Brodin, Karolina.
Consuming the Commercial Break: An Ethnographic Study of the Potential
Audiences for Television Advertising.
(2007,
Area: Marketing)
Despite of the sociality
of TV viewing, advertising researchers have traditionally studied the
solitary viewer. The study of the social uses of advertising has been
limited, and the reception of advertising in a naturalistic setting has
practically been ignored. As a consequence, contextual factors of time,
space, and everyday life have received only scant attention in the
advertising literature.
This thesis adopts the
ethnographic method to investigate within a naturalistic setting the
phenomenon of the consumption of commercial breaks. Eight households in
Northwest London varying in age, socio-economic factors and other
variables were filmed during a two-week-period and later interviewed.
The videoethnography led to the identification of a set of cultural
themes, which are illustrated in the thesis by behavioral episodes and
interview excerpts from the participating households. In addition to the
identification of archetypical behaviors, the thesis underlines a set of
contingencies that have implications for behavior of potential audiences
for television advertising, such as audience composition and time-of-day
effects.
As a scholar or
practitioner with an interest in advertising, it is easy to overplay the
role of advertising in people’s lives. However, the everyday life of the
consumer consists of a myriad of demands and choices. For the consumer
who needs to prioritize among countless information sources and
competing demands for her attention, advertising is at best of minor
importance. The results of this thesis highlight that advertising
watching is merely one of many behaviors – and by no means the default
one – that consumers engage in during commercial breaks and demonstrate
the importance of balancing prevailing advertising-centered approaches
to the study of television advertising consumption with an
audience-centered approach.
Publication no 721, Price SEK
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