A study has shown that a higher percentage of women buy newspapers to access news content as opposed to men who buy them for political content.
The survey which was done in 2021 by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), using a sample size of 3, 589 respondents across the 47 Counties, placed women at 78 per cent and men at 71 per cent when news as a content was the reference.
With adverts, classified and display as a reason for purchase of newspapers, only 23 per cent of men were recorded with 30 per cent of women making purchase for the same reason.
14 per cent of women and 8 per cent of men were found to purchase newspapers for purposes of accessing feature stories.
The report which indicated that only 10 per cent of the respondents bought newspapers to access the obituaries section, also indicated that only 2 per cent made purchase for entertainment reasons with 51 per cent and 35 per cent of men and women respectively, buying to access sport news.
According to the findings which were presented on January 31, 2022 by David Omwoyo, the CEO of MCK, Daily Nation, Standard and People Daily were found to be the most preferred respectively.
In general, 46 per cent purchased hard copies of the newspapers, 27 per cent accessed the papers through online subscription, 8 per cent read the papers at the vendor’s selling point, 13 per cent got access in social places while 5 per cent relied on free copies.
The survey which utilized questionnaires in data collection revealed that only 25 per cent of the respondents interviewed consumed print media content.