Chapter 5: Understanding Media Synergy

As an extension to Assael’s (2011) review on media synergy, this chapter examines the latest evolvement of media synergy research in the past 10 years by integrating studies from a wide range of leading journals.

We searched a total of 17 major journals in advertising, communication, and marketing from 2005 to 2014 and identified a total of 42 articles on media synergy. These studies were reviewed to assess the current status of media synergy research.

Studies of inter-media interaction at the individual level provide mixed support for a media synergistic effect, and the occurrence of this effect demands certain boundary conditions. Research on multi-media engagement has been gaining momentum in the past few years and is a promising subject in media synergy research.

We envision two growing approaches in future media synergy research: the neuroscientific approach and the data mining approach.

This chapter posits that media synergy research has evolved in the most recent years to a new phase, which is multi-media engagement. Hence, this chapter extends Assael’s work in terms of explicating media synergy in the context of social media engagement and identifying research gaps in current literature.