Farmers Use of Icts for Marketing Information Outlets in Oyo State, Nigeria

The study examined the use of ICTs for accessing marketing information outlets in Oyo State, Nigeria. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 150 respondents for the study. Data collected were analysed using frequencies counts and percentages to describe the findings while, Chi-square and PPMC were used to test for relationship between the variables in the study hypotheses. The results of the findings showed that majority (70%) of the sampled respondents were male while (69.3%) were married with (84%) of them having a family size of less than five members. Large proportion (59.3%) of the respondents fall within the ages of 31-50 years, and majority (74.7%) of them were rural residence. The results also showed that majority (81.3%) of them required information for the sales of their agricultural products. The major sources of agricultural marketing information outlets to the respondents were fellow farmers (81.3%), radio (85.4%) and GSM (83%).The study found that (61.3%) of the respondents were in low level category of ICTs users. Inferential statistics indicates that, there were significant relationship between level of use of ICTs for agricultural marketing information and marital status (?2=10.46, p>0.05) and level of educational attainment (?2=16.35, P>0.05). However, age (?2=5.5, p<0.05), sex (?2=5.99, p<0.05) and family size (?2=6.22, p<0.05) had no significant relationship with marketing information outlets. PPMC analysis revealed that radio(r=0.28, p>0.05), fellow farmers(r=0.19, p>0.05) and GSM (r=0.88, p>0.05) as a source of marketing information were highly significant. The study recommends that government and other stake holders in the information and communication technology industries should endeavour to eliminate the identified barriers to the effective use of ICTs for marketing information outlets in the study area.