The day of the consumer is almost always depicted through the eyes of a nine-to-five worker with weekends distinctly free of work and dedicated to family and leisure. But the lives of consumers today are not that simple. Work, play, leisure time and socialising with friends and family are more and more split into fragments of time. Furthermore it is typical that there are several things happening simultaneously. The role of mass media in consumers lives has gone through the same kind of change. Media is less and less a power that unifies people under an umbrella of uniform behaviour and more a source of what ever information or relaxation the consumer needs at a particular time.
When news of the British TouchPoints project started to circulate everybody in Finland was very excited. There had never been a research approach that came anywhere near TouchPoints in that it dealt also extensively with media consumption. Even though the excitement was high there were many sceptics in Finland who pointed out the cost of TouchPoints and thus ruled out the study as not for use. However, the main idea of mapping out consumer activities in everyday situations and trying to find out how media in real life attaches itself to those activities was widely applauded and greatly missed.
Symposium: 2007: Vienna, Session 3 - Confronting New Needs
Authors: Eboreime, Tabu, Malik, Marjo
Organisations: Taloustutkimus Oy
Topics: Inter-media Comparison