Media Behavior Data × Social Sequence Analysis [3]10 Media Lifestyles with "High Daytime Outing Rates"
Dentsu Inc. Media Innovation Lab, in collaboration with Video Research Ltd.'s Human Research Institute, conducted a project to analyze modern media lifestyles across seven groups and 30 distinct styles. The first installment of this series introduced the project's overall framework. The second installment detailed two groups within these seven that exhibit high daytime at-home rates.
This time, we introduce the 10 styles within the three groups with high daytime outings: "③ Weekday Outing Group," "④ Early-to-Bed, Early-Rising Group," and "⑤ Late-Night Media Group." In contrast to the previous installment, these three groups share a common rhythm: leaving home in the morning and returning in the evening or later, primarily on weekdays from Monday to Friday. They are also centered around people who work or attend school, with men accounting for a higher proportion in 8 out of the 10 styles.
The key differences between the three groups lie in their morning start times and evening bedtimes. If we consider "③ Monday-Friday Outing Group" as representing a somewhat average lifestyle, "④ Early-to-Bed, Early-to-Rise Group" has earlier morning start times and bedtimes, while "⑤ Late-Night Media Group" is the opposite, with later mornings and evenings.
The 5 Styles of the "Weekday Outdoors Group"
Now, let's introduce them starting with "③ Weekday Outing Group".
The keyword common to all five styles in this group is "7 AM." At 7 AM, the following three events coincide:
・By 7 a.m., nearly all members of this group are awake and have started their activities.
・By 7 AM, those who woke up earlier begin heading out
・As a result, the morning media consumption peak forms with 7 AM as its apex
Viewed this way, it seems to evoke the typical hectic morning scene in a household. However, the styles differ in two key aspects: whether the media contact peak is concentrated in the evening or split between morning and evening, and which media they primarily engage with.
In this group, styles 13 ("Evening-Centered TV Viewing") and 14 ("Evening-Centered PC & Mobile Use"), where the media contact peak is concentrated in the evening, are more common among men. Styles 15 ("Weekend Outings & Morning/Evening Media Use") and 16 ("Weekend Home Stay & Morning/Evening Media Use"), where contact is split between morning and evening, are more common among women. "17. Weekday Commute Radio Listening Type" differs from both of these but is a media consumption style common among men.
This time, let's examine "14. Night-Centered PC & Mobile User."
The "14. Night-Centered PC & Mobile Use Type" is a style commonly seen among unmarried men with an average age of 30.
"14. Night-Centered PC & Mobile User" is predominantly male, accounting for roughly two-thirds (65.1%) of users. With an average age of 30, it is the youngest of all 30 styles. Consequently, the unmarried rate is high at 73.1%, and high school, college, and junior college students collectively make up a significant 19.9% of this group.
Key characteristics of this type's media consumption include:
① Morning media contact peaks at only 20%, but at night, internet use via PC and mobile becomes more prevalent than TV viewing. During the peak 9 PM hour, over 60% of people engage with media.
② Notably, the average time spent watching online videos at home, especially mobile videos (pink shaded area), is 18 minutes—the longest among all 30 styles (PC online video <purple shaded area> is 17 minutes).
In fact, the wake-up, departure, return, and bedtime schedules of this type are almost identical to those of the "13. Night-Centered TV Viewing" group, which is adjacent to them within the same category. Being adjacent also implies similar lifestyles. Incidentally, the "13. Night-Centered TV Viewing Type" represents the largest share (12.7%) among the 30 styles. They are typical individuals with an average age of 41.9 years (10 years older than the average) and are mostly corporate employees.
In other words, if "13. Night-Centered TV Viewing Type" represents the current archetype of media lifestyles, then the "14. Night-Centered PC & Mobile Usage Type" presented here may foreshadow the archetype of media lifestyles 10 years from now. The presence of younger generations, whose primary media engagement at home has significantly expanded beyond just TV viewing to include PCs and mobile devices (especially mobile video viewing), warrants continued attention.
Therefore, let's examine the weekly activities of one individual classified under this style.
Here is the weekly media lifestyle of a 31-year-old male office worker/researcher. On weekdays, he wakes up around 7:30 AM and starts his day with background TV viewing. After working during the day, he returns home around 8:00 PM, but he watches TV at home only one day per week. Instead, he often uses his mobile device for about an hour during his relaxation time before bed. Additionally, PC internet use becomes more prominent on weekends.
These lifestyle records reveal the daily routine of a young salaryman leading a steady, regular life. The persistence of morning TV viewing before work suggests continuity across generations, connecting him to older salarymen. Conversely, the low TV engagement after returning home and his affinity for digital devices clearly show a disconnect from older generations.
Two Styles of the "Early-to-Bed, Early-to-Rise Tribe"
Next, let's look at "④ The Early-to-Bed, Early-to-Rise Tribe."
This group, characterized by waking up earlier than the "③ Weekday Outing Tribe" and going to bed earlier at night, is predominantly male.
This group is simply divided by the time they wake up and start their activities: either in the 5 o'clock hour or the 6 o'clock hour. Among them, almost all wake up in the 6 o'clock hour and conversely go to bed by midnight. The average age of the "18. Early-to-Bed, Early-Riser Type (6 AM Wake-Up)" group is 36.4 years old, indicating a younger demographic.
Let's examine "18. Early-to-bed, early-to-rise type (6 a.m. wake-up)".
The "18. Early-to-bed, early-to-rise type (6 a.m. wake-up)" group has middle-aged men as its core demographic.
Men comprise three-quarters (75.2%) of the "18. Early-to-bed, early-to-rise type (6 AM wake-up)" group, with men aged 35-49, the middle-aged cohort, forming the largest segment (30.3%). In contrast, about half of the women (12.1% of the total male-female sample) belong to the teen age group (12-19 years old). This difference in the main age group between men and women is a defining characteristic.
Consequently, rather than having a unique style, media contact characteristics naturally align with each generation's affinity. For example, older men tend to choose television in the morning and evening, while mobile devices are the preferred medium throughout the day for younger generations. This results in the balanced graph shown above, depicting diverse media contact patterns.
Within this style, here is an example of a weekly media lifestyle for someone who seems to achieve this diverse media balance single-handedly.
Conversely, most people belonging to this style do not engage with such a diverse range of media; they almost certainly lean heavily toward specific media types. The prominent shared characteristic of waking up around 6 AM may have contributed to the incomplete classification of this group's "media exposure patterns," which remains a challenge for the project.
The Three Styles of the "Late-Night Media Tribe"
At the end of Part 3 of this series, we introduce "⑤ The Late-Night Media Group." This group clearly exhibits distinct characteristics in both their lifestyle and media consumption patterns within it.
First, the common characteristic of the "Late-Night Media Group" is that they engage with media later into the night than any of the other three groups examined here. The gender ratio is again male-dominated, and the average age is around mid-30s for all members, making it a group centered on younger adults.
Looking at how they spend their time, all three styles spend weekday daytime hours primarily outside the home, engaged in work or school, which is common to the other groups. However, within this, the "22. Uniform Lifestyle / 11 PM Peak Type" sees about 20% of people staying at home during the day, suggesting a style for those with relatively flexible work or school schedules.
Furthermore, the most significant difference among the three styles lies in their weekend behavior: either spending weekends out nearly as much as weekdays ("20. Weekends Out, 10 PM Peak Type") or, conversely, spending a significant amount of time at home ("21. Weekends at Home, After 11 PM Peak Type").
This time, let's examine "21. Home on Weekends, Peak After 11 PM Type."
The "21. Home on Weekends, Peak After 11 PM" type represents the typical white-collar salaryman.
The defining characteristic of "21. Stay-at-Home Weekends, Peak After 11 PM" is that while they are out during the day on weekdays, most people stay home on weekends. To illustrate this feature, we'll graph their activities for all seven days from Monday to Sunday.
The "21. Home on Weekends, Peak After 11 PM" style has the highest male ratio among the three groups and ten styles we're introducing this time that have a "high daytime outings rate," reaching 81.9%. Looking at occupations, among all 30 styles, "Office/Research Workers" make up the highest proportion at 44.0%. Additionally, full-time regular employees constitute the largest share at 76.9% of this group. This could be considered the typical white-collar salaryman lifestyle.
On weekdays, the majority of people in this type return home after 10 PM and typically go to sleep between 1 and 2 AM, establishing a night-oriented lifestyle pattern. Perhaps as a reaction to this, on Saturdays and Sundays, over 50% of people are at home even during the daytime.
The defining feature of their media lifestyle within this rhythm is the peak occurring after 11 PM, as the name suggests. However, other interesting characteristics emerge.
For instance, the red-shaded areas stand out—representing time spent watching recorded programs (timeshift viewing) after returning home on weekdays and throughout the entire weekend. For people in this style, timeshift TV viewing becomes an efficient way to consume content within the limited time between returning home late at night and going to sleep, replacing live TV viewing. The high level of time-shifted viewing on weekends also suggests these days serve as a "revenge" viewing period, where they binge-watch TV programs recorded during the week when they had no time to watch them.
Next, let's examine the weekly media lifestyle of one male office worker in his early 40s living this kind of life.
This illustrates how a male office worker in his early 40s spends his week. From Monday to Friday, his return home is after 10 PM, sometimes extending into the 11 PM hour, with bedtime occasionally reaching the 1 AM hour. Perhaps as a reaction to this, he spends most of his weekends indoors, engaging with various media.
His primary media consumption is watching TV at home. On weekdays, however, the time-shifted viewing (shown in red) is longer than the real-time viewing (shown in blue). Furthermore, mobile internet use, characteristic of younger generations, peaks late into the night. On weekends, real-time TV viewing increases, often with focused attention, though time-shifted viewing still dominates on Sundays.
This suggests that the core demographic for this viewing style consists of people who are essentially TV lovers but are too busy with work to watch leisurely during the week, and information-hungry individuals who, even outside of work, engage with numerous societal topics via mobile and other means but still want to include TV programs as one of their sources.
The "Role of Media" Revealed by Social Sequence Analysis
This time, we introduced the characteristics of three groups, totaling ten viewing styles, centered on people who are basically out during the day from Monday to Friday.
The "Monday-Friday Outdoors" group, while seemingly sharing the typical salaryman lifestyle rhythm, clearly reflects generational differences in media engagement as distinct styles. This reaffirms that even with the same rhythm, the primary role assigned to media differs by generation.
Furthermore, time-shifted viewing within the "Weekend Homebodies / Late-Night Peak" style is not particularly high in duration compared to other groups or styles (in fact, the group previously introduced with longer home time and longer real-time TV viewing has significantly more time-shifted viewing. The notion that time-shifted viewing replaces real-time viewing across society is actually incorrect).
However, social sequence analysis revealed a new interpretation: busy individuals rely on time-shifted viewing to compensate for their limited real-time viewing time. Such insights would never emerge if media consumption patterns were interpreted solely based on daily viewing hours.
While the roles of each media type are often discussed in terms of generational axes or competitive-complementary axes, social sequence analysis allows us to visualize them concretely.
Next time, we will introduce the eight styles—two groups characterized by irregular lifestyles.
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Author
Akira Miwa
Dentsu Inc.
Since joining the company, I have primarily conducted research and studies in the fields of information and communications, digital devices, and content at DENTSU SOKEN INC. I have also worked on building business visions and providing consulting services for both public and private sector clients. My responsibilities have spanned a wide range of areas, from cameras and robots to e-books. From July 2012, I worked on projects related to information media in general within the Media Innovation Research Department. I have held my current position since November 2015.
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