Measuring gratification of social media use in Kazakhstan using niche theory

Abstract

With the wide availability of portable mobile devices, social media has become a main tool for information sharing and communication recently. In Kazakhstan it is also noticed that the usage of social media has been continuously increasing and social media is easily available. There have been many previous researches on how social media play roles of availability for tasks using media richness theory, social existence theory, how well social media can represents the characteristics of face to face communication, and how richness of media affect the communication on social media. However, there are not many studies conducted on the difference in the gratification of social media reflecting unique features and characteristics of social media. This study examined gratification of social media utilizing limited resources based on four important factors using niche theory. Niche theory employs niche width, niche overlap, and superiority to analyze the degree of competency of each social media based on each criteria. This study is expected to identify market structure of social media in Kazakhstan and provide an opportunity for general overview of competency in social media market in the developing countries. The limitation of this study is basically dependent upon samples from university students. Consequently, it seems to be difficult to generalize the result of the study to apply to all user groups representing diverse age groups. It is desirable and recommended to conduct further research to specify the level of previous experiences and consider personal characteristics.