ABSTRACT

Over the years, advertising has become a regular strategy for positioning product, services and ideas in the market. Yet an over dependence on advertising could be counter productive and disdainful for the target audience who often regard excessive advertising as information overload. Inspite of the growing criticisms about the effectiveness or other wise of advertising, its relevance in contemporary marketing management is not in doubt. This study was structural to critically examine the usefulness of advertising as an effective tool in sales volume of detergent, with a special focus on proper packaging, which will surely persuade consumers to experiment a particular product, and if such advertisement should be executed long enough it will generate curiosity that will motivate consumers to buy a given product. The study reviews/recommends that Unilever Nigeria's Plc, must endeavour to understand the consumer buying behaviour and what motivate their curiosity to buy, arid identify why, how, where and when they buy. Otherwise, an instructural advertising campaign will not yield positive result. The populations of this study consist of consumers and manufacturers of detergents product in Ogun and Aba metropolis. This is area where our sample size is drawn from. A total of 60 questionnaires was distributed and administered by the researcher, 50 copies were dully filled and returned, this formed the bases of the analysis. Three related hypothesis formulated for this study were tested with chi-square test statistic. 1-lypothesis one state that: advertising does not persuade consumers to buy product/services. This was rejected at 0.5 significance level. Hypothesis two state that: advertising does not have a positive effect on sales volume of a product. This was also rejected at 0.05 significance level. Hypothesis three state that: advertising does not improve the competitive capability of the firm. It was still rejected at the same significance level: The hypothesis stated in the null were all negated thereby accepting the alternative hypothesis. Therefore, this study proves that 95% of respondents believes that consumer buying behaviour is determined by advertisement. From our analysed result of this study, some major recommendations were made. One of such outstanding recommendations is that advertising is a sin-qua-non in which manufacturing firms should adopt if they think of survival. Another recommendation is that Unilever Nigeria's Plc should ensure that there is a planned, co-coordinated and controlled sales promotion programme.