THE INFLUENCE OF NEW MEDIA ADVERTISING ON THE BUYING HABITS OF STUDENTS

1.1 Introduction

The time of new media has arrived, messaging is starting to assume job in our everyday lives. It has far outgrown the phase of being a helpful expansion to a telephone and has showed into an expansion for some individuals. The purchasing conduct is a standout amongst the most basic issues for this situation, since understudies utilize their parent's cash to purchase (King, 2014). Social media advertising helps the consumer to make the final decision of buying because it provides consumer with free and easy-accessed information that influence the five steps of buying decision including need recognition, search for alternative, evaluate the alternatives, take the decision, and evaluate the decision.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Today, most organizations are mainly interested in incorporating social media into the business structures of their organization, but do not have a proper know-how of what social media is all about. They also don’t have a tangible channel to ascertain the gain that these technologies hold for them. In a survey carried out in 2009 by McKinsey and Company, it was discovered that with the appropriate use of the social media a lot of organizations were able to benefit from each other in ways such as sharing of ideas, communication becoming better and the workplace environment becoming enhanced. The value that social media adds in organizations is huge as an increasing number of organizations are already endorsing and exploiting the various opportunities in social media technological innovation. This is to enable them find support for their various organizational and business practices (Starmark, 2008).

New technological inventions can have a great impact in organizations through its contributions to change the social environment while expediting sharing of knowledge and the development of new ideas. (Kling et al, 2005). Social Media will come in handy as a good example of new technological innovation that is making a great impact in the organizations of today.

In time past, the social media inspired technologies were seen as a chapter. But time has proven that wrong. We have seen the world being transformed daily by these new collective technologies, which is giving a new hope to organizations with impacts which were never considered to exist initially.

Social media hold a lot of interesting opportunities, but it is important to understand how to utilize it with its accompanying impact in an organizational context beside where it is applicable in real‐life projects. The present day organizations should ask questions like how can employees use social media technologies to do their work and what impact these have on employees. These should be pivotal questions for modern day organizations. These questions can help organizations to understand how social media technologies work effectively at workplace. Thus, it affords them the opportunity to review and understand how to utilize what it offers with its impact on how people interact and work among them as earlier discussed.

Hill (2009) portrayed Globalization as the deviation towards a more unified and co-dependent economy which is historically merging different national markets into one global enormous marketplace. The Economic Intelligence Unit (2009) announced that, the global market place was overwhelmed by variations in exchange rates, the purchasing behavior of consumers and inflation in the course of the recession that started in 2007. These economic developments have ended up compelling organizations to redesign their business strategies so they can be able to communicate their brands more effectively. Davis (2001) writes that brand is one of an organization’s most prized assets which simply imply that there is a demand on the present day organization to understand that it is important for them to capitalize on their brand. This can help them maintain a profitable growth and achieve sustained profitability objectives.

There are various means of building brands, which can come in form of advertising, meeting specific needs of customers, attaching a particular image to a service or product, identifying and meeting a need that competitors are to identify, combative communication and strategizing price (Burger et al, 2009). As recessions is towering in recent times of high, it became very imperative for organizations to maintain honest, clear medium of communication and retain a good image in a cost effective means (Unit for Economic Intelligence, 2009). Social media marketing was one of the popular channel organizations used to communicate their brands during the recession. Some of those mediums are; online electronic media which helps facilitates participation, responsiveness, consultation, connectivity and networking amongst online end users (Mayfield, 2008).

Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn etc are some of the dynamic tools that have helped facilitate online rapport (Golden, 2011). Relatively, it is a low cost pattern of marketing which allows organizations to engage direct end-users through their contacts (Heinlein and Kaplan, 2010).

Brands and consumers have a changing role to play in the organization’s strategy given the choices made available to consumers and the prominent role of social media marketing being that they now have an impact on the economy (Mayfield 2004, Lindeman, 2008). Brands have huge influence on customer choice and customers influence other customers. Affecting repurchases are these series of events, which goes on to affect earnings in the future and long term organizational continuity (Oliveira and Sullivan, 2003).

Thus, consumer’s buying behavior is often influenced by a leading brand. This value is created by generating demand (via repurchases) and securing of future earnings for the organization (Sullivan and Oliveira, 2003). Therefore social media marketing serves as opportunities for communication and depends upon new and unusual thought patterns (Heinlein and Kaplan, 2010; Kweskin, 2008). This helps customer’s product and brand experience.

This new era of digital communication and social engagement is preeminent for strategizing in business. Therefore as organizations are becoming more competitive globally, it is pertinent for them to explore marketing strategy in a more compelling and innovative way so as to attract larger number of customers (Rockendorf, 2011).

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Influence of New Media Advertising on the Buying Habits of Students.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

The coming of the Internet and its acceptance by the public, have altered quite a lot in the way organizations promote their services and products as well as the channels of communication between them and their customers. This is seen in the way they market and communicate their brands and products nowadays which is becoming a challenging project.

Customers are overwhelmed by marketing commercials and promotional events. The sensitivity of customers to get excited is fading out on promotional events and consumers are beginning to resist the efforts of some companies at marketing them.

Basically, the promotional focus of some organizations is on the conventional mass media advert style which includes commercials on TV, radio jingles and advertisements in print formats such as newspapers and magazines along with billboard placements. It is now on record that as the Internet is fast advancing across the global marketplace, the effectiveness of traditional mass media is fast on the decline.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Influence of New Media Advertising on the Buying Habits of Students. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To identify the impact of social media on students in terms of buying habits of students.
2. To examine the effectiveness of social media on students in terms of buying habits of students.
3. To find out the problems with social media on students in terms of buying habits of students.

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Are there any problems with New Media Advertising on students in terms of buying habits of students?
• What is the impact of New Media Advertising on students in terms of buying habits of students?
• What is the effectiveness of New Media Advertising on students in terms of buying habits of students?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

Hypothesis One

• H0: There are no significant problems with New Media Advertising on students in terms of buying habits of students
• H1: There are significant problems with New Media Advertising on students in terms of buying habits of students

Hypothesis Two

• H0: The gender of the respondent does not moderate the effect of new media advertising on students’ purchasing habit.
• H1: The gender of the respondent moderates the effect of new media advertising on students’ purchasing habit.

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1.7 Significance of Study

The findings of the study would be of benefit to: Business operators, Advertisers, Ministry of commerce, the Media, Students, and students of Enugu State University.

The study is of benefit to business operators as it would create awareness of the importance of social media (online) advertising on the sale of their products.

The findings are also a benefit to advertisers as they would have a broader understanding of how internet advertising influences the sale of their goods online and their possible inhabitants.

It is of benefit to students as it provide liable information on various concepts related to online advertising,

Finally, it is significant contribution to the existing body of literature in the discipline.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Influence of New Media Advertising on the Buying Habits of Students in UNIBEN (University of Benin).

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).