Consumers’ Uses and Gratifications of Commercial Websites Advertising in Kenya: A Case of Nairobi

Abstract

Commercial websites can be considered as ways of promoting businesses whereby companies use online advertising in order to focus on ways of increasing the sales of a service or a product. Practitioners and researchers are in unison by indicating that such websites have many potentials in the business arena. Numerous studies done on purposes and gratifications are in traditional media and internet general use. The knowledge relating to usage and gratifications of commercial websites advertising in Kenya remains scanty. This research addressed this gap by applying Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) as a structure to analyze usage and gratifications of business websites in Nairobi, Kenya. Therefore, this study aims at analyzing consumers’ usage of commercial websites, gratifications gained from these websites and the challenges experienced by the users while online. This study applied descriptive research approach to gain knowledge of underlying consumers’ usage and gratifications of Kenyan commercial websites advertising. It focused on Nairobi the capital city, which was purposely selected and preferred because of its well-developed communication infrastructure; electricity supply, fibre optic cable internet connectivity and has the highest number of internet (4G) users with 85% of all Facebook users in Kenya residing in Nairobi. This study used selective purposive sampling procedure as it allowed a deeper understanding of the research objectives. The sampling frame consisted of Nairobi’s commercial websites users with a sample size of 384 respondents from a target population of one million users. Structured questionnaires were used in collecting primary data distributed to commercial web users in cyber cafes, academic institutions, and offices in the Central Business District. Descriptive statistics was used to evaluate collected data using categories based on research objectives using SPSS. This study established that the most common reason users offered for visiting commercial websites was to share media such as pictures, videos, music and blogs. Six categories of reasons for using commercial websites were identified as socialization, information seeking, convenience, entertainment, relaxation and passing time. This research also found that the most widely held gratification obtained from using commercial websites was to share media content, such as pictures, videos, music and blogs. This is classified under socialization. The other gratifications obtained were categorized as information, convenience, entertainment, and relaxation and passing time. The challenges faced by commercial websites users identified in this study were slow loading, clutter, high costs, fraud, identity theft, and complexity of use. The reasons as to why consumers avoid certain commercial websites were found to be immorality, addiction, risk of loss of money, manipulation and poor advertisements. The research findings suggests useful guidelines and commendations for companies in search of establishing a presence on the web, as well as web-based businesses. It also offers an understanding of consumers’ usage and fulfilments of commercial web advertising. This study will benefit online businesses, online researchers, webmasters, e-entrepreneurs and e-marketers on how best to persuade and serve clients through management of online advertising platforms.