The Impact of Advertising Medium on Consumer Brand Preference for beverages in Osun State, Nigeria

The study examined the roles of advertisement on consumers’ brand preference of beverages, using Cadbury Nigeria PLC as a case study. The primary aim of this research was to examine the influence of advertising on consumers’ buying behaviour, evaluate the influence of advertising on the competitiveness of beverage brands, examine the influence of advertising on the sales performance of Cadbury Nigeria PLC brands and to determine the types of advertising commonly used by Cadbury Nigeria PLC in attracting customers’ preference to its brands. The adopted methodology was a descriptive design with a simple random sampling technique. A Structured questionnaire was designed in the data collection from the respondents of the study area. The collected data was analysed using simple percentage and frequencies and the results were presented in tables. The Findings of the study indicated that advertising significant influenced consumers’ buying behaviour of beverage drinks and sales performance of Cadbury Nigeria PLC Brands in Osun State. The radio, television, billboards and internet (online) advertisements are the types of advertising media used by Cadbury in attracting customers to its brands. Conclusively, advertisement is a major element in maintaining consumer brand preference. Therefore, companies are encouraged to research continuously into quality improvement with effective advertising media that attracts consumer’s attention and interest to their products. Keywords: Advertisement, Brand preference, Buying behaviour, and Advertising campaign DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/87-01 Publication date:October 31st 202

Detection and distribution of seed-borne viruses on commercial cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) cultivars in Ado-odo Ota, Ogun Sate, Nigeria

Cowpea is a major source of dietary protein in the nutrition of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Many viruses have been reported to cause economic reduction in cowpea productivity in Nigeria. However, their current distribution is not well documented while most farmers source their seeds from local markets. This study investigated the detection and distribution of seed-transmitted viruses on commercial cowpea cultivars in Ado-odo Ota Local Government area (LGA) of Ogun State. Cowpea seed samples were collected from eleven markets in the LGA. Coordinates of the locations were recorded with Geographical Positioning System (GPS). Thirty cowpea seeds from each market were sowed in planting pots under screenhouse conditions and seedlings were observed weekly for visible virus symptoms. Four-week old seedlings were tested for viruses using Antigen Coated Plate-Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ACP-ELISA) and Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR). Samples were tested for seven seed-transmitted viruses namely Blackeye cowpea mosaic virus (BlCMV), Cowpea aphidborne mosaic virus (CABMV), Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), Southern bean mosaic virus (SBMV), Cowpea mottle virus (CMeV), Cowpea yellow mosaic virus (CYMV) and Cowpea mild mottle virus (CPMMV). Seed germination rates ranged from 63.3±15.3% of seeds from Joju to 96.7 ±5.8% for Atan and Iju markets. All samples tested negative to ELISA and were confirmed negative by RT-PCR. These findings suggest absence of seedtransmitted cowpea viruses in the study area as at the time of sampling. Periodic detection survey is recommended to assure the virus-free status of the area.Keywords: ACP-ELISA, Cowpea viruses, Diagnostics, RT-PCR, Seed transmissio

FAMILY COMMUNICATION ON HIV / AIDS AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN A NORTHERN STATE OF NIGERIA

Most Adolescents in Nigeria, like many others in Africa, are potentially at risk for contracting HIV through unprotected sexual intercourse. Yet the issue of how to help youth avoid risky sexual behaviour through family communication / education on HIV/AIDS is still of serious arguments within the society. This study examines the practice of family communication on HIV / AIDS among secondary school students. A descriptive study using 420 secondary school students selected by multi-stage random sampling was done. Self administered semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect relevant data. Only 48 (12.1%) reported family as the first source of information. However, most of the students 315 (79.7%) had family communication on HIV/AIDS with their family members. There is a gender difference in practice of family communication. Significantly higher proportion of the female students had family communication more than their male counterparts. The educational status of the parents significantly determined whether or not a student had family communication on HIV/AIDS. There is considerable level of family communication in the study population which should be encouraged further to cut across all members of the family

Association of C-reactive protein with bacterial and respiratory syncytial virus-associated pneumonia among children aged <5 years in the PERCH study

Background. Lack of a gold standard for identifying bacterial and viral etiologies of pneumonia has limited evaluation of C-reactive protein (CRP) for identifying bacterial pneumonia. We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of CRP for identifying bacterial vs respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pneumonia in the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) multicenter case-control study. Methods. We measured serum CRP levels in cases with World Health Organization-defined severe or very severe pneumonia and a subset of community controls. We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of elevated CRP for "confirmed" bacterial pneumonia (positive blood culture or positive lung aspirate or pleural fluid culture or polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) compared to "RSV pneumonia" (nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal or induced sputum PCR-positive without confirmed/suspected bacterial pneumonia). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to assess the performance of elevated CRP in distinguishing these cases. Results. Among 601 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative tested controls, 3% had CRP ≥40 mg/L. Among 119 HIVnegative cases with confirmed bacterial pneumonia, 77% had CRP ≥40 mg/L compared with 17% of 556 RSV pneumonia cases. The ROC analysis produced an area under the curve of 0.87, indicating very good discrimination; a cut-point of 37.1 mg/L best discriminated confirmed bacterial pneumonia (sensitivity 77%) from RSV pneumonia (specificity 82%). CRP ≥100 mg/L substantially improved specificity over CRP ≥40 mg/L, though at a loss to sensitivity. Conclusions. Elevated CRP was positively associated with confirmed bacterial pneumonia and negatively associated with RSV pneumonia in PERCH. CRP may be useful for distinguishing bacterial from RSV-associated pneumonia, although its role in discriminating against other respiratory viral-associated pneumonia needs further study

Practice of Periodic Medical Examination among Hospital Workers in a Nigeria Teaching Hospital

A survey conducted to examine the practice of periodic medical examination among health workers was conducted at University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin. A total of 74 hospital workers were selected by stratified random sampling from all the departments and units in the hospital and interviewed. More than half (60.9%) of those interviewed were senior staff while 39.1% were junior staff. Most of the respondents (82.8%) had a medical examination since being employed in the hospital. Among those that had pre-employment medical examination done only 14.1% had the examination done before assumption of duty. Two-thirds of those who did the medical examination did so just to satisfy the hospital management requirement. Only 20.6% of the respondents had ever had periodic medical examination (PME) while on employment of the hospital. Among those that ever had PME the mean number of times that they had periodic medical examination was 2.4. Socio-demographic characteristic of respondents had no significant effect on the practice of PME. It was found that there was a significantly higher level of PME practice among hospital workers who were encouraged to do PME by doctors. This low practice of periodic medical examination will not allow early detection of diseases. The situation will probably be worse among the general population who have less knowledge of the benefits of PME and reduced access to facilities for PME. It is therefore important to put in place a national policy on periodic medical examination so that diseases can be detected early and through this put in place early management to reduce morbidity and motility. NQJHM Vol. 14 (3&4) 2004: pp. 206-21

A NEURO-PREDICTIVE MODEL OF AN INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PROCESS USING PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS ANALYSIS

This paper presents a way of predicting the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the output stream of the activated sludge of a food processing industry. A combination of principal components analysis (PCA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) was used to develop the network model structure that contained eight neurons in the hidden layer. PCA was used to preprocess the training data sets comprising of four input variable that have been transformed into four principal components before being fed into a back propagated neural network. A more satisfactory result was obtained from PCA-ANN model with correlation index 0.998 and performance error (MSE) of 0.007 compared with that of ANN model with correlation index 0.82 and performance error (MSE) of 0.056 for the training process. This result shows that preprocessing data will bring about improvement in prediction

A NEURO-PREDICTIVE MODEL OF AN INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PROCESS USING PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS ANALYSIS

This paper presents a way of predicting the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the output stream of the activated sludge of a food processing industry. A combination of principal components analysis (PCA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) was used to develop the network model structure that contained eight neurons in the hidden layer. PCA was used to preprocess the training data sets comprising of four input variable that have been transformed into four principal components before being fed into a back propagated neural network. A more satisfactory result was obtained from PCA-ANN model with correlation index 0.998 and performance error (MSE) of 0.007 compared with that of ANN model with correlation index 0.82 and performance error (MSE) of 0.056 for the training process. This result shows that preprocessing data will bring about improvement in prediction

Data Analytic Solution for Heterogeneous Transportation Management Network System: A Case Study of Kwara State, Nigeria

When the transportation system of any States in Nigeria is effective, it positively contributes to effective economy growth and infrastructural facilities; saves stress and generate revenue to the authorities. This is the desire of every ministry of Transportation for State in Nigeria although a number of constraints usually make it not attainable. The transportation system presently operated by the Ministry of Transportation, Kwara was studied and found to be suffering, cumbersome, exploitative and fall short in all standards of a good transportation network system. Therefore this paper seeks to present the results of the research carried out to Big Data Analytic Solution (BDAS) for the management of the transport companies’ network system within Kwara State. The research adopts a transportation frame work design solution, MySQL for data migration and Php framework ‘codeigniter’ for productive server for the full development. The phase testing is carried out and presents the improved version for the improvement in routes schedules, company’s services and driver’s registration and user booking. The system will serve as open access to heterogeneous communities in Kwara State, Nigeria and make easy booking for passengers, assist communities in management of transportation systems within kwara state, Nigeria

Fuzzy Bigroup from another Viewpoint

In group theory, given two groups G and H, it is possible to construct a new group from the Cartesian product of G and H, G × H. With this as a motivation, we replicate this concept in fuzzy group algebra. In this paper, we take a slight deviation from the familiar definition of fuzzy bigroup by looking at fuzzy bigroup from the idea of Cartesian product of groups. We define Cartesian fuzzy function on groups and give examples. We also define Cartesian fuzzy bigroup and study some of its basic properties. Keywords: Bigroups, Cartesian fuzzy function, Fuzzy bigroups