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MOTIVATIONS FOR WEB USE
Previous research suggests that motivations for the use of media, in general,
tend to be dichotomous, split between what are known as process and content
gratifications. The preference for media content (i.e., a content gratification) might
be analogous to a television watcher who wishes to watch the nightly news to learn
about local events, while television watchers who routinely video tape shows in
order to enjoy the ability to fast forward through commercials in later viewing are
motivated by the actual use of the medium —
a process gratification (Stafford &
Stafford, 1996). Correspondingly, in the Internet medium, some people may enjoy
the process
of randomly browsing the Web for enjoyment (Hoffman & Novak,
1996), while others may prefer to seek out and use specific Internet sites primarily
to access site-related informational content
(Stafford & Stafford, 1998). These
are the modern analogs of process and content gratifications in the new Internet
medium.
In the formative days of uses and gratifications research, McGuire (1974) noted
that it seemed less important to know how a user came to
a medium than to understand
how the medium could hold
a user once browsing had its intended effect, and
Internet scholars voice this same concern with regard to the “holding power” of Web
site content (Barker & Groenne, 1997). Hence, while browsing might be considered a
general motivation for Internet use, what a commercial Web site specifically offers in
terms of content appears to be a key factor that will determine if that site has
influence with potential consumers.
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS FOR WEB SITES
In the Internet marketplace, understanding the motivations which bring
consumers to a site, can be a success characteristic, since the "segment of one"
approach can only be profitable if a marketer can reliably attract and serve
numerous individual customers (Stafford & Stafford, 1998). Hence, knowledge
of what consumers desire and benefit from in accessing commercial Web sites will