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COPYRIGHT 2005 Cambridge University Press
The findings demonstrate that simultaneous media usage is a fact, undermining typical media measurements done in isolated environments that neglect the everyday patterns of media users. More importantly, the simultaneous media experience points to the concept of synesthesia as an experiential integrator of differing sensory fields. The experience of simultaneous media foreground/background relationship needs to be incorporated into the media planning and allocation mix if we are to actually address the consumers' media experience with multitasking.
INTRODUCTION
THE PRESENT RESEARCH STUDY of over 14,847 respondents was conducted in May 2005. It is number VI in BIGresearch's biannual research program. It is based on an initial May 2002 BIGresearch online pilot study of 1,883 participants. That pilot was followed by a fully executed investigation into simultaneous media usage and its effects with 7,800 respondents conducted in August 2002 and 12,322 respondents in March 2003. Also included in this study are the findings of SIMM II in February 2003, SIMM III in October 2003, SIMM IV in June 2004, and SIMM V in December 2004.
RATIONALE
Media technologies, even as early as print media but exponentially more so with the newer technologies, have begun to break down Euclidean space. In reading about world events, we are aware of such events in a significant fashion. We know what they mean, and we understand them from the perspectives of others and are capable of filling either imaginatively or by memory the empty signs. It is our body positionality, our imaginations, memories--indeed our horizons--that offer perceptual content. With radio our perceptual presence thickens; we hear one's laughter and--synesthetically--hear her smile and her expressive face.
If we extend the technical media toward film, the perceptual presence of the other thickens even more. More importantly, in film I am bodily located as "here" in contrast to another's visible body "there." Indeed, the film medium allows me to see events, vistas, facades of buildings from his/her perspective. I can fill in his/her body position and hence see the way he/she sees. In addition, the others who confront him/her also offer positions, each representing, positioning, and differentiating from one another. I can attune to their body performances and can enter the concrete vectors of their gesture, extended and varied by speech. I can see the angry, pensive, cold expressions across their faces and hear these expressions in their voices and total body comportments.
The new communication technologies constitute a recoupling process that transforms a reading culture into an audiovisual kinetic culture. In essence, the interplay of images, sounds, and graphics become central to a cultural system of self-reproduction. The new communication technologies transform modern three-dimensional space and sequential time, space of locations and distances, into presences without distances; into "take-for-granted's" with which we interact "right at home." Multiple perspectives fuse inextricable with our own. The space of concentrated metropolitan places of business and commerce, of trade and transportation, is dispersed and yet made more accessible. The times are at an instant from everywhere. Space, time, and motion have assumed radical transformation.
One of the by-products of this radical transformation is a fragmented media environment characterized by an exploding number of media alternatives vying for people's time. Unfortunately, people still have only 24 hours in a day, creating a need to simultaneously use various media forms to keep pace with events around them. As we know, people often talk on the cell phone while listening to the radio or viewing TV. Therefore, simultaneous media usage and multitasking are not new to society, but they appear to be new to media researchers and planners.
The growth of simultaneous media usage should have a direct impact on the allocation of advertiser's media dollars. Simultaneous media usage suggest that (a) one media becomes background or (b) both pass one through the other or (c) there is dissonance. Each option creates a different metric of receptivity to programming and advertising, requiring media allocation to be thought through based on some of the following issues:
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
* Which media create optimal synaesthesia experience?
* Which media have the most influence in simultaneous use on concrete behavior?
* Which media command attention during simultaneous usage?
BACKGROUND ON THE MEDIA CONSUMPTION MODEL
A detailed research model was presented at the 2004 ESOMAR/ARF Worldwide Audience Measure (WAM) Conference and subsequently published in Excellence in International Research 2005. Based on a database of 60,000 respondents, BIGresearch presented its major...
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