APPLICATION OF LINEAR PROGRAMMING TO MEDIA SELECTION PLANNING: A CASE STUDY OF MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORK (MTN)

Abstract

Generally this research used Linear Programming techniques to investigate the budgetary allocation of MTN Company for effective media selection planning. The problem was formulated as a linear programming technique by using the available data obtained from the company and other media sources. Mathematical software which embodied the simplex algorithm techniques such as Quantitative Manager for Business version 3.2 and Linear Programming Solver version 5.2.2 were used to solve the resulting Linear Programming model. Sensitive analyses were carried out on some selected parameters of interest to test the robustness or otherwise of the revised model to slight variations in the input parameter values. It was also aimed at determining how redundant a constraint was to the solution of the Linear Programming problem. It was found that out of the three major media categories which give a total of Forty-Five (45) media outlets in the country and a budget of Six Hundred Thousand Ghana cedis (GH¢ 600,000), the optimal target audience exposure was 541,399,986. The optimum media mix which generated the desire objective value for the advertising campaign include; three (3) Television media outlet, seven (7) newspapers within the print media outlet, and twenty (20) FM stations within the radio media outlet respectively. We can conclude that modeling the media selection planning problem using Linear Programming techniques for the MTN Company advertising campaign was useful and it can be applied to any area where allocation of fund to optimize the media mix is a setback.