ABSTRACT

Social media advertising is a much more effective way to nurture leads and transform prospective customers into loyal ones. This is because social media allows you to engage and interact with consumers unlike any other advertising platform.

Social media or social network sites can be defined as a web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system. Social network advertising is a term that is used to describe a form of online advertising that focuses on social networking sites.

The main objective of this study is to investigate JMC students’ perception on the effectiveness of social media adverts. The study covers students of the University of Buea from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC).

This study uses the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (ELM) as its theoretical base which uses the high and low model as a tool to influence consumer behaviour.

The research design used for this study was the descriptive survey research design and study population was drawn from level 200, 300 and 400 students from JMC in the University of Buea. The simple random sampling technique was used to select participants.

The instruments used for data collection was a well-developed questionnaire for students. The self-delivery method was used to administer the questionnaire. Data was analysed with EXCEL 2019 version in frequencies and simple percentages and presented on tables and figures.

The results indicate that majority of the respondents 55.4% do not perceive that social media adverts influences their purchase intent while 44.6% do.

Also, most of the respondents 78.75% perceived that social media influences their product loyalty while 21.25% do not. Lastly, 68% of respondents think social media influence their loyalty to products while 32% do not.

Recommendations were made to businesses and student business owners on the need to make use of social media advertisements and it should be reliable and credible so that consumers can believe in the authenticity of the services provided.
Key words: Advertisement, Social Media, Social Media Advertising, Students, Perception

                                                                              CHAPTER ONE
                                                                             INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Social media advertising is a much more effective way to nurture leads and transform prospective customers into loyal ones. This is because social media allows you to engage and interact with consumers unlike any other advertising platform.

Social media or social network sites can be defined as a web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those are made by others within the system. (Boyd & Fllison. 2007). Social networking sites include social networks (Facebook.

Google’, Myspace), picture sharing online albums (Instagram. Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket),professional networking (linked-in. twitter). In the past few years, social media have become perhaps the popular communication channels for college-aged Internet users (Pelling and White, 2009).

The aspect of communication most recently under the spotlight is that driven by the social media phenomenon. User-centric multimedia applications such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Instagram, Picasa, and YouTube are flourishing (Bond Camilla et al., 2010). At the technological age, most of the valuable company doing business in developing countries in South Asia such as Bangladesh depends more on social media advertising for persuading consumer and branding their companies.

The value of social media advertising in Bangladesh is increasing due to a rapid increase of teenage internet users which is approximately 16 million (BTRC, 2014). Social network advertising is a term that is used to describe a form of online advertising that focuses on social networking sites. Major benefits of advertising on a social networking site is that advertisers can take advantage of the users’ demographic information and target their advertisements appropriately. Direct advertising based on the network of friends is the most
effective format but also causes the most controversy.

Indirect advertising is an innovative marketing technique in which a company will create a ‘page’ or ‘group’ those users can choose to join, the best use out of social networks is not to make money ‘directly’ oil them, but to harness their marketing potential and to use them to market your own business.

The use of social network sites for advertising has allowed for the popularity of other marketing techniques here being viral marketing which relies on the same principles. Poter & Golan (2006) offer the first empirical effort to define viral advertising, as “unpaid peer-to-peer communication of provocative content originating from an identified sponsor using the Internet to persuade or influence an audience to pass along the content to others.”

With the emergence of social media, viral advertising also has gained tremendous popularity; online social platforms dramatically have changed the way consumers respond to advertising (Marken. 2007). Once a consumer joins a brand-related group on Facebook, their brand perceptions and purchasing decisions could be influenced by mobilizing information they receive from other members.

Meanwhile, they also may encounter more opportunities to pass along viral messages created by advertisers to their contacts through social network sites (SNS). As consumers increasingly turn to SNS groups as trusted sources of information and opinions, new opportunities arise to build consumer-brand relationships and advertising platforms (Shu-Chuun. 2011).

The rise of social media as an alternative channel for advertising in the recent years has made many organizations to take to it as a means of promoting and marketing their products. In Cameroon there is a rising online community that would be a good target to advertisers and marketers. A good number of private companies and organizations both local and international have employed the use of social media to target the Cameroon market.

Social networking is on the rise for business reasons and also for personal use with its popularity increasing day by day, the need for business tables to go social is indispensable (Wind & Todi, 2008). Based on the above facts, it becomes imperative for us to investigate the influence social media has in our environment and how effective it is. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the perception of JMC students on the effectiveness of social media adverts.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Social media sites are very important in advertisement. Most businesses recently use social networking sites such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Youtube for advertisement. Social media has transformed the information and business community making information circulation faster. However, the effectiveness of social media advertisement can be perceived differently from one person to another as different social media users hold diverse opinions on the influence social media adverts has on their purchase intent, product awareness and even product loyalty.

For instance, a social media can view an MTN advert on Facebook and ignore it while another will be influenced to buy it. This implies that some users are influenced by social media adverts while some are not. As such it is important for these different perceptions to be investigated out of which strategies can be put in place for social media adverts to be more effective.
1.3 Research questions
1.3.1 Main research question
– What are JMC students’ perception on the effectiveness of social media adverts?
Specific research questions
– What is perception of JMC students on the influence of social media adverts on the level of their purchasing intent?

What is perception of JMC students on the influence of social media adverts on their
product awareness?

What is perception of JMC students on the influence of social media adverts on their
product loyalty?
1.4 Hypothesis
H1: There is significant change in the level of students purchasing intent due to social media adverts.
H0 There is no significant change in the level of students purchasing intent due to social media adverts.
H2 There is significant change in students’ product awareness due to social media adverts influence.
H0 There is no significant change in students’ product awareness due to social media adverts influence.
H3 There is significant change in students’ product loyalty due to social media advert influenced.
H0 There is no significant change in students’ product loyalty due to social media advert influenced.

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