THE PHILIPPINES, MAY 2, 2012: Good Thinking Incorporated, a Filipino research company presented a study on how young adults think and use media on April 25, 2012 at the 7th High Club at the Global City, Taguig.
Presented by Myls Rivera, research director for analytics and Vida Alaras of the qualitative team, the study study, entitled "Generation Next," is a result of a combined quantitative and qualitative research where young adults aged 20-30 years old comprising 20% of the country’s total population, who are income earners were the respondents.
The study Concentrating in Metro Manila, the researchers randomly selected respondents from class A, B, C, and D homes who travel or go out of their house at least three times a week and have at least been exposed to one type of out-of-home media.
Segmented into three types, the respondents are either busy or distracted, keeping up, or value entertainment.
The busy and distracted segment are those that often multi-task and think that multi-tasking is equivalent to being productive. In traditional media, a significant change in how these young adults use media in the past two years from 2009 – 2011 is an increase of 68% – 86% in internet usage and a drop from 56% to 39% newspaper reading. In new media, because they want to be updated in a flash, they only read headlines in news websites skimming through long articles. They prefer micro-blogging explaining the 100% increase in Twitter usage from 9% to 20% in the last two years. For out-of-home media, the ads that they notice are: relevant 38%, familiar 29%, and colorful 25%.
The keeping up segment, are young adults who like to compare themselves with their peers. They like to travel with gadgets and actively search for Wi-Fi hotspots. For traditional media they are still very interested in current events that’s why half are still in tune with news programs that are mostly on TV and use the radio to update themselves with the latest music and traffic. The study showed that print is not used in keeping up – 100% use tv, 97% use mobile phone, 84% use radio, 86% use the internet and only 39% use newspaper and 30% use magazines to keep up. For new media, they like keeping up with trends and have different gadgets. In the study, half bought an electronic gadget in the past 12 months. In two years from 2009 to 2011, 26% increase in internet access from 68% to 86% and from 0 to 34% increase in mobile internet access was found. 94% or almost all have Facebook account s. 9 on 10 think out-of-home media say something new and serves as awareness building for future investments.
The last segment, those who value entertainment are those who feel exhausted during travel. 6 out of 10 carry a negative disposition in their way home being tired or hungry so they seek entertainment in and out of home. For traditional media, tv is still a major source of entertainment for most and they watch telenovelas, variety shows and reality shows. Print however a niche media is and for more upscale readers. For new media, multimedia content is downloaded online, applications are regularly updated, and picture and view viewing in social networking sites serve as entertainment. To them, online games can be a boredom reliever.
Good Thinking concluded that all three media are complementary. Depending on the life stage of the brand, one media can be a supplement to another. Traditional media confirms that TV and radio will always be present assuring brand credibility and serves as assurance of brand’s place in the category and communicates stability of a brand. New media informs – it gives real time and quick updates and need to always be updated as much as possible and out-of-home media reminds and helps in awareness building and pushes purchase only on select categories.
The main challenge for brands therefore is to know which medium is far reaching, to know which medium is close to their hearts and to know their brand’s place in the out-of-home media clutter.
