New Concepts on Market Research

I searched the internet for an article on consumer behavior and I found an article about the influence of television on our buying decisions.

Source : http://www.acrwebsite.org/topic.asp?artID=351

This article analyses the television behavior of Americans in relation to their buying behavior. In order to prove the thesis that television cultivates our material values, two studies were conducted in America.

The three authors are professors of US universities which are specialized in Market Research and consumer behavior. They conducted two studies (independently from each other) with the aim to reveal the influence of TV on materialism in the USA. They structured their article into three paragraphs: the presentation of the research done, the significance of this and the implications for consumers.

In the first part they begin by telling the reader a fact: Americans watch around 4 hours TV per day. Most of them are aware of that, and feel they are watching “too much”.
The authors continue by mentioning all the assumed negative consequences of watching a lot of television: increasing violence, loss of family and sexual mores for example.

Then they state that TV also has an influence on our increasing materialistic values. In order to prove their thesis they conducted two surveys: a national survey (questionnaire) and a laboratory experiment (showing movies to the test persons).

They result that people who pay attention to what they watch are more likely to be influenced then those who do not pay attention and it is really the TV which influences materialism, not the other way round.

In the American TV the world displayed is unrealistic: it shows that possession gives status, and happiness and a wonderful life…TV even influences our thinking. Consumers make their decisions of purchase while watching TV, because they would like to have the same “positive feelings” shown by the protagonists of the spots or series. “That is, as we view portrayals of desirable products, or see wealth and affluence consistently paired with luck, success, and happiness, we may (consciously or unconsciously) update our attitudes and our value systems to place more importance on material values.”

The research proved the relation between the time spent before the TV and our increased materialistic values. The authors insist in the fact that the television should now be considered as a real causable variable for market research for instance. They recommend consumers to be aware of the effect so they are not so vulnerable to this any more.”(…) viewers may combat materialism by being aware of what they are watching (…) in other words, reminding ourselves that the television world is distorted.”

Opinion

In this article with as subject the influence of TV on our buying attitudes and materialistic values, I found especially interesting the fact that consumers can be influenced on their decisions. Before reading the article, I was not aware of this. For me, TV is just for relaxation and advertising is “annoying”. I was conscious that the TV World is not realistic and I thought I would never buy this product or it is ridiculous to dress like this… But as said in the article TV will affect us anyway because we are also influenced unconsciously.

It is known that nowadays TV is the most important media in an advertising campaign. In addition to that, many companies use the internet as marketing platform to attract also there the attention of their consumers.

With the steadily growing internet connections it has become indispensable to advertise in the internet. But watching TV films for example, we are interrupted by commercial spots on most channels. Here the consumer can be more controlled and guided unconsciously. This is up to the fact that ads in the internet (as for example pop-ups, interactive banner) are perceived as being disturbing. Besides, the internet user can switch to other web pages and seek there for more information.