Surfing all the Channels

UT’s Media Research Lab Taps Into New Wave of Consumer Behavior

By: Erin Geisler

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has even looked at a TV lately, but must-see TV is dead. Gathering around the TV for the 8 p.m. lineup is as passé as “The Cosby Show,” “M*A*S*H,” “Seinfeld,” “Cheers” or “Friends.”

Today, Americans live in a time-pressed society where multi-tasking is de rigueur and goes beyond watching TV during dinner. And while mass media have evolved over the past 50 years, (remember when there were three networks and FM radio had not been replaced by XM Radio and Sirius?) societal and technological trends over the past five years have fast-forwarded that evolution.

Some forms of “New Media” already are not sounding so new anymore: Digital Video Recorders, iPods, BlackBerrys, and iPhones are as ubiquitous as the 20th century toaster.

This all comes as no surprise to Dr. Terry Daugherty, director of the Media Research Lab in the College. An assistant professor of advertising, Daugherty is exploring the strategic, social and technological issues at the core of the media phenomenon and giving researchers across the country the tools to investigate media consumption.

These technological and societal changes can even confound the metrics-driven media industry—advertisers, marketers, public relations professionals and journalists—who are trying to communicate a message to consumers and track the results.

“The distinctions between print, broadcast and mobile are disappearing,” says Cindy Wells, manager of interactive media solutions at Tribal DDB, an interactive media agency. “The industry is evolving and everything will become a digital touch point. For example, the billboard will be digitized, consumers will be able to take TV shows on the go all through the device that is most convenient to the consumer.”

Daugherty has unique qualifications to assess this brave new world. With a Ph.D. from Michigan State (Mass Media) and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with eLab at Vanderbilt, the genial Daugherty has also worked in advertising media and event marketing.

“I’ve always been fascinated with media, how it has evolved, how we are engaged by it and how we rely upon it in our daily lives,” he says. “The mass media are not only delivering new communication vehicles today—the cell phone is now considered an advertising channel—they’re changing how we consume media, including ‘old media.’”

For example, a growing number of Americans today are engaging in simultaneous media consumption because of time pressures and numerous media options. According to eMarketer, 30 percent of total media time is spent multi-tasking. The more media a person consumes, the more likely they are to multi-task.

The effect of multi-tasking on the absorption of media messages, whether product placement in music lyrics, video games, television and film, is not always clear, but “the answers to these questions have major implications for the multi-billion dollar media industry,” Daugherty points out. “There’s immense pressure in the industry to justify return on investment for advertisers, and there are currently no standard measures to evaluate many of the tactics being used in this changing environment.”

But the University is fast-tracking a standard answer on its own —a first-of-its-kind College Media Research Lab, designed to provide researchers at UT, and other academic institutions and corporations across the country, a way to quantify these changes and help media identify new and meaningful ways to connect with their audiences.

Other colleges seem to have caught on. Since the Spring of 2006, the lab has been used for more than 35 teaching and academic research projects, including UT, USC, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, the University of Tennessee and the University of Georgia.

“Faculty and graduate students associated with the lab are using these systems to address many of the most pressing issues facing media professionals today,” Daugherty says.

The lab features collaborative space for planning and conducting research and dedicated research stations for conducting experiments and data collection, including immediate feedback.

“From this work, we are learning whether product placements in video games are viable advertising alternatives, why and how consumers use Digital Video Recorders to consume media, and what role user-generated content online plays within the media universe, as well as numerous other media issues,” Daugherty explains.

The lab’s consumer online panel was started in 2003 to give advertising students realdata to conduct training on primary research methods. The panel, an opt-in, informed consent/privacy-protected resource, can reach more than 20,000 consumers around the world for real-time, Web-based research.

Researchers at other universities pay a small administrative fee to the Department of Advertising for administering the panel survey and are responsible for covering incentive costs, which are cash prize drawings offered to participate in specific studies,” Daugherty points out.

The lab provides the infrastructure for students and faculty to conduct theoretically-driven research, using an adult population from around the world. Physiological measurement tools in the lab measure a body’s biological response—heart rate, perspiration and breathing—to various media.

Not to ignore the window to the soul, eye tracking systems monitor visual behavior for different types of media.

“In each of our research classes, students develop a research project to analyze current media usage trends and brand preferences,” Daugherty explains. “They start with secondary research and then examine primary research through the panel.”

By using the panel in classroom assignments, students gain first-hand knowledge of managing research data, including the technology and resources required to maintain it—and the steps required to execute an online survey or experiment.

Daugherty feels students develop strong analytical abilities and bridge the gap between the rigor of the classroom, and what will be expected of them when they graduate and enter the work force.

Dr. Wendy Macias, associate professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Georgia (and a UT advertising alumna), and Dr. Sally McMillan, associate professor in the School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee, had success using the panel last year.

They were able to identify different groups of online American senior citizens, and examine their online health information attitudes and behaviors. “The panel enabled us to do a broad-based survey among a specialized population, as we wanted to reach Internet users who were over the age of 55,” McMillan says.

One of the results of that work is the research paper, “My Granny Googles Better than Yours: Factors Influencing Differences in How Older Americans Use the Internet for Health Communication and Information”

“We found the quality of the panel members to be very high, the response rate and response time were both excellent, and the panel members seemed to take the survey very seriously by providing quality answers and thoughtful responses,” McMillan says. “Overall, the experience was very positive and I will likely use the panel again in the future.”

Macias and McMillan say they hope health information providers will use their panel findings to more effectively communicate with older consumers, which is not a monolithic group, but quite diverse in health attitudes and behaviors.

Daugherty hopes to increase the number of panel participants to 50,000 over the next three years, and offer the expertise and resources beyond academia, to the media industry itself. “Mass media will continue to evolve and consumers will adapt,” he believes. “It’s exciting to speculate what’s next. Thanks to the unparalleled resources in the lab and the panel, researchers—from any organization—have the tools to track and analyze mass media and recommend strategies on how best to engage consumers.”