Stay tuned! : TV-commercial avoidance in a multitasking environment

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to, through an ethnographic case study, understand 20-25 year olds‘ multitasking habits when watching TV and to create a framework of the distractions identified for media consumption. Background: The changes in technology and the new possibilities of consuming media creates a need to understand how people in the ages of 20-25 consume media. Advertising on TV is, in Swe-den, the marketing channel that companies spend the largest amount of money on. Most of the statistics regarding viewing rates are collected in a way that might not give totally accu-rate picture of the actual TV viewing of the consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to do an in-depth study of the media consumption habits of this group. Method: The study will be conducted, through an ethnographic case study where the researchers ob-serve a sample of four people in the target group during 10 sessions. Each session will be two hours long, and during, the researchers will observe the group‘s media consumption habits when watching TV. The observers will also look at the multitasking habits of the group, what media and distractions are combined while watching TV. Conclusions: The researchers conclude that multitasking is a common occurrence in the target groups media consumption. The authors have identified four categories that distracts the viewer‘s focus from TV commercials. The first three are distractions being, social, media and non-media distractions. The fourth category is technical avoidance, where people tend to switch channels or mute the sound in order to avoid commercials. Further, an important factor af-fecting the level of multitasking was whether the TV viewing was planned or unplanned. It was observed that this had an effect on the level of commercial avoidance when watching TV. Finally, four different models have been created as a framework to help marketers un-derstand the consumers behavior.