ABSTRACT
Big, Small
and Medium Enterprises and individuals are now promoting their products and services
on online inlcuding Facebook because 40% of the people in the world
are now online and because facebook is the second most visited website after
google.com according to Alexa ranking. It was on this background that the research studied audience
perception of sponsored Facebook advertisement on Kwara State University
students. Survey research design was adopted as a quantitative method using questionnaire for data gathering. Multistage sampling method as
probability sampling technique was used to select respondents. Two hundred
(200) respondents were drawn among the students using simple random sampling as probability method to pick the respondents.
However, out of 200 copies of the administered questionnaires one hundred and ninety three (193) copies were retrieved upon which
the analysis was based. SPSS
version 20 was used to analysis data retrieved in which Descriptive Statistics
with frequency tabulation and percentage method was used. Findings show that majority of the respondent were aware
of buying and selling via
facebook and in other online platforms, though few respondents
buy or patronised facebook
products and services. It further that the major
challenge hampering facebook users to patronize products
and services advertised among
students are insecurity, lack of trust and high
presence of online scammers whereas convenience, time-saving, unavailability of
such products/services in their area. It
is recommended that all effort should be developed to ensure that fraud is
minimized to the barest minimum, so that people especially, the internet users
can have a rest of mind to shop online and receive their products and services.
