“To what extent do radio advertisements impact the sale of products in Ghana?” This is the central question explored in the senior thesis project of Former JEC Chairperson, Okyeame Sarfo. Okyeame was inspired by the fact that many products and services receive massive radio advertising campaigns. He wondered if radio advertisements really did impact product sales, and further, if net profits improved even after accounting for the massive budgets spent on advertising.
In an attempt to come to a successful conclusion, Okyeame gathered data from a range of selected companies in the Ghanaian market, ran a regression analysis and analyzed the data to evaluate his hypothesis. His research revealed that in Ghana radio listenership was higher than the patronage of print, television or internet media. Radio advertising was in fact an effective way to improve sales. Further, he found that products advertising in local languages led to a quicker customer response than advertising in English.
In the future he hopes his data and recommendations will be used by companies to help make decisions on how to use radio advertisements effectively. He also hopes that students and lecturers can refer to data from his thesis in their discussions about marketing in Ghana. The study provides a lot of information to readers on the positive and negative aspects of investing in radio advertisements.
Okyeame is just one of the over fifty students that will graduate in June. As graduation is fast approaching, seniors are working hard on their final projects. About 40% are writing theses, 55% are working in groups to develop business plans and a few are working on applied projects. Graduating seniors are asked to use the knowledge they have gained from Ashesi over the last four years to find practical solutions to real issues in Ghanaian business and society.
Okyeame describes the senior project experience as “exhilarating” and thinks it helped him understand the dynamics of marketing and how to use various marketing tools and techniques to improve the sales and profit margins of firms in Ghana.