Abstract:
The marketing of intangible services – particularly of unsought services such as those of the
funeral industry – can be said to pose inherently unique challenges to marketers. Because
of the unsought nature of funeral services, consumers generally avoid the industry, primarily
because the services offered by the funeral industry are associated with death and grief. This
article reports on some selected findings of an evaluation of the effectiveness of funeral-home
websites of members of the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) of South Africa. The
focus of this paper is on the user-friendliness of the websites under consideration. A quantitative
content analysis of the websites in question was conducted to collect the relevant data. The
findings indicate that the majority of the websites may be considered satisfactory in terms of their
overall ease of use. As well as some recommendations for improvements to the websites, a few
suggestions for future research are also provided.
