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A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF WEBSITES OF MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH AFRICA: AN EASE OF USE PERSPECTIVE
25 ABSTRACT
The marketing of intangible services, and particularly unsought services such as the funeral industry, poses inherently unique challenges to marketers. Due to the unsought nature of funeral services, consumers generally avoid the industry primarily because the services the funeral industry offers are associated with death and grief. This paper reports selected findings on an evaluation of the effectiveness of funeral home websites of members of the National Funeral Directors Association of South Africa (NFDA). The focus of this paper is on the ease of use of the websites under study. The elements that were used as a basis to determine ease of use of the websites in the study included accessibility and visibility (which relates to “searchability”); navigability and “contact ability”. A quantitative content analysis of the websites was conducted to collect the relevant data for this study. The findings indicate that the majority of the websites can be considered satisfactory in term of overall ease of use. Recommendations for improvements to the websites, as well as suggestions for future research are provided.
KEYWORDS Websites; Digital marketing; Funeral industry