CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Advertising is one of the veritable promotional tools designed to promote and market organizational products. It plays a very important role in the efficient marketing of products or goods and services. Generally speaking, companies exist to produce and market products. This objective cannot be actualized if the manufactured products are not brought to the knowledge of the consuming public. If the consumers and the general public are not informed and educated on the needs and wants some products could satisfy, they will definitely stay clear of the products. Against this background, product advertising focuses on projecting the image and maketability of products in such manner that will make them acceptable to the consumers and buyers. Odunsi (1998: 19), noted the importance of product advertising when he stressed that the growth being recorded in the advertising field is connected with its potentiality to enhance the acceptability marketability of companies products. Product advertising has helped so many companies to revive and reposition some of their products which have almost reached the decline stage in their life cycle. Furthermore, the continuous existing survival and growth of companies to some extent depend on the performance of their products and the level of their sales revenue. The fact still remains that for a company to decline profit and possibly grow, its sales revenue must be high. For its sales revenue to be high, its products must be acceptable to the consumers, hence giving rise to their high demand. These can only be achieved when these products are made known to the buyers through advertising. Product advertising as stressed by Ebue (2000.75) is an effective promotional tool that will not only inform and educate buyers or consumers about a company’s products but highly significant in achieving the targeted sales revenue of the company. For over fifty (50) years of existence, a Nigerian brewery Plc is one of the leading breweries operating in Nigeria today. The company has a wide range of products that includes alcoholic, malt and soft drinks. The notable products in the company’s product mix includes; Golder, star, Amstel malt, maltina, Legend and schepps. The company has a large factory at Agbara, Lagos and a brewery plant at 9th Mile Corner, Ngwo, Enugu. The Company again commissioned its new Ultra – modern brewery in Ama Enugu State in October 27th 2003, by his excellence president Olusegun Obasanjo.