SOME FRONTLINE ADVERTISING THEORIES AND THE QUESTION OF UNIVERSAL APPLICABILITY

Abstract

In scholarship, it is not unusual to expect theories, especially the frontline ones to exhibit a good degree of universality of applicability. This, it seems, may be tantamount to expecting too much. It becomes needful, therefore for such theories to be tested for applicability from time to time in different local environments around the world.
This paper subjects some of the frontline advertising theories of Behavioural Learning or Low Involvement, Active Learning or Information Processing and Dissonance Reduction or Cognitive Dissonance to the all-important applicability test, within the Nigerian environment; utilizing the Nigerian advertisement audience. The study adopted the quantitative methodology, and it is realized as a descriptive survey. A purposive sample made up of city dwellers formed the body of respondents. Results have been presented in tables and percentages.
When the data from Three Thousand and Two respondents across Nigeria was collected and analysed, a few insights emerged. While the advertising theories of Active Learning, which is also known as the Information Processing Theory of Advertising, has found applicability with the local audience, the same could not be said for the theories of Behavioural Learning as well as Dissonance Reduction. The study, thus, establishes the levels to which these frontline advertising theories are applicable or not applicable to the Nigerian advertisement audience, as the case may be. It affirms that some of these theories, in truth, lack universality of applicability. That is to say, for example, that if a particular theory is found to be applicable in Europe, it must not be assumed that the same is also applicable in Africa.