Capturing the complexity of audiovisual consumption through the top-down categorization of its platforms: Experimental evidence for a scientific, marketing and political agenda

Audiovisual (AV) consumption unfolds across an ever-growing range of platforms that are increasingly complex to categorize. This article aims to deeply analyse such categorization. Various theoretical approaches to cognitive categorization are examined and assessed in terms of their ability to capture the complexity of the AV field. Among these, the top-down approach – incorporating the principle of goal-derived categories – emerges as the most suitable and underpins an experimental study. This experiment (N = 163) investigates the influence of personal goals (information vs entertainment) and situational goals (mobility vs sedentary use) on the categorization of AV platforms. The results show that, under the main and pooled effect of these goals, dissimilar platforms increase in similarity for consumers. The scope of these results is discussed: (i) for AV content suppliers and regulatory authorities in making their (marketing and public) policies and (ii) for future research on AV consumption.