1. What social and personal factors might influence the purchase of a DVR or a streaming option?
2. How would you market this product in order to create a need in the consumer's mind?
When asked about their least favorite aspect of TV viewing, most people say it's the commercials. Although most consumers understand that commercials support free programming, they are bothered by the growing number of commercial interruptions. One way to avoid all the clutter is to channel surf and bypass commercials. But digital video recorders (DVRs) offer another solution-skip commercials altogether while still watching your favorite show on your own schedule.
Consumers are attached to their DVRs and love the freedom they find through services like TiVo. The service allows consumers to automatically record shows and skip commercials during playback. Statistics show that DVR users watch more TV, channel surf less, and move many prime-time week shows to the weekend, when they have more leisure time.
Will DVRs put an end to commercial dominance and put the consumer in the driver's seat? This question assumes that television will continue its long-running domination as the number-one outlet for program content. But the nature of how consumers are getting their news, sports, and entertainment programming is in flux like never before.
For starters, more and more consumers are opting to purchase their favorite show on DVD or through download or streaming services like iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Roku. As with the DVR option, this can cut out commercials altogether. But for the launch of a recent season, the four major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) made a landmark move. Each began offering full episodes of many of their top programs through their websites. The episodes are available the day after they air on television, are delivered in high-resolution streaming video, can be viewed full screen, and are available 24/7. The price? They are free, but viewers must watch a single commercial five or six times during a one-hour show. Not exactly commercial-free, but far less than the 18 or so minutes per hour devoted to ads on television.
What a novel concept: deliver the content for free, and pay for the programming through ad revenues. And while the delivery of program content will likely evolve for some time to come, the bottom line is consumers will choose the viewing method and options that give them the features they value most. Big screens? High resolution? No ads? Convenience? On-demand? Only time will tell.