We had the opportunity to welcome Prof. Renana Peres, the Head of Marketing Department and Vice Dean for External Affairs at the Hebrew University Business School in Israel as our fourth speaker in this semester’s Research Seminar Series.

The so-called phenomenon of “second screening” is a very common occurrence nowadays with TV viewers, where they use another device such as a mobile phone or a tablet while consuming the primary content on the TV or other main screen. How and why are users capable of multitasking in this way and whether it has any marketing impact is interesting to both scholars and practitioners alike, yet hard to track and determine.

Second screening is also the main focus of the presented study by Renana and her co-authors, in which they tackle the problem of tracking by observing a panel of participants. They construct a very large and granular dataset of watched shows and usage of second screens and identify several viewer segments with series consumption habits. Using various classification methods, the results then show a significant difference of second screening between these segments. Additionally, it is revealed that activities done on the second screen vary across the segments and may lead to an increased need to rewatch or word-of-mouth amplification on the social media.

We are grateful to Renana for sharing her research and experience with us and are looking forward to see her again!