Through the kaleidoscope: media consumption patterns in the participatory cross-media era

The paper aims to identify actual media audiences of different mass- and non-mass media types through identifying those audience clusters consuming not different but differentiable media mixes. A major concern of the study is to highlight the transformation of mass media audiences when technology, digitalization and participation behaviors are able to reshape traditional audience forms and media diets, which may directly affect the traditional media value chain and in turn the thinking and decision making of media managers. Through such a kaleidoscope the authors examined media use and consumption patterns using an online self-reported questionnaire. They developed different media consumer clusters as well as media consumption mixes. Based on the results of the study the authors can state that internet use is today’s main base of media consumption, and as such it is becoming the real mass media, replacing television. However this “new” media has a completely different structure, being more fragmented with smaller audience reach. At the same time, television is keeping its audience. However, there are emerging segments self-reporting non- or light television viewing. This is how the question of the viewer-television relation among different television viewer clusters evolves. At the same time only gaming exhibited demographic differentiation of audiences based on gender.

A válság hatása a vállalatok marketingtevékenységére = The Impact of Financial Crisis on Marketing Activities of Hungarian Companies

A tanulmányban azt elemeztük, hogy a vizsgált vállalatok a válságra milyen marketingválaszokat gondoltak megfelelőnek. Ennek megválaszolásához a „Versenyben a világgal” kutatási program 2009-ben készült felmérésének 300 vállalatra kiterjedő mintáját elemeztük, amelyet szakértői interjúkkal egészítettünk ki. A tanulmány alapozó részében elemeztük a nemzetközi trendeket és megoldásokat. A marketingben a válaszok helyessége ugyanis annak alapján ítélhető meg, hogy milyen mértékben képes a vállalat a fogyasztók dinamikusan alakuló igényeit formálni vagy azoknak megfelelni oly módon, hogy figyelembe veszi a környezet sajátosságait. A vizsgált vállalatok válságkezelő stratégiája ad-hoc jellegűnek mondható, nem illeszkedik az addigi stratégiai irányokhoz vagy az addig folytatott marketingstratégiához. A legnépszerűbb válságkezelő marketingeszközök az új piacok keresése, az akciózás és a költségcsökkentés. Közepesen népszerű a más média használata, a termékinnováció, az árcsökkentés, valamint a reklámkiadások csökkentése. A legkevésbé kedvelt eszközök pedig a marketingtevékenység kiszervezése, a termékválaszték vagy a termékminőség csökkentése. A választott eszközök típusai alapján három stratégiai irány határozható meg, az alternatív utak keresése, az ármérséklés, valamint a beszűkülés. A megkérdezett vállalatok 39,9%-a beszűkülő stratégiát, 30,4%-a az alternatív és ármérséklő stratégiák kombinációját, míg 29,7% egyik stratégiát sem preferálja. A választás azonban a legtöbb esetben inkább ad-hoc jellegűnek, mint tudatosan átgondolt stratégiának tűnik, mivel a választott irány nem függ a vállalat addigi marketingtevékenységétől vagy az addig hangsúlyosnak vélt jellemzőktől és versenyelőnyöktől. ________ In this study the marketing responses of the companies were analyzed, which were involved in the Competitiveness Research Program survey carried out during 2009 among 300 companies, combined with expert interviews. A literature review proceeded the empirical part. The capability of dynamic adaptation to consumer needs defines the right strategy in marketing. In our analysis we mainly found ad-hoc adaptation to handling the crisis that has little connection to firms’ previous strategic directions or their marketing strategy. The most popular crisis management tools include the search for new markets, promotions, and cost reductions. New media, product innovation, price reductions and lower advertising is less followed by companies. The least frequent reactions include outsourcing and reducing product quality. Based on the above three directions emerge. 39,9 % of the companies contract, 30,4 % use a combination of price reduction and alternative strategies and the remaining subset has formulated no strategy. The strategic directions show little correlation to previous practices or to the core competitive advantages.

The New (Marketing) Role of Firms as Media Content Providers – The case of SME’s Strategic Social Media Presence

In the new social media context, it is gradually more common to say that each party can itself be considered a media content provider, firms included (through their brand pages). This tendency is reflected in a rising professional field called “content marketing”. This study incorporates the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into the scope of social media (SM) as a marketing communications and media content distribution system. In an exploratory content analysis of 20 official SM brand pages with 1281 analyzed posts the authors study how SMEs respond to the advent of a new paradigm of marketing communications with special attention to their usage of media-specific contents. SM impels companies to eventually rethink the traditional one-way communication flow of their marketing messages and to incorporate a new, two-way communication into their marketing strategy, where (their engaged and involved) users can create, modify, share and discuss content related to the firm’s activity. This study’s preliminary results show that diffusing content generally acts for SMEs as a facilitator to involve fans by offering a thematized space for them to manifest themselves in company-related topics. Therefore, content adds to the firms’ possibilities of brand positioning by offering a reflection of fans’ company- and contentrelated behavior, which is a supplementary source of information.

A fogyasztói hitelszerződések új szabályai (New regulations the credit agreements for consumers)

A fogyasztói hitelszerződések jogát az Európai Unión belül a 2008/48/EK irányelv szabályozta újra, amely a magyar jogalkotó számára is a belső jogba történő átültetés kötelezettségét írta elő. Ennek az implementációnak az eredményeként született meg a fogyasztónak nyújtott hitelről szóló 2009. évi CLXII. törvény. Jelen cikk a jelzáloghitelek szabályozására vonatkozó elképzeléseket, majd a hiteltermékek reklámozására – kereskedelmi kommunikációjára – irányadó szabályokat vizsgálja meg részletesebben. Ennek során bemutatja a hiteltermékek reklámozásáról szóló, hatályos jogszabályokban fellelhető ellentmondásokat is. Ezt követően a szerződéskötést megelőző tájékoztatási kötelezettséget, valamint az előtörlesztés intézménye körüli kérdéseket elemzi. Végül alátámasztani kívánja azt az álláspontot, hogy a fogyasztói kezességi szerződésekre is indokolt lett volna kiterjeszteni az új irányelvben foglalt védelmi szintet, a jelzáloggal fedezett hitelekre azonban nem, hiszen ezekre vonatkozóan további uniós jogalkotási lépések várhatóak. / === / The consumer protection law is governed by Directive 2008/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and was implemented to the Hungarian legal system through the Act on Credit Provided for Consumers (162/2009). This article aims at observing the relevant provisions on mortgage as well as the commercials and advertisements of mortgages. This article will show that there are many confl icts within the relevant legal provisions and will further examine the obligation to information and the institution of early repayment. The author of this article believes that the protection created by the new directive should have been extended to guarantee contracts as well, but not to hypothec contracts as the latter are expected to be governed through future EU legislation.

"Gene-fouled or gene-improved?" – Media framing of GM crops and food in Hungary

This paper presents results from a research which analyzed the reporting on genetically modified crops and food in the Hungarian tabloids and political papers with the highest circulation from 1 May 2007 to 31 October 2009. Both quantitative and qualitative media analysis was conducted. It was found that in contrast to some Western countries the issue had low salience in the investigated period; it featured especially marginally in the tabloids. Two distinct valenced frames could be differentiated: a dominant ANTI-GM (Threat) frame – which was particularly frequent compared to what has been found for some other countries, and a minority PRO-GM (Advancement and Benefits) frame. Despite a range of similarities with what had been reported by previous research from some other countries, argumentation on the GMO topic in the Hungarian press had several distinct characteristics, one of which was the relative prominence of economic arguments against the technology.

Media presentation and public understanding of stem cells and stem cell research in Hungary

This paper reports on a research project which examined media coverage and audience perceptions of stem cells and stem cell research in Hungary, using focus groups and a media analysis. A background study was also conducted on the Hungarian legal, social and political situation linked to stem cell research, treatment and storage. Our data shows how stem cell research/treatments were framed by the focus group members in terms of medical results/cures and human interest stories – mirroring the dominant frames utilized by the Hungarian press. The spontaneous discourse on stem cells in the groups involved a non-political and non-controversial understanding – also echoing the dominant presentation of the media. Comparing our results with those of a UK study, we found that although there are some similarities, UK and Hungarian focus group participants framed the issue of stem cell research differently in many respects – and these differences often echoed the divergences of the media coverage in the two countries. We conclude by arguing against approaches which attribute only negligible influence to the media – especially in the case of complex scientific topics and when the dominant information source for the public is the media.

Re-written by machine and new technology: Did the Internet kill the Video Star

The traditional way of understanding television content consumption and viewer reactions may be simply summarised: information about the program, viewing at airing time, and interpersonal discussion after the program. In our digital media environment due to crossmedia consumption and platform shifts, the actual trend in audiovisual, and traditionally television content consumption is changing, the viewer’s journey is different across contents and platforms. Content is becoming independent from the platform and the medium is increasingly in the hands of technologically empowered viewers. Our objective is to uncover how traditional content expressly manufactured for television (series, reality shows, sports) can now be consumed via other platforms, and how and to what extent audiovisual content consumption is complemented or replaced by other forms (text, audio). In our exploratory research we identify the typical patterns of interaction and synergies of consumption across classical media content. In this study we used a multimethodology qualitative research design with three research phases including focus groups, online content analysis, and viewers’ narratives. Overall, the Video Star stays alive, but has to deal with immediate reactions and has to change according to his or her audiences’ wishes

The Attributes of Social Media as a Strategic Marketing Communication Tool

New digital trends are transforming the media industry landscape, modifying elemental characteristics and attitudes of companies as well as of consumers. Firms often claim that their presence in social media (SM) is a key element to success. SM helps companies rethink the traditional one-way flow of their marketing messages and to incorporate a new interactive pattern into their communications. Nevertheless, these tendencies involve problems of strategic myopia for firms that do not structurally integrate these tools. One main problem is that institutions can rarely differentiate between the various types of SM and the attributes thereof, while the literature equally reveals a number of contradictions in the subject. The present conceptual paper lays the foundations of a strategic approach to SM and discusses its theoretical implications. Following an overview on the concept of SM, through a content analysis of the specialized management literature (n = 14), we present various best practices and reflect on the apparent lack of strategic thinking in using SM as a marketing application. Then, we compare these practical examples with general marketing strategy theory. By merging theory and practice, we aim to provide an insight towards a well-founded application of SM as a genuinely strategic marketing tool.

Google’s Antitrust Cases Competition Analysis in New Economy Markets

Today, global economic performance largely depends on digital ecosystems. E-commerce, cloud, social media, sharing economy are the main products of the modern innovative economic systems which are constantly raising new regulatory questions. Meanwhile the United States has an unimpeachable dominance in innovation and new technologies, as well as a large and open domestic market, the EU is only recently discovering the importance of empowering the European digital economy and aims to break down its highly fragmented cross-border online economic environment. As global economy is rapidly becoming digital, Europe’s effort to create and invest in common digital market is understandable. The comprehensive investigations launched by the European Commission into the role of social network, search engine, or sharing economy internet platforms, which are new generation technologies dominated by American firms; or the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union declaring that the Commission’s US Safe Harbor Decision is invalid1 might be considered as part of an anti-American protectionist policy. However, these measures could rather be seen as part of a broader trend to foster European enterprises in technology developments.

The migration crisis: representation of a border conflict in Hungarian, German and Pan-European television new coverage

In this article we review the methods used by television news channels in their reporting of the clashes between the Hungarian police and refugees at the Serbian-Hungarian border on 16th of September 2015. With the help of content analysis we examine the techniques used by each editorial board to portray events differently,resulting in dissimilar effects on recipients. During the analysis we examine news coverage for one specific day as presented by Hungarian, German and pan-European broadcasters. German news programs were chosen for comparison with Hungarian ones due to the fact that most of the refugees were heading towards Germany. We conclude that there are significant differences between the information that was broadcast according to television channels; owner expectations presumably play an important role in this.