The housewife as a consumer and an audience

In the most general and concrete sense, consumption is use of goods and services by people for satisfying needs and requirements. However, besides some basic human needs, persons also consume for different purposes. It is important to understand what are the factors making people purchase things that they do not necessarily need. This thesis aims to examine the buying behaviours of housewives, and the relationships between these behaviours and media consumption practices with taking cultural, social and economic capacities and opportunities of the housewives. Furthermore, in today's societies media tools have important ideological, political and cultural functions. The television, having a strong visual and symbolic structure, is an important medium. Hence studying the structure of television content and messages, and the relationship between audiences and the television is an important task. This study is on housewives' television viewing patterns; the factors that play role in making their viewing preferences; the way they read the TV message; the manner in which they position themselves with regards to television; the factors that lead to proliferation of their expectations and satisfactions. Keeping these points in mind, this study makes use of the theoretical and conceptual framework provided by British Cultural Studies School, and Uses and Gratifications Approach. Although this study is not exactly an ethnographic study, it attempts to make use of opportunities provided by ethnographic method. Participant and non-participant observations and in-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of 16 housewives in Ankara. This study examined the relationships between the buying behaviours of housewives and media contents consumption practices. The study, keeping in mind housewives' demographic qualities, discovered that there are diversifications and fractures; differentiations and junctions in the consumption behaviours and media content preferences and consumptions of housewives