Consumer Value and Modes of Media Reception: Audience Response to Ryan, a Computer-animated Psycho-realist Documentary and its Own Documentation in Alter Egos

Abstract

Consumer value and value creation are fundamental con-
cepts in marketing, management and in literature on orga-
nizations, but are almost never considered in the context of
screen-based “experience” products. In this paper, the au-
thors depart from the prevailing approaches to audience or
reception studies by investigating the experience value the
consumption of a screen-based product has for the specta-
tor. Using the Q-methodology and Holbrook’s consumer
value framework (1999), they empirically identify audience
segments based on television viewers’ subjective experi-
ence with an innovative flm product: the award-winning,
computer-animated short documentary Ryan. The flm uses
creative state-of-the art animation to tell a compelling story
in ways that stretch the documentary genre. The authors
uncover and describe four audience segments. Unexpect-
edly, these four segments bear a strong resemblance to the
four principal modes of media reception proposed recent-
ly by Michelle (2007), thereby creating a potentially fruit-
ful link between the framework for consumer experience
value and media reception studies