THE INFLUENCE OF BROADCAST MEDIA ON THE SALES OF FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS IN PORT HARCOURT

THE INFLUENCE OF BROADCAST MEDIA ON THE SALES OF FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS IN PORT HARCOURT

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

The term ‘broadcast media’ is quite often mentioned these days. It is a new phenomenon and one would probably imagine that everyone knows or understands what it means. Nearly ninety percent (if not more) of all online or internet users use broadcast media in one way or the other (Kietzmann and Kristopher, 2011; Dolwick, 2009).

The emergence of broadcast media began in the early days of internet when people started sharing information and communicating with one another (Boyd and Ellison, 2010) but unfortunately; the platforms used then were more ‘technology intensive’ and required some level of expertise before use. Hence, the number of people using broadcast media platforms then was limited. Over a period of time as technology advanced, platforms that are less sophisticated were developed thus, enabling billions of regular internet users, without any technology background, to use the services (Boyd et al., 2010; Baden, Bender, Spring, Bhattacharjee and Strain, 2009) and this marked a turning point in the history of the media, making the media all inclusive in such a way that people no longer remain silent spectators to the content being dished out to them. Now, they could create their own content, share it with others, respond to people, collaborate with them and many more (Andreas and Haenlein, 2010). This user interaction is what gave impetus to the today’s increasingly emerging broadcast media platform.

Broadcast media medium such as, the radio and television now allow member individuals to interact with one another and to build relationships even many companies across the world have joined but they joined only the fastest growing networks such as Facebook and Twitter, so as to connect with their customers (Trattner and Kappe 2012). The broadcast media networks act so fantastically as the vehicle helping companies to gain traffic or attention to their product and service usually through the use of Links via the adverts they place on the broadcast media (Chinag and Chung, 2011; Deis and Hensel, 2010).

It also acts just as the traditional Word of Mouth in mainstream marketing does. Corporate messages conveyed through broadcast media spread very fast from users to users and presumably resonate in favour of the company (Deis and Hensel, 2010). In these regards, broadcast media networks, ever since 2002, have become the new 21st century paradigmatic market medium for businesses to exploit (IMAP, 2010) and influence their customers’ purchasing behaviour more. This is because, globally, a survey report reveals that about half of the 170 million Nigerians regualary make use of the broadcast media(Oracle Retail, 2010) and sequel to this notion, virtually all businesses now employ broadcast media networks as an extension of their existing corporate marketing strategies especially the retail industry in order to capture and serve customarily those active users with a broad range of lifestyle brands of products across the universe. And in the light of this, many firms in Nigeria also have started plunging into using these platforms. This current study thus seeks to explore thepatronage behaviour of Nigerian consumers via these growing broadcast media networks especially from those companies that utilize them for their marketing activities.

THE INFLUENCE OF BROADCAST MEDIA ON THE SALES OF FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS IN PORT HARCOURT