Will the negative publicity, prolonged commercial rollout of TSTV affect Day 1 sales?

The hype has been crazy, there has been controversies and negative publicity surrounding the offerings the pay-TV company is planning to serve Nigerians which the company has well labelled as mischievous and perhaps malicious propaganda.

According to a Journal of Consumer Psychology, there could be two classifications of consumers - Holistic consumers and Analytical consumers.

And according to the journal abstract hypothesis, negative publicity of a brand has two contrasting effects on both types of consumers.

For the holistic consumer, the journal hypothesizes that holistic thinkers are less susceptible to negative publicity information than are analytic thinkers. Holistic thinkers are more likely to consider external context-based explanations for the negative publicity, resulting in little or no revision of beliefs about the parent brand.

Analytic thinkers, in contrast, are less likely to consider contextual factors, attributing negative information to the parent brand and updating their brand beliefs accordingly.

So that leaves us to wonder if both types of consumers are present in the Nigerian situation of prospective TSTV customers, while also postulating there are some who may not fall into any of the categories, which should include young Nigerian school kids.

The analytical thinking consumers are the more likely ones to consider and question the credibility of TSTV.

From what we have seen, there has been a huge supportive following by the average Nigerian pay-tv consumer who feel cheated by the long running monopoly of DSTV, who have been able to position themselves as the top market shareholders.

But there are of course a couple Nigerians who do not have a problem with subscribing to DSTV’s premium, they do not really count the model DSTV operates on as much of a rip-off - The major factor here being their capacity to afford the price DSTV offers conveniently, up to the premium bouquets.

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Those clamouring for an end to the monopoly and a new era in the pay-tv business offering pausable subscription validity as long as 7 days, free bonus internet data and for the soccer faithfuls the privilege of watching top EPL and other favorite league matches at a much lesser cost compared to DSTV’s, the bad publicity, on hearing the rumours,and doubts flying around about the credibility of the company may witness a divide, that could see the strategic and holistic thinkers theory come into play.

As to how day one sales may turn out to be, I think that’s largely going to be determined by the test phase which the management has announced to involve 5000 giveaway decoders to business partners dubbed to be public places customers can walk into easily and check out how the TSTV device works.

You can be rest assured eager Nigerians will be getting to those places on weekends to catch a glimpse of BeiN sports channels expected to air the glorious EPL matches.

If this free 5000 decoder plan proves successful in convincing majority of Nigerians (comprising holistic and hopefully analytical consumers) that TSTV is for real, and the whole hype has not been a waste of time, then a great sales volume should be recorded come November 1, 2017 or at least during the first two to three weeks of rollout.