According to the study, about 91.8 percent of respondents see ads online, while 56.2 percent believe that online ads save their search time, and 38 percent believe that online ads are an excellent source of information.

Sixty-four percent of women are affected by ads, followed by children at 34 percent, then men by 2 percent, according to a field study conducted by Hassan Niazi, associate professor in the Department of Communication and Information at King Faisal University in Al-Ahsa.

The analytical study, which aims at investigating the effect of advertising and e-marketing on consumption by the Saudi family, confirmed that e-marketing has contributed to excessive consumerism on the part of the Saudi family.

“The Kingdom has faced — especially in the last three decades — major social and economic changes which have led to the spread of a consumer culture on the level of individuals, family and society. This has adversely affected the completion of the existing development and modernization processes,” said Niazi.

He noted that the common factor among families is that they have become consuming families, despite the difference in their locations, levels of education, attitudes, or purchasing power.

The researcher explained that the flow of oil revenues into the Gulf states and the Kingdom in particular has had a great impact on their economic transformation. Besides, it led to rising consumption which quickly became a tendency to excessive consumption.

Niazi noted that one of the factors influencing the growing consumption pattern is simulation and imitation, confirming that the increased spending on travel items, cars, and servants, is a wide-spread consumption pattern in the Gulf states which does not exist in non-oil Arab societies.

Regarding the factors which helped to spread the consumption culture, the study revealed that they include media openness a 29 percent, immigration at 4 percent, ads by 13 percent, income level by 14 percent, commercial offers by 17 percent, and 4 percent for companies’ consumption knowledge, and finally 19 percent for economic openness.

According to the study, about 91.8 percent of respondents see ads online, while 56.2 percent believe that online ads save their search time, and 38 percent believe that online ads are an excellent source of information. Also, 33.8 percent of them believe that online ads help in assisting their purchasing decisions, while 31.2 percent reported that online ads bring them pleasure, and only 18.6 percent think that ads are useless.

The study showed that 44.2 percent of participants are occasionally interested in buying online, 17.8 percent are partly interested in buying online, and 8.6 percent are entirely dependent on online purchasing.

On the challenges facing e-marketing, the researcher said that they included privacy and security at 36.7 percent, 16.7 for website technology development and language obstacles, 13.3 percent for non-conviction of top management, 10 percent for high costs of creating websites, and 6.7 for a lack of specialists.

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