Media Preferences among Consumers: Empirical Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

Advertising is at the heart of any effective marketing communication campaign since it is a cost effective tool at communicating to masses of people. However, selecting the appropriate medium or a mix to use in advertising is a difficult task because of the abundance of advertising media and channels. The advent of internet technology and the rate at which it is becoming a part of social life and purchase behaviour has presented another medium that could possibly be used in communicating to targeted audience. However, there are few relevant studies on media preference of consumers and how it relates to advertising in Ghana. This study was aimed at assessing consumers’ preference for both traditional and contemporary media used in advertising to determine how gender differences and seasonality affect consumers’ usage of these media. 100 fully completed structured questionnaires were used to seek responses. By employing the Mann-Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon signed ranks tests, it was revealed that although there were no significant differences in media preference with regards to gender, seasonality had a significant impact on the usage frequency of the traditional media. Only internet was not significantly affected by seasonal changes. Therefore, advertisers need to be wary of how seasonal changes affect the number of respondents who will receive the message being communicated on the traditional media.

Keywords: Advertising, Mann-Whitney U test, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and consumer media preference.