AN EVALUATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSUASION AND CHOICE OF DAILY NEWSPAPER BY READERS OF DIFFERENT GENDER IN KENYA

Abstract

A one-size-fits-all strategic approach to persuading male and female consumers in the marketplace may not yield desired results, as research has established gender differences in perception of marketer communicated information, which reliably influences a range of consumption related behaviour. This study used Consumer Involvement Theory (CIT) and Elaborate Likelihood Model (ELM) to evaluate persuasion and its relationship with consumer choice between male and female newspaper readers. A multi stage sampling technique was employed to get a sample of 384 respondents from 13 counties in Kenya, who completed close ended questionnaires. The findings of this study revealed that there is a negative correlation between interpersonal persuasion, subliminal persuasion and self persuasion; and consumer involvement among female, while positive correlation existed for the same variables with consumer involvement among males. Also, in this study, self persuasion and subliminal persuasion have been confirmed to predict consumer involvement, while interpersonal persuasion was not significant in both genders. The models for both genders accounted for 68.3% of variance in (R2 = 0.683) males and 70.2% of variance in (R2 = 0.702) females which is generally large. The findings also revealed a weak positive correlation between consumer involvement and consumer choice for both genders. Also consumer involvement contribution to the variance for both genders was small, 14.1% of variance in (R2 = 0.141) male and 10.1% of variance in (R2 = 0.101) female. Finally, all the two hypotheses were supported.