Design and Implementation of an Internet-based Advertisement Desk for a Multi-product Manufacturing Company (a Case Study of Dangote Group of Company, Ilorin)
Chapter One
AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The primary aim of this project is to effectively use the internet medium as a means of bringing the products of the company to the awareness of a very large number of consumers so that the company can sell quickly. The objectives of the study are:
- To develop an internet based advertisement that can help sell a new product quickly, enabling them to recoup the costs of developing new products;
- To develop an application that can help motivate salespersons to improve their performance and to induce consumers to purchase goods and services; and
- To design a system that enables advertisers to promote products and services to millions of potential customers through the World Wide Web.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
INTERNET ADVERTISEMENT
Advertising has an important effect on a country’s economy, society, culture, and political system. This is especially true in the countries where the advertising industry plays such a prominent role.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
By stimulating the development of new products, advertising helps increase competition. Many economists believe that increased competition leads to lower prices, thereby benefiting consumers and the economy as a whole. These economists also argue that by interesting consumers in purchasing goods, advertising enables manufacturers and others to sell their products in larger quantities. The increased volume of sales enables companies to produce individual units at lower costs and therefore, sell them at a lower price. Advertising thus benefits consumers by helping lower prices.
Other economists, however, believe that advertising is wasteful. They argue that the cost of advertising adds to the cost of goods and that most advertising simply encourages consumers to buy one brand rather than another. According to this view, advertising simply moves sales from one company to another, rather than increasing sales overall and thereby benefiting the economy as a whole.
SOCIAL IMPACT
Advertising can have wide-ranging repercussions on a society. Some critics suggest that advertising promotes a materialistic way of life by leading people to believe that happiness is achieved by purchasing products. They argue that advertising creates a consumer culture in which buying exciting new products becomes the foundation of the society’s values, pleasures, and goals.
As adverts have begun to more fully reflect the lives of women and African Americans in the Advertising has a major social impact by helping sustain mass communications media and making them relatively inexpensive, if not free, to the public. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and broadcast television all receive their primary income from advertising. Without advertising, many of these forms of mass communication might not exist to the extent that they do today, or they might be considerably more expensive, offer less variety, or even be subject to government control through subsidies. In-depth news programs, a diversity of magazines, and free entertainment might no longer be widely available.
At the same time, however, some critics warn that because advertising plays such a major economic role, it may exercise undue influence on the news media and thereby curtail the free flow of information in a free society. Reporters and editors, for example, may be hesitant to develop a news story that criticizes a major advertiser. As a result, society might not be alerted to harmful or potentially harmful conduct by the advertiser. Most members of the news media deny that pressure from an advertiser prevents them from pursuing news stories involving that advertiser, but some members of the media acknowledge that they might not be inclined to investigate an issue aggressively if it threatened to offend a major advertiser.
Advertisers may affect media programming in other ways, too, critics charge. For example, companies that sponsor TV programs prefer relatively wholesome, noncontroversial programming to avoid offending a mass audience. This preference causes TV networks to emphasize this type of programming. The result is that society may be denied the benefits of being able to view challenging or highly original entertainment programs or news programs on controversial issues. Because advertisers are especially interested in attracting the 18 to 34 year olds who account for most consumer spending, television shows are often developed with this audience in mind. If the ratings show that a program is not attracting large audiences, particularly among 18 to 34 year olds, advertisers often withdraw support, which causes a program to be canceled. As a result, shows that are more likely to interest and to be of value to older audiences are not produced.
The impact of television on young children has received much attention. Researches suggest that children see television advertising as just another form of programming and react uncritically to its messages, which makes them especially vulnerable to advertising. There is also concern about the way in which adolescent girls respond to advertising that features beautiful, thin models. Research indicates that many adolescent girls are unduly influenced by this standard of beauty, become dissatisfied with their own bodies, and may develop eating disorders in pursuit of a thin figure. New research suggests that adolescent boys are also being influenced by advertising images of bulked-up, buffed bodies. As a result, many become dissatisfied with their own body image, devote large amounts of time to weightlifting, and may even take drugs that have harmful side effects in order to develop more muscle. Those over the age of 60 are thought to be less influenced by advertising, but some elderly people no longer process messages as easily as younger people, making them more susceptible to questionable advertising claims.
POLITICAL IMPACT
Advertising is now a major component of political campaigns and therefore has a big influence on the democratic process itself. Advertising professionals did not become involved in electoral campaigns until the 1950s. But since then, political advertising has grown in sophistication and complexity.
Political advertising enables candidates to convey their positions on important issues and to acquaint voters with their accomplishments and personalities. Television advertising is especially effective for candidates running for national or statewide office because it can reach so many people at once. Candidates can also use advertising to respond effectively to the charges of their opponents.
Various campaign finance reform proposals, however, have tried to address the impact of television advertising on political campaigning. Because of the high cost of television ads, the costs of political campaigns have skyrocketed, making it necessary for candidates to raise money continually, even after they have been elected into office. Critics say this factor jeopardizes the democratic process by making elected officials beholden to wealthy contributors and by making it more likely that only the wealthy will run for office. Some reform proposals have called for free airtime, but television and radio networks have resisted this idea.
Critics of political advertising also charge that the 30-second television spot has become more important to a political campaign than a thorough discussion of the issues. As a result, voters are bombarded with image advertising rather than being acquainted with the candidate’s positions. They contend that this practice is harmful to good government. Issues are simplified, and candidates are “packaged and sold” much like a consumer product, thereby distorting the political process.
CULTURAL IMPACT
Advertising can affect cultural values. Some advertising messages, for example, encourage aggressive individualism, which may clash with the traditional cultural values of a country where the collective or group is emphasized over the individual or humility or modesty is preferred to aggressiveness. With the globalization of the world economy, multinational corporations often use the same advertising to sell to consumers around the world. Some critics argue that advertising messages are thus helping to break down distinct cultural differences and traditional values, causing the world to become increasingly homogeneous.
Many advertising campaigns, however, have universal appeal, overriding cultural differences, or they contribute to culture in a positive way. Humor in advertising has made many ad campaigns widely popular, in some cases achieving the status of folklore or taking on new life in another arena. For example, a popular ad campaign for a fast-food chain with the slogan “Where’s the beef?” became part of the 1980 Democratic presidential primary campaign between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale. The ad ridiculed a competitor by depicting a small hamburger patty dwarfed by a huge bun. During a primary debate one of the candidates used the ad slogan to suggest that his opponent’s campaign lacked substance.
ADVANTAGES OF INTERNET ADVERTISING
Internet adverting enables good conversion tracking
It’s impossible to get a good idea of how many people see advertising through traditional means. Tracking the reach of newspaper and television advertisements is difficult. However, internet advertising allows the advertiser to track the number of impressions an ad gets (how many people see it), and how many visits their business web site gets from particular ads, making it easy to see what kind of conversion rates internet advertisements are getting.
Internet advertising is huge
With the growth of information on the internet has growth the amount of time people spend on it, which has in turn generated a new market for internet advertising. Some of the wealthiest companies in the world have made sure that they get a piece of the internet marketing pie, and for a good reason.
Internet advertising is targeted
As a company looking for advertising opportunities to a specific market, internet advertising offers some targeting methods that insure that those who see your ads are the ones most likely to buy. Programs like Google’s AdWords and AdSense match up advertisers with content that their target market peruses regularly. Forget the costly machine-gun strategy of newspaper advertisements, internet advertising is targeted!
Internet advertising can be much cheaper
Because of the targeted nature of internet advertising and the ability to track the effectiveness of ads, conversion rates from internet advertising is typically much better than traditional mediums.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS OF THE PROJECT
METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
The researcher consulted electronic books, textbooks and past project fetched from the internet and the school library respectively. Relevant parts of these documents were gathered and edited for suitability and guidance in course of this work. Informants from the case study were interviewed, guided by a semi-structured interview protocol to provide consistency, yet allow for free response. They were questioned about their background, their work, the characteristics of their product and its marketing environment, and their use of computer-based data. Data for this study came from responses to four questions. The questions on their education and work history and their product provided background for our analysis and important information on potential factors that influenced use of computer-based data. In addition, personnel were directly asked to identify factors that influenced their use of computer-based data.
DESCRIPTION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM
To reach the consumers, advertisers employ a wide variety of media. The most popular media for advertisement used in Nigeria are television, newspapers, radio, magazines and outdoor advertising. Television is the most popular advertising medium among others, followed by Newspapers, magazines, radio, and outdoor advertising.
Television is available to advertisers in two forms: broadcast and cable. Broadcast TV—television signals that are sent over the air rather than through cable wires—generates all of its revenue from advertising. Advertising accounts for about 60 percent of cable television revenues with the rest coming from subscriber fees.
To run commercials on television, advertisers buy units of time known as spots. The standard units of time are 15, 30, or 60 seconds in length. These spots are purchased either locally or from a national network. Because of the high cost of national network spots, ranging from hundreds of thousands of naira to millions of naira, only large national advertisers can afford to run network television spots. Advertisers wishing to reach a local audience can buy time from an individual station. But even these spots cost so much to produce and run that small and even many mid-sized companies cannot afford them.
Because television commercials combine sight, sound, and motion, they are more dramatic than any other form of advertising and lend excitement and appeal to ordinary products. Advertisers consider television an excellent medium to build a product’s brand image or to create excitement around a particular event such as a year-end auto sale. But TV spots are too brief to provide much product information. As a result, television works best for products such as automobiles, fashion, food, beverages, and credit cards that viewers are familiar with and easily understand.
Newspapers are the second most popular advertising medium after television. Newspapers enable advertisers to reach readers of all age groups, ethnic backgrounds, and income levels. Two types of advertising appear in newspapers: classified advertising, such as the want ads, and display advertising. Display ads range in size from as large as a full page to as small as one column in width and less than one centimeter (less than one inch) in length. Display ads often contain illustrations or photographs and usually provide information about where the product or service being advertised can be purchased.
Most advertisers believe that newspaper ads fail to convey the kind of emotional images that build brand image. As a result, most newspaper advertising is done by retailers who use newspaper ads to provide timely information that can lead to immediate sales. Newspapers are particularly well suited to this role because most are published daily. Readers can clip coupons from the newspaper and cash them in quickly at local stores.
Improvements in color printing paved the way for cost-effective production of illustrated advertising posters during the 19th century. French illustrator Jules Chéret revolutionized the look of poster advertisements. Earlier posters were text-oriented and only illustrated to highlight the message of the words; Chéret’s posters featured prominent illustrations and a minimum of text. His idealized figures emphasized beauty and vitality: The image, not the words, conveyed the message.
Radio is the fourth largest advertising medium in Nigeria. Although national advertisers can buy national network radio time, 90 percent of all radio advertising is local. Unlike television which reaches a broad audience, the specialized programming of radio stations enables advertisers to reach a narrow, highly specific audience such as people who like sports or urban teenagers who listen to the latest styles of popular music. Because many people listen to radio while in their cars, radio also enables advertisers to reach prospects just before they go shopping. But because people listen to the radio while doing something else such as driving or working, radio commercials can be easily misunderstood. As a result, radio ads work best when the messages are relatively simple ones for familiar, easily understood products.
CHAPTER FOUR
DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM
SYSTEM DESIGN
This is a stage that contains the expected outputs from the program, the input form layout, file/database design and procedure design. It as well describes the input and output structure of the program.
OUTPUT DESIGN
It is necessary to consider what is required from the system before deciding how to go about producing it. The choice of output media will also have to be made, including when to use hand copy and when to use screen displays.
This system employed form bases interface in the Acceptance of data and display of information. A user friendly computer interface will be designed as illustrated below:
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SUMMARY
The project work has discussed the design and implementation of an internet based advertisement desk for a multi-product manufacturing company, relating the study to the purchasing system of Dangote Group Of Company. The first chapter gave an introduction and general overview to the project topic, the problems that led to suggestion of a new system, the benefits of the system to the organisation and its objectives.
Subsequently, some relevant aspects of implementing computer system in related field of study and the relationship between computer-based manufacturing, the evolution of the internet and information technology were discussed. Among these discussions compared agile computer-based manufacturing and flexible manufacturing systems.
The active involvement of individuals in making sense of their consumption decisions and in the construction of meanings speaks to how much more complicated the retailing scene actually is, leaving a trail of the much more complex motivations that characterize web-based transactions today, and probably in the future.
EXPERIENCE GAINED
Experience gained in the course of this project is much. I learnt the use of macromedia Dreamweaver in developing web pages without witting a line of code. Thus as people say the use of Dreamweaver has made everything easy in web application development, well they said it all but that fact I learnt remain; you can successfully develop a good looking web application in Dreamweaver environment without having an idea or knowledge of a scripting or styling language.
CONCLUSION
The design and development phases, criteria and the essence of the proposed system for computer-based purchasing information system for a multi-product manufacturing system are described in this project. The manual system, of any organization or super store can take care of its sales ordering transactions to a limited extent. It does not provide technically mature and sophisticated features that are currently needed by the management.
Among the advantages of the system that are normally not available in other similar systems is the facility, “delivery to the password secured box”. The system provides the facility to the customer to choose the delivery option while ordering online. In the case of delivery to box the system inquired for the password that is dispatched with the customer address on the order receipt. The system also facilitates the customer by giving payment option. The customer can pay online as well on home after receiving safe his/her order. The system is also participating to achieve environmental benefits as well as personal benefits e.g. saving money, time etc.
The system was tested and showed a high accuracy and success. The system can be utilized in research knowledge-seekers its usage, properties and applications.
RECOMMENDATION
A successful implementation of the system can improve the image of the organization, catch the attention of more customers and an automated system fulfills customers and owner’s needs.
Further researchers can carryout an extensive work on this project and overcome the limitations of this work as this is done basically for academic purpose and not for commercial hosting, so what you see is what you get.
REFERENCES
- Alabi R. (2011): An academic project titled “Design and Implementation of a Computerized Purchasing Information System”, HND thesis.
- Chandra C., Mark E. and Janis G. (2005): “Evaluation of Enterprise-Level Benefits of Manufacturing Flexibility.” Omega 33, no. 1.
- Campbell D. J. (1998): “Task Complexity A Review and Analysis”, Academy of Management Review.
- Culnan M. J. (1993): “Environmental Scanning: The Effects of Task Complexity and Source Accessibility on Information Gathenng Behavior”, Decision Sciences.
- Davis F. D., Richard P. B. and Paul R. W. (1999): “User Accpetance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models,” Management Science.
- Eisenhardt K. M. (1999): “Making Fast Strategic Decisions in High Velocity Environments,” Academy of Management Journal.
