ABSTRACT
Video club services has become the bare of the Nigerian citizens. They have gone a long way in providing services to people and they have in their own way created market for movie producers.
They have boosted the activities of the most actors and actresses in the Nigeria movie industry and entertainment.
This project, is undertaken to know how these video club market and conduct their services in order to meet the required satisfaction of their customers or club members.
According to the study, these marketing of video clubs in Enugu State could lead to self employment, promotion of video club services and video products, sales and advertising of video club services and create a good public relation between the owners of video club and their workers and customers/club members.
Using observations, interviews, it was found out that the video clubs give outstanding services to their customer/club members and that thy sometimes face the problems of the government (they are sometime harassed by the local government business premise task force groups) or they are at times find it difficult to handle or deal with the harsh government reforms.
Also discussed were the customer satisfaction, which the video club services give to their customers and how the prices of the video club affect the production and services of the video clubs.
However, the appraisal of the video club should be advocated because it will avail the employment and profit opportunity of proper management of the video owners. The video club owners and their employees will be willing to put in their best on the job thereby enhancing public relations.
INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Marketing as seen by everybody is the act of buying and selling goods and services at a particular price and in a particular place.
Marketing according to chambers universal learners Dictionary International Students Edition which was edited by E. M. Kirk Patrick, “it is the process(es) by which anything may be sold”. But in the real according to sense, marketing as defined by marketing professionals as thus; Principles and practice of marketing by Adirika Ernest Okey defines marketing as – the process of buying selling and exchanging of goods to meet ones needs.
Marketing involves a lot of activities that start before the good(s) are produced and continues after sales. These activities are as follows, research, production, packaging; advertising, selling, merchandising and distribution.
Marketing also involves communication and feedback, what does this mean? It means that for a marketer or a producer of a product gets his products/items sold to the buyer or consumer he (marketer) must make sure that his buyer/consumer understands the language he speaks and in response/ to show that he (buyers) understands he either buys or refuses to buy. As we said earlier that a lot of activities is involved in marketing from production right through to sales and after sales and those activities includes:-
Research, the producer/manufacturer has to conduct to research to know the kind of people who are likely to make use of his products better; whether to is the aged people; he has to know the sex either females or males etc. When these is found out he now go on to produce the goods/products.
Packaging, for the purpose of this our topic packaging is very important, because it is the packaging, which must people in the video club refer to as “casing” that makes the ‘magic’ in the sense that the picture in the pack/case of the movie attracts the customers of the movie industry, if the packaging does not attract/catch the eyes of the customers that movie/product is bought or borrowed by the customers.
Advertising-How the jingles of product/movie is said or sang is very important, if the jingle/proster is not interesting the customers do not patronize such a product/movie.
Merchandising, these goods are bought and sold. Distribution, the goods/movie are taken to various outlets where they are bought/sold.
It is not common to see a product(s) that did not pass through this activities to make its way perfectly in the market – for a product/movie to have its way in the market the producers must have undergone through these marketing activities; this was why we said that marketing is a process of buying and selling. Goods must have to be produced by the producers/manufacturers, the customers which we refer to as the wholesalers buy these goods in large quantities and sells them to retailers who now sell to the consumers.
Relating the act of marketing, to our topic i.e the video clubs. Before movies get to the video clubs, it has to researched – meaning, that the producer of the movie has to conduct researches, interviews on the types of movie he waits to produce, call up his actors and actresses, get a movie set, start shooting, producers and written into the video CD or video tapes, distributed to various markets and movie markets and then the video clubs gets them.
Just as the producers/manufacturers depend on the patronage of the wholesalers and retailers to help them distribute their goods, so the movie industry(ies) depend on the help of the video clubs to help them distribute their movies to the public.
A close look at some video clubs and their services like the Omega video club, their services to their customers/members of the club is dependent on the movie industry. It is when the movie industry produces a movie and sells to the video club, the video clubs rails these movies to their customer/members at a stipulated rate and hoping to make their profits but most times, these video club operators face some problems such as, lack of funds to purchase movies, disorderliness on the side of their workers (sales girls), piracy from mischievous people etc,. all those problems affect the service and operation of the video clubs in marketing activities.
Obviously, the services of the video club in Nigeria is not underrated because they help the customers/members of their clubs to get hold of movies (new & old) as the right time. They (video club owners) get involve in the buying and selling of movies – they buy these movies at affordable rates from the producers and sell to their customers or club members at rates slightly above the price that they purchased it from the movie producer.
The video clubs serves as an ‘advertising agent’ for the movie industry. This is done through all those posters that are stacked at the entrance or in the doors of the video clubs and from this posters, the customer/club members are made to know the new movies in town. The efforts of the video club owners to satisfy their members/customers is very impressing because customers/members will have to see these movies before every other person, this is to hold their customers so that other clubs do into snatch their customers away.