Abstract

This study investigates the effect of TV advertisements on the buying behaviour of the youths in the Buea Municipality of the South West Region of Cameroon. Specifically, the study examined the extent to which Information Content of the Television advertisement, using celebrity/conveyer on a TV advertisement, the use of Music/jingles on Television advertisement the extent to which Eye candy/attractiveness of the Television advertisement affects the buying behaviour of youth. To achieve this, the survey design method was employed to extract and analyze primary data.

A total of 100 questionnaires were served using convenient, simple random sampling techniques. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The results reveal that TV Advertisement is a factor that every marketer should concern as it may urge the youth to buy behaviour.

According to the findings, the youth of Buea Municipality always believe that products are as good as demonstrated in TV advertisements. And also, they are expecting to buy products and services after watching Television Advertisements up to some extent. People believe that they can aware of new products; existing products and they can expand their knowledge by watching Television Advertisements.

Youth segment thinks that using a celebrity is a good way to remember the product name, to create positive attitude but they do not believe always it will not be true. To attract the youth segment Television Advertisement should be attractive and for that can use beautiful sceneries, interesting letters and attractive people.

Thus, it was concluded that TV advertisement has a significant effect on the buying behaviour of the youths in Buea Municipality. Thus its recommended that businesses in Cameroon should improve their TV advertising quality so the customer could feel easier to access the information from the TV advertising.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Every day, we are all exposed to different kinds of media that are trying to sell products to us. Society today gives the marketing communication business more than just TV and newspaper to communicate with their customers. Advertising has been a tool for companies for as far as the 17th century where Gillian Dyers (1982) found a trace from the production of news sheets that worked as an information source for the financial market.

Advertising plays an imperative role in our society in which almost every person irrespective of age, sex, occupation, status, and is concerned, and this has a strong impact on the attitudes and behaviours of people. Advertising today seems to be everywhere and ever-present exerting afar-reaching influence on the daily lives of people (Kotwal, 2008). The key to success for an advertiser has been their ability to manipulate our decisions and impression (Giles, 2003).

Advertising not only informs people about a product but also persuades them to go for it (Belch and Belch, 2004). It also reminds people about the product thus creating brand awareness, changing the attitudes of customers and expanding the consumer base (Baker, 2016). In the contemporary world, companies are often involved in cut-throat competition for customers and according to Kotler and Amstrong (2017), customers are considered as the most significant actors in the business’s microenvironment.

According to Hackey (2005) advertising is claimed by researchers as the most important form of representing our contemporary world. Considering the impact that globalization has had on the economy, businesses have had no choice but to devise ways that can help them gain a competitive edge in the world of the economy (Andrews and Shimp, 2017).

They want information about their product to reach the consumer as fast as possible. Additionally, they want the consumer to get convinced, that their products and services are superior thus are worth trying. Yet, advertising is considered as an a high-cost element to produce and distribute and critics claim that they doubt efficiency in communicating with certain target audiences.

Among all forms of advertising, Television (TV) advertisement is considered the most powerful and influential because of its strong combination of visuals, sound, music and action. TV commercial messages are specially designed to target the masses which appeal to their needs, emotions, desires etc. and prompt them to take action by buying the advertised product or using the particular TV service.

Television advertising has been a popular medium for large retailers ever since the TV first began to appear in living rooms. The impact of television is vital because of its enormous potential as an audio-visual communicator.

Television (T.V.) enables the creative man to communicate by combining motion, sounds, words, colour, personality and stage setting to express and demonstrate ideas to the large and widely distributed audience. T.V. advertisements usually play a role in either introducing a product reinforcing the familiarity with the product and also convincing to purchase the product (Ligo and Manohar, 2016).

Television advertisements by their nature use persuasive techniques to appeal to consumers’ sense of purchasing behaviour. Not only that but human behaviour as well. This influence may be either positive or negative.

The kind of influence depends on the kind of advertisement. Many a time, consumers turned down the content of advertisements due to varied reasons. Some maintain that the information content has no diverse effect on their purchasing behaviour, while some asset that it does. This study is an attempt to examine the extent to which these claims are true.

Advertisement cannot only change emotions but give a subliminal message. Advertising today seems to be everywhere and ever-present exerting a far-reaching influence on the daily lives of people. Advertisements develop self-concepts to induce purchase decisions. Television advertising employs attention-grabbing tricks such as catchy and pleasing music, lyrics, Jingles, humour and repeated messages. The impact of the advertisements is more on television than the print media or radio (Ligo and Manohar, 2016).

According to Jobber (2001), advertising is “any paid form of non-personal communication of ideas or products in the prime media that is television, the press, posters, cinema and radio” Wells Burnnet and Mariaty (2003) says “effective ads work on two levels” the first level is that the advertisement should satisfy customer objectives. The second level is achieving the adviser’s objective.

According to Kotler and Amstrong (2004), companies worldwide are spending $414 billion on advertisements annually. Since the advertisement is an often-used tool, Wells et al (2003) point out three-dimension characterizing effective advertisement. The first dimension is the strategy: this is where objectives are carefully examined and the target audience and message created. The second objective is creativity: where a large number of advertisements running the message have to stick to the target audience memory. The third objective is the execution which is the details, the photography, setting and printing.

Based on the background, this study will analyze the effect of TV advertisements on the buying behaviour of the youths in Buea Municipality.

1.2 Problem Statement

With the huge competition in the industry, there is a major challenge for marketers to identify the factors affecting customer buying behaviour. And also advertisements are playing a major role when influencing customer buying behaviour. Therefore, it is clear that to change and influence youth segments buying behaviour through TV ads, advertisements are more important and useful.

Television has the properties of sight; sound and motion that traditionally set it apart from other media such as radio (sound only) or print (sight only). With its three-pronged assault on its viewer’s senses, TV can create broad awareness for a product. Television is considered a mass medium because of the numbers of people it reaches.

Television advertising can have a powerful influence on youth customers. Having realized the stupendous effect T.V. advertising has not only on the purchasing pattern but also on the total lifestyle of young customers a need was felt to study the impact of T.V. advertisements on the buying behaviour of the youth customers towards cosmetic products in the Buea Municipality.

With a variety of television advertising options for companies to choose from, television has been flooded with advertisements of all kinds (Axhami et al., 2015). Unfortunately, most television viewers (youths) are not aware of the influence that television advertisements have on their perceptions and choice of products and services.

It is important to investigate how these advertisements affect consumer behaviour with a focus on Albania. There is a growing concern among local researchers that television viewers in Buea Municipality have little or no information concerning the impact that TV advertising has on their lifestyles. Against this background, the study seeks to investigate the effect of TV advertisement on the buying behaviour of the youths in the Buea Municipality.

1.3 Research Questions

1.3.1 Main Research Questions

What is the effect of TV advertisements on the buying behaviour of the youths in the Buea Municipality?

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

1. How does the Information Content of the Television advertisement influence the buying behaviour of youth?
2. How does using celebrity/conveyer on TV advertisement affects the buying behaviour of youth?
3. How does the use of Music/jingles on Television advertisements impact of buying behaviour of youth?
4. How does candy/attractiveness of the Television advertisement affect the buying behaviour of youth?