A Study on the Role of Advertisement to Promote the Business

Advertising is multi-dimensional. It is a form of powerful marketing tool, a component of the economic system, a means of financing the mass media, a social institution, an instrument of business management, a field of employment and a profession. Advertisement, in the present atmosphere of global competition, is a powerful social and economic force. Consumers look to it for information in respect of products, brands and services that might help them in selection and to meet their material needs. From the critics of advertising we hear that it works by playing on people's hidden fears and motivations, or by manipulating consumer demand for the advantage of the advertiser or by distortion or misrepresentation. Advertising, in the real world, does its work in many marvelous ways. Advertisement, in the present atmosphere of global competition, is a powerful social and economic force. Consumers look to it for information in respect of products, brands and services that might help them in selection and to meet their material needs. Without these services immediate contact is not possible while sitting away from home and at a distant place. All the studies show that a lot of work has been done and is being done on the relevance and need of advertising but so far no attempt in this regard has been made . Sometimes advertising does not include objective information because the primary function of commercial advertisements is to sell a product/service to the prospective buyer. Advertising as an institution and as a business and social process has the greater responsibility within the economic system of any country.

Stratified random sample technique has been followed to identify the respondents in rural and urban areas. A questionnaire was designed, tested and administered for collection of data. It was finally decided to select a sample of 600 respondents. Media advertisements' effectiveness has its own say. A major proportion of the respondents endorse the proposition that advertisements in media affect the customer behaviour for the sale of mobile services. Whether appearance of the celebrities in advertisements affect the customers‘ buying behaviour, to this, more than half of the respondents disagree. Company's brand ambassadors and the advertisements presented by them are indeed liked by the viewers, the question is only of rating. The advertisements presented by the companies through brand ambassadors act as emotional appeal to the viewers, to some extent. The data further provides that a vast majority of the urban respondents disagree with the statement that advertisements affect the sale of mobile phone services. An overview of various aspects and issues of the present study through the review of literature available on the subject has been presented in this chapter. The investigations made in the previous studies have been of great significance in understanding the intricacies of the issues taken up for this study and also in finding the gap for further research in the field. The conclusions drawn from the earlier research works have served as a guide mark for this study. Some of the important studies have been reviewed as under: Wagner (1941) in his article titled, Advertising and the Business Cycle, studied one of the most difficult and controversial problems of marketing. Although his analysis is handicapped by important weaknesses in the available data and particularly in statistics on the volume of advertising, the conclusions he reaches are of interest to many workers in this field. The author in making a conditions. Advertisement plays an important role in achieving growth in sales of product and services. Effective advertising refers to informing the public about the right product at the right time through the right medium. The right media selection is the crux of the success of the entire advertising campaign.

To meet the specific objectives are the main methodological issues of the present study. The methodology adopted for the study is as follows:

Secondary data: The secondary data has been collected from various journals, books and policy documents of the government.

PRIMARY DATA:

Primary data has been collected from the respondents belonging to the three districts in the state. Stratified random sample technique has been followed to identify the respondents in rural and urban areas. A Structured Questionnaire was designed, tested and administered for collection of data. It was finally decided to select a sample of 600 respondents - 200 from each district with a break-up of 100 rural and 100 urban respondents. The composition of respondents contacted is as under: - Servicemen - Businessmen - Students - Others (not covered under the above categories).

While highlighting the advertisement sensitivity, a comparative study of Rural and Urban areas was made. For this purpose, the mean, weighted average score, F-Test, and Pearson's Chi-square test have been used in this research work. Chi-square is a statistical measure used in the context of sampling analysis for comparing a variance to a theoretical variance. In this study, to analyze the cross classification tables, the Chi-square test has been used for independence. For the test of independence, a Chi-square probability of less than or equal to 0.05 (or the Chi-square statistic being at or larger than the 0.05 critical point) is commonly interpreted as justification for rejecting the null hypothesis that the row variable is unrelated to the column variable. The alternative hypothesis corresponds to the variables having an association or relationship where the structure of this relationship is not specified. Advertising became a major economic force around the middle of the nineteenth century, with advent of the prices. However, as markets matured with a proliferation of similar brands, sales promotion gained importance. Currently, most of the firms spend about three-fourths of the promotional budget on sales promotions, and one-fourth on advertising. Thus, sales promotions have become a very important component of the promotional mix. Second, advertising and sales promotion are closely interlinked. Expenditures on advertising have a direct bearing on expenditures on sales promotion. Third, personal selling and publicity may not be close enough to advertising and sales promotion to merit an in-depth treatment.

The specific objectives of the study are:

• To study the socio-economic profile of the users and examine the impact of socio-economic factors in both rural and urban areas.

• To study the extent to which advertisements affect the promotion of services.

• To identify the most effective ways of advertising in business.

• To suggest a marketing strategy for further growth in business services.

• To study the consideration in the minds of the customers.

DATA ANALYSIS

From the analysis and discussion of the combined data comprising urban and rural respondents, it is revealed that about one-fifth of the respondents are having mobiles, though they have no income at all. Respondents who fall in the 'service' category are comparatively using more mobiles than other categories.

From the discussion and penetrating study of the data analysis, it is finally concluded that more than half respondents are of the opinion that they were not influenced by any advertisement during the course of buying their mobile service. However, advertisements through electronic media play an important role (about thirty eight percent) in the popularity of mobile phone services. Indeed, electronic and print media has its own some say. In urban segment an abnormal trend has been seen where hundred percent respondents in the age group of 15-20 years agree that advertisements in media affects the customers' buying behavior for the sale of mobile phone service. Overall analysis opinion goes against the version that

much like to go through deeply into the advertisements while reading newspapers/magazines and also while seeing television. One significant analysis has emerged that source through advertisements in electronic media plays a guiding role for the rural and urban respondents both.

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