A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Business in Partial/Fulfillment of the
Requirements for Award of the Master of Business Administration
(MBA) of Mzumbe University
This study examined utilization of social media and newspapers in advertising
services among local companies in Tanzania drawing experience from Tanzania
Telecommunication Corporation specifically aiming at examining the level of
utilization of newspapers and social media in advertising, examining the reasons
behind utilization of both newspapers and social media in advertising services and
determining the effect of advertising using newspapers and social media on the sales
performance of company’s services. A study population comprised 49 employees
from marketing department of the company, 44 of them (89.7%) constituted the
study samples using simple random sampling technique. The required data were
collected by administering questionnaire to all samples members which were
analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics with the aid of STATA version
11.2 program. The company documents such as company’s annual report (2017/18)
and strategic plan for 2015/20 was utilized as secondary sources of data.
The findings revealed that newspapers were more utilized in advertising services by
the than social media which was supported by factors such as budget commitment
which was very high (mean value = 4.6) compared with social media (mean value =
2.8). Also, the results showed that the company was utilizing both newspapers and
social media in advertising its services for three one of them being desire to broaden
opportunity of reaching service messages/ information to audiences having multiple
media habits. Finally, it was established that advertising using social media has low
effect in terms of users’ subscription (mean value = 2.9) compared with social media
(mean value = 3.9).
This implies that both newspapers and social media were utilized in advertising
services led into targeting large audiences with different media habits, product
characteristics, message requirements and costs. Also, implies that high utilization
of newspapers compared to social media means that cost was not important
factor when choosing advertising medium. To ensure cost effective advertising, the
current study recommends utilization of social media than newspapers.