Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Reed College of Media

Department

Reed College of Media

Committee Chair

Archie Sader.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not radio station website designers effectively use relationship marketing to achieve the goals of the stations and their websites. The study is a comparison/content analysis of the websites of 150 radio stations, in three different formats, in the top 50 U.S. population centers. This study compared the results of a content analysis with the results of a 2000 Edison/Arbitron survey which asked respondents to rank 14 website features according to what those replying considered important. This study sought to determine whether the more popular features actually appeared on more websites than did the less popular Internet features. Unexpectedly, that was not the case. A website feature's popularity did not seem to be linked to its frequency of occurrence; some popular features appeared on only a few websites, and some relatively unpopular features were more prevalent. In conclusion, website designers do not necessarily take visitor preference into account when designing a radio station's webpage; they, therefore, forgo an effective method of fostering relationships.

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