Traditional and Digital Media Advertising Preference: A Descriptive Evaluation of Billings, Montana Mothers

Understanding consumers allows marketers to tailor specifically to a target market effectively. Digital advertising methods are relatively new compared to more established traditional advertising methods; the introduction and proliferation of the Internet and digital devices have steadily increased digital advertising use by marketers. Preferences within digital advertising and within traditional advertising have been explored; however, as digital media usage has increased, preference between the two methods has not been examined. Research indicates mother consumers in America conduct a majority of the household shopping across numerous product categories. An understanding of media channel preference for this demographic group could increase marketing campaign reception and indicate to marketers how marketing dollars should be budgeted for mother consumers. Marketing allocation success could be significantly improved with a better understanding of consumer preference between the traditional and digital media channels. Mothers in Billings, Montana with children living in the home under the age of 18 years old were asked to complete a mail survey to determine mother media preference between traditional and digital media advertising. There were 285 mother consumers' responses to the mail survey request. A t-test and ANOVA analysis were used to show mothers' preference for traditional media channels over digital. A significant difference was found in mother media channel preference for traditional media channels (M= 2.63, SD= 0.71) over digital media channels (M= 1.68, SD= 0.57) conditions; t(285) = 1.97, p < .000. The ANOVA results were significant, F(5,1698) = 128.239, p = .000, indicating a statistically significant difference between channel preference within the pairs of the six media channels studied. This study provides marketers information about the media channel preferences for mother consumers that can be used to effectively target the consumer preference and behavior of this demographic group wielding significant purchase power.