An Assessment Of Facebook And Radio Advertisements On The Purchasing Habits Of University Students.
[A CASE STUDY OF GODFREY OKOYE UNIVERSITY THINKERS CORNER ENUGU]

4.3. Discussion of findings

This section, data collected from the research work on the topic “Comparative Analysis on the Influence of Radio and Facebook on Undergraduate Youths” would be discussed. The data contained were 240 copies of questionnaire and was retrieved from the 317 copies from the respondents.

4.3.1. Research question 1: To what extent are undergraduate youths exposed to advertisement on radio and Facebook.

Table and figure 2, 3, 4 and 5 were drafted to answer the research question. The research question which sought to answer if undergraduates are exposed to advertisement on radio and on Facebook.

Data from the table shows  that 115 (48%) respondents  listen to advertisements on radio while 125 (52%) respondents  do not .

 This implies that many undergraduates do not listen to advertisements on radio and this is in accordance with what Rajagopal (2011)  discovered in his work that impact of radio advertisements is highly influenced by physical variables.

According to the table  respondents who expose themselves to facebook advertisements are 180 (75%) while those who don’t listen to or view facebook advertisements are 60 (25%) out of the respondents  this is in relation with the uses and gratification theory which is all about the media using the media to satisfy their needs and the need in this case could not have been advertisements.

While out of the 48% that expose themselves to radio advertisements 68 (59.1) respondents  expose themselves once a day to advertisements on radio, 32(27.8) expose themselves to advertisements on radio two to five times daily and 15 (13.0) respondents expose themselves to advertisements on radio more than five times daily as against the 52%  out of the respondents that expose themselves to facebook advertisement messages with 41(23%) exposing themselves once a day to facebook advertisement message as well 49 (27%) exposing themselves to facebook advertisements two to five times daily with the majority 90 (50%) exposing themselves to it more than five times daily . This also is in accordance with the uses and gratification theory which talks  about how active the mass media audience is and this boisterous tendency extends to their usage of the various mass mediums.

  4.3.2 Research question 2: What media channels are preferred by undergraduate youths for advertisement  information?

To address the problem posed by this question, question 6, 7 8, 9 and 10 were drafted.

The following findings was obtained from the data gotten.

The table gave a statistical representation of what media channels are preferred by respondents , with respondents that prefer radio for getting their advertisement information  being 83 (32%) whereas respondents that were for facebook being 157 (65%). This implies that undergraduates prefer online marketing to radio advertisements and this is in accordance to what Jenyo and Soyoye(2015) discovered that online marketing has impacted consumer purchase decisions in Nigeria.

The next question was an open ended question that required the respondents to state their reasons for their choice and replies gotten were classified under four categories with those who said they preferred facebook advertisements because of its accessibility coming under the accessibility category 45 (29%) respondents , those who preferred it because it was found entertaining being 35(22%) respondents, with those who found it more informative being 50 (32%) alongside those who preferred it for being credible totalling 27(17%) and this implies that facebook was found to be a better choice by majority of the respondents because it was found to be very explicit at giving advertisement information and trust and this is in accordance with the results of the study conducted by Weisberg(2011) where he discovered that consumers on social media will unconsciously have a level of trust if they take notice of friend’s likes ,check ins and comments on advertisements posts and this also goes hand in hand with the predict of social relationship theory that humans are bound to be influenced by their peers as a result of the relationship with each other and this influence could extend to them patronising products which otherwise they would not have purchased if not for the peer influence.

The next question are replies gotten from an open ended question from respondents who preferred radio for advertisement information and their responses was classified under accessibility 22.9% ,entertainment 18%,information 19% and source credibility 39.8% . This implies that majority of the respondents who chose radio as their preferred choice did so as result of confidence in the source and this is in consonance with what Richard and Guppy(2014) discovered in their findings and this was that trust is a central theme in purchase decisions a it is known to decrease uncertainty in both online and offline contexts.

4.3.3. Research question 3: What media channels better influences the purchasing decisions of undergraduate youths?

Question 11and 12 were analyzed .

The table gave a statistical representation of how Facebook influences the purchasing habits of the respondents ,the respondents who voted yes 168 ( 70%) are those whom commercials on Facebook made them buy products while those who voted no 72(30) are those who advertisements on facebook did not influence their purchases and also the latter representation on the table shows how radio influences the purchasing habits of the respondents ;those who voted yes 90 (37.5%) were influenced by radio advertisements to patronise goods and services advertised while those who said no 150(62.5%) are respondents who are of the opinion that radio advertisements does not make the m patronise goods and services being advertised. . This implies that the spending habits is geared towards purchases and this is in congruence with what Ajide(2017) discovered in his study that the variables that best represent the spending habits of youths in Nigeria is shopping ,mobile phone expenses and fast food.

The tabular illustration shows how the number of products purchased by respondents who were influenced by Facebook advertisements to do so ,104(62%) respondents purchased one to five products via Facebook ,40 (24%) purchased six to ten products via Facebook while 24(14%) purchased eleven products and above via Facebook advertisements ,this implies that majority of products purchased online was between one to five as result of the economic level of the students which  the results of Ajide(2017)  was accordance with stating that the major source of income was gotten from relatives and family and there existed a significant positive relationship between pocket money and spending pattern.

It therefore proves that Facebook have more grounds in influencing the purchasing habits of undergraduate youths more than radio. The study signifies that more prefer Facebook advertisement than radio advertisement.