The Advertisement Practice and Audience Reaction towards it: The case of Oromia Television.

Abstract

The main aim of the study was to examine the advertisement practices of Oromia Television and audience reaction with the theoretical foundation of encoding and decoding and situational ethical theory. The study of the research employed descriptive design involving both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Data were qualitatively collected through in-depth interview and questionnaire with open and close ended questions. Besides, purposive sampling method was employed to select the respondents of the study. The data obtained from conducted interview were analyzed qualitatively.  In the study, the data which were gathered through document review basically ethical guideline and sample of broadcast ads, were presented in the forms of descriptive and the responses of the audience were presented in the form of the tables and chart with frequency and percentage. Finally, this data were analyzed quantitatively.  Through the help of above methods the research answered four basic research questions.

The findings of the study revealed that Oromoia Television advertisement manual which has produced by Oromoia Television and which were not given more attention to the problem (Marketing concept and professionalism) of advertisement ethics. The procedures more of followed by conducting advertisement focused on revenue generation. And the findings of the study also revealed that most of ads have the problem of imitation from local and foreign language, this leads the advertisement practices of Oromoia Television to standardization, similarly the practices are not understandable, the advertisement message is not adequate and some advertisement messages have no logical link with the product or products being communicated and advertisements transmitted on Oromoia Television are unreliable, exaggerated and deceptive information.

Based on these indications the study concludes that there are problems of ethics in Oromoia Television advertisement which have been resulted from many factors. Oromoia Television advertisement practices have negative influence on purchasing decisions of the audiences. Finally, great attention should be given for improvement of the advertisement practices of Oromoia Television.