Everyday Advertising Context: An Ethnography of Advertising Response in the Family Living Room

Abstract

Consumer research largely examines television advertising effects using conventional psychological accounts of message processing. Consequently, there is an emphasis on the influence of textual content at the expense of the everyday interpersonal viewing contexts surrounding advertising audiences. To help restore this theoretical imbalance an ethnographic study was conducted in eight Australian homes to explore the influence of everyday viewing contexts on advertising audiences. This article examines how the everyday advertising contexts of social interaction, viewing space, media technology use, and time impact consumer responses to television advertising texts. Advertising viewing behavior in the family living room is framed within broader household activity and around cultural ideas regarding family life, and can enhance consumer and family identity value. Our theoretical framework details how television advertisements, everyday viewing contexts, household discourse, and viewer practices intersect to produce processes of advertising response and engagement not explicated in previous studies of consumer behavior.