ABSTRACT
Every minute of every day millions of people express their media preferences by renting or buying a movie on videocassette or DVD or by attending a movie at a theater. Media preferences are also expressed by sending an e-mail message to a friend, shopping online for a CD, watching a vintage situation comedy on a cable channel, reading a magazine or newspaper, or buying a book to read on vacation. These decisions by consumers or media patrons represent demand for media products and services. Underlying the media choices and hence, also underlying demand are the gratification-utilities that explain why people allocate money and time to the media (see Fig. 2.1, p. XXX, this volume). The media can be conceptualized as competing to satisfy the expectations or gratifications sought that audiences or patrons bring to their media use. Because the gratification-utilities are fundamental to media choice they are also fundamental to questions of competition and coexistence. This chapter is concerned with these fundamental questions as they are illuminated by studies of the gratification-utilities.
