The Nigerian movie industry “Nollywood” – a nearly perfect marketing case study

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the marketing challenges facing the Nigerian movie industry – Nollywood. The paper also attempts to make a case for due recognition to this multimillion dollar industry in management research as opposed to being pigeonholed in the domain of media, film or cultural studies.

The case study benefits from a mixture of survey questionnaires, in‐depth interviews and focus groups drawing on a range of themes from Nollywood's target audience in the diasporas over a three‐year period (2005‐2007).

Explanations for why African movies – as epitomized by the case of Nollywood – continue to lack box office appeal cannot be detached from the poor marketing‐mix strategies adopted – notably weak marketing communications and poor product quality.

The paper is restricted to a convenience sample of respondents and may arguably suffer from a weakness of generalizability.

Nollywood directors, producers, distributors, marketers and all other stakeholders must organize national, regional and international networks/networking events in order to guarantee the requisite forum for shared access, ideas and more importantly technology and technical know‐how. There is also the need for skills upgrading and more robust marketing communications.

This is the first major attempt to move the discourse of cinematic consumption away from the field of media studies to general management – notably marketing. The paper exudes of a powerful message – this is not just art, it is big business!