An Exploring Study of Contemporary Young Students’ Communicating Content and Media Channels

The prevalence of personal computer, Internet, cell phone, mobile technology, and social network websites leads to the doubt whether the traditional marketing media such as newspaper and television commercial can still effectively reach consumers. According to one manager of a snack company in Taiwan, sales volume used to immediately increase after the company put advertisement on newspaper or television. Nevertheless, the same promotion method is not useful nowadays. One may say that due to the long-built habit, choices of communication media of adult and elder population may not radically change. However, while young consumers such as teenagers or college students are surrounded with new communication media like social network websites in their early stage of life, can companies still reach young consumers through traditional media? How should those companies targeting young population plan their marketing strategies and choose the effective communication media and channel?
This paper aims at exploring young consumers, especially college and high school students’, communication media and content is their daily life. Time diary method was used to collect diaries of college and high school students in Taipei City. Then, content analysis method was employed to analyze and code the data. The results indicate that college and high school students nowadays are closely connected with computers, Internet, and mobile phones. In contrast, although some students still watch television in their daily life, they rarely buy newspaper on their own. This result may imply the declining popularity of traditional communication media.
Previous studies have explored the media usage of college students through questionnaire method (Hsin-Jung Hsieh, 2011). Compare to questionnaire method, this paper used qualitative method to reveal an outlook on college and high school students’ real life. Those companies which targeting young population can take the result of this study for reference when developing marketing plan. Also, this paper shed the light of future studies on investigating young students’ daily life or other related topics.