Consumers demand different commodities based on their preference and taste for them.
Awareness of a good influences a consumer‘s purchase of the good. Other factors that influence one‘s taste and preference for a good are psychological and environmental. Taste and preference for a good change overtime. Advertisements play a role in influencing the taste and preference of consumers‘choice.
Consumers are known to be rational with regard to their purchases, wanting to maximize their
Satisfaction when it comes to consumer goods. A consumer will therefore not purchase a commodity whose price is above the additional satisfaction that he derives from the good. (Sloman and Wride, 2007)
Advertising is a business activity, employing creative techniques to design persuasive communication in mass media that promote ideas, goods, and services in a manner consistent with the achievement of the advertiser‘s objective, the delivery of consumer satisfaction and the development of social and economic welfare. (Cohen, 1988)
One encounters advertising messages while watching television, reading magazines and newspapers, surfing the internet, listening to the radio or even simply while walking down the street, therefore advertisement has a stimulating influence on the purchasing behaviour of the consumer.
In durable markets, the initial growth of product‘s sales is usually attributed to consumers becoming informed about the existence of the new product (Horsky and Simon 1983 and Krishnan and Jain 2006).
The effect of advertising on sales via informing the consumers of the product‘s existence is dynamic since advertising will affect the consumer‘ s awareness of the product in the future, and therefore will affect future sales. This dynamic effect of advertising explains that firms usually advertise a product the most at the entry.
Producers often advertise their product mostly with the intention of