Marketing Promotion as Key to Tourism Products Patronage: A study of Bida (Tsotamuku)Arts Works

Abstract

Marketing promotioncomprises the tools used by businesses to create awareness, inform and persuade the target market to buy products and services. This study examined marketing promotion as a tool for the patronage of tourism productsin Bida Arts Works, one of the ancient Nupe Arts Works in the Nupe Kingdom, Niger State, Nigeria using Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) method. The resultsshow that all the respondents were male,18-50 years old with 45% in the 34-41 age brackets; and mostly married (67%).  The majority (56%) has a family size of 6-8 individuals and45% were Muslim with the majority (78%)having no formal education (78%) while 45% had between 26-30 years of experience on the vocation and 45% of the respondents generate between N 301,000-400,000 annually.None of the respondentemployed modern technology, 100% used of family members, 78% hadmarket stalls for promoting the trade while 67% market the product themselves.  All the respondents had patronage from individuals (100%), government officials (67%), researchers (45%), tourists (33%) and foreigners (22%).The raw materials for artwork production were sourced from the immediate environment through the re-use of unused aluminum. The challenges facing the trade: illiteracy (100%), recycle-technology (78%), transportation cost (45%) and access tobank loans (11%) were responsible for low production and poor profit. Therefore, the producers of Bida Arts Work should adopt marketing promotion techniques to enhance tourists and other visitors’ patronage.Theschool-agedamong them should be encouraged to combine the Arts work with education to strengthen the businesses.