SALES PROMOTION IN INCREASING THE LEVELS OF NETWORK PATRONAGE IN THE TELECOMS INDUSTRY IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

People often confuse sales promotion with broader term, “promotion” but sates promotion is one of the promotional toots.

Promotion consist of advertising, personal selling direct marketing, all term to communication, the advantage of the firm’s goods and services to it’s customer. Promotion is one of the four “Ps” of product marketing and has to do with all the activities carried out by the organization communication with the public about their product. A target audience can be in any stage are awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. This is called the hierarchy of effect. Because they represent stages a buyers goes through in moving towards a purchase and each describes a possible objective or effect of promotion. The goal of promotion is to get the prospect to the final or purchase stage, but in most cases, that may not be possible until the person has moved through the earlier stages. Thus a promotion effort may have appeared to be modest but essential objective such as creating knowledge about a product’s advantage. The term promotion originated a Latin word “prornotioners” meaning to move forward, to advance from the view point of business practices, promotion is the marketing communication activity that attempt to inform, remind and persuade individual., to accept, resell, recommend or use a product, idea or institution.

Sales promotion on the other hand is a semi personal form of communication which is short term in nature and aim at achieving more sales and building of better image of the company.

The America Marketing Association (2000) define sales promotion as those marketing activities other than personal selling, advertising and publicity designed to stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness, such as snows, denotations and various non recurrent selling effort not in the ordinary routine.

Kolter (2002) defined sales promotion as activities which are of short term in nature designed not stimulate the interest of perfect market Sales promotion can also be seen as those marketing efforts that are supplementary in nature and seeks to induce buying decision. Sales promotion activities may also aim at inducing customers to act immediately without further delay by offering price relate, time constraint, contest, premium etc. it is also defines as short term inducement of value offered to arouse interest of buying goods and services. It is a promotional tool which unlike the other element to have a temporary effect on the buyer. The major consumers promotion tools free samples, premium (gift) capon, trading stamps free trails, deals rebate, product demonstrations point of purchasing displays prizes (contest, game, sweep stakes) etc. the study x-ravel the reason which firms embark on sales promotions exercise with short period. It is strong to be better in the market than a non promoted product. This is because the consumers are meant to he aware of such product through such means.

One of the constraints that affected the study was inadequate funding of the research exercise enough money was not available to ensure smooth collection of data.

Network service providers are those firms that provide telecommunication service to its consumers examples include mobile telecommunication limited.(MTN), globacom Nigeria limited Zain Nigeria limited. (MTN) Aba, there are about 120 staff that is presently working there and the name of the managing director is chief v. Odili. Mobile telecommunication network Nigeria is a part of mobile telecommunication network (MTN) group Africa’s’ leading cellular telecommunication company. On may 16 2001 MTN become the first global in Nigeria. Therefore, the company launched full commercial operation beginning with Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt. MTN paid two hundred and eight five million dollars to enable her acquire for GSM licenses in Nigeria in January 20th 2001. Therefore, on 18th May 2002, Mobile telecommunication network Nigeria limited launched commercial operation in Aba, Owerri, Umuahia etc on November 2003 MTN commissioned a corporate office at Aba located at Umungasi, Aba-Owerri road Aba Abia state. To date in excess of us $L8 Billion has been invested building mobile telecommunication infrastructure in Nigeria. Since being launched, MTN has steadily deployed it’s services across Nigeria. It now provide service in 223 cities and 10,000 villages and communities and growing members of high ways across the country spanning the 36 states of Nigeria and the federal capital territory Abuja. Many of more villages and communities are being connected to the world of telecommunication for the time ever.

The company’s digital microwave transmission backbone the 3400 kilometer, yellow plan was commissioned by president Olusegun Obasanjo on 10 Dec 2003 and is reputed to be the most extensive digital microwaves transmission intrastate in all Africa. MTN Nigeria is also recently expended its network Nigeria is also recently expanded its network capacity to include a new numbering range with the prefix 0806, 070 and recently 081, making MYN the first GSRN network in Nigeria to have adopted an additional numbering system having exhausted its historical subscribed numbering range of 0803.

1.2 STATEMENTOF PROBLEM

Major problem centered on the ineffective promotion and inefficient management of some network service providers with particular reference to mobile telecommunication network (Nigeria) limited Aba. This specific problems were internal and external. On the external form, the MTN Nigeria Limited was faced with competition from other network service providers with each striving to have a bigger share of the market. It was also found out that the company (MTN Nigeria) has the problem of reaching Hinterland who form the large bulk of the customers, who do not understand promotional massages  and do not at times have access to redemption centers or other branch offices

There exists also some problem with staff of MTN Nigeria Limited. This ranged from various company staff who also participate in promotion directly by leaking vital information to their relatives which is against the rules of eh sales promotion. At the end, of the promotion sale may start to go down and portray negative attribute to the firm.

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The major objective of the study is to determine the evaluation of sales promotion on the marketing network service providers with respect to mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN)

The specific objective of the study includes

To find out which advertising medium would best effectively direct the promotion massage to the target audience.

To determine how a good corporate image can be built by MTN Nigeria Limited with the people of Nigeria.

To establish methods of sustaining good corporate image end reputation.

To analyze sales promotion can generated huge sales fro the companies involved in sales promotion

To make recommendations for profitable sales promotion activities.