How media producers define audiences
Why audience research is important
Media producers use research to learn about their audience before they go ahead and create a product, if they didn't do their research then it might not appeal to the costumers. This is because when companies do research on people, they use different methods of finding out their hobbies, interests, jobs and even where they live. These can all contribute to making a product designed for a specific purpose. When companies and businesses are trying to find their target audience they consider multiple factors like:
- Age
- Gender
- Religion
- Race
- Sexuality
- Education
- Occupation
- Annual income
- Lifestyle
- Media interests
How audiences are profiled
Socio-economic status
This is a method used by businesses and companies to find the right economic class for their target audience. The three classes would be upper, middle and working class, upper class would be the wealthy people who have high paid jobs or even just born into a wealthy family. The middle class is somewhere in between upper and working class, and working class if for the lower paid jobs. This method of research doesn't necessarily work for everything, for example if someone was to make an advert for a high end product like a expensive car, then it will be focused more towards upper class people, but BARB estimates that 26.8 million households (roughly around 97% of all house in the UK) own a TV, so the socioeconomic target audience doesn't matter. But in some cases it is useful, for example if a company is making a TV show, they will want to know who it will be most popular towards so that they can make them the target audience.
Psychographics
Pyschographics deal with peoples behavior and personality, for example someone who is really extrovert would be in a different category to someone who is really introvert. Demographics explain who the audiences are whereas psychographics explain what they want to do. Media producers use psychographics do help profile their audience because just like demographic charts, they are much more detailed and offer a large variety of audience to choose from. This is useful for when making things like music videos, as the company has to categorise their audience into standard occupational classification, Geo-demographics, age and gender.
Age and Gender
Age and gender is a very important part of choosing a target audience as for example if your making an action film then it is more likely to be targeted towards males rather than females, as stereotypically females dont like action films as much as men do. Age and gender is a obvious thing to think about when making a product as it applies to every product. The age group depends on what the product is, for example if you make a film that has lots of swearing and violence in it will either be rated a 15 or 18, but if its a cartoon for kids then it wont involve any swearing or violence.
Sexual orientation
Media producers have to make sure they show equality in their products. This is so you dont offend anyone as this can result is consequences. For example you should still include someone to use or watch your product no matter what their sexual orientation.
Regional identity
Regional identity is where media producers find out more about certain areas that may be for example featured in a film, if the film is set in somewhere like Middlesbrough, then they would have to do research about Middlesbrough, as of not to offend people as it needs to be as real as possible and not stereotypical.
Mainstream
This is where producers look into what is popular at the time. This is an important thing to do as lets say you creating a product and the design is quite old and well known, it will not sell as well as something that is new and popular. The same thing goes for films as well, if a certain genre is really popular at a certain time then all films that relate to that genre will be watched by many people. For example if a Christmas film came out in june, then its not going to do as well as it would if id came out in December. Also a lot of viewers get bored of watching the same thing so want new and exiting things, so its always a good idea to keep new ideas in mind when creating a project.
Niche
This is a method used by businesses and companies to find the right economic class for their target audience. The three classes would be upper, middle and working class, upper class would be the wealthy people who have high paid jobs or even just born into a wealthy family. The middle class is somewhere in between upper and working class, and working class if for the lower paid jobs. This method of research doesn't necessarily work for everything, for example if someone was to make an advert for a high end product like a expensive car, then it will be focused more towards upper class people, but BARB estimates that 26.8 million households (roughly around 97% of all house in the UK) own a TV, so the socioeconomic target audience doesn't matter. But in some cases it is useful, for example if a company is making a TV show, they will want to know who it will be most popular towards so that they can make them the target audience.
Psychographics
Pyschographics deal with peoples behavior and personality, for example someone who is really extrovert would be in a different category to someone who is really introvert. Demographics explain who the audiences are whereas psychographics explain what they want to do. Media producers use psychographics do help profile their audience because just like demographic charts, they are much more detailed and offer a large variety of audience to choose from. This is useful for when making things like music videos, as the company has to categorise their audience into standard occupational classification, Geo-demographics, age and gender.
|  |
| |
| | ||||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
|
| |
| |
| | |||
This is an example of a social grade with the different jobs sorted into each category. | |||||||||
Age and Gender
Age and gender is a very important part of choosing a target audience as for example if your making an action film then it is more likely to be targeted towards males rather than females, as stereotypically females dont like action films as much as men do. Age and gender is a obvious thing to think about when making a product as it applies to every product. The age group depends on what the product is, for example if you make a film that has lots of swearing and violence in it will either be rated a 15 or 18, but if its a cartoon for kids then it wont involve any swearing or violence.
Sexual orientation
Media producers have to make sure they show equality in their products. This is so you dont offend anyone as this can result is consequences. For example you should still include someone to use or watch your product no matter what their sexual orientation.
Regional identity
Regional identity is where media producers find out more about certain areas that may be for example featured in a film, if the film is set in somewhere like Middlesbrough, then they would have to do research about Middlesbrough, as of not to offend people as it needs to be as real as possible and not stereotypical.
Mainstream
This is where producers look into what is popular at the time. This is an important thing to do as lets say you creating a product and the design is quite old and well known, it will not sell as well as something that is new and popular. The same thing goes for films as well, if a certain genre is really popular at a certain time then all films that relate to that genre will be watched by many people. For example if a Christmas film came out in june, then its not going to do as well as it would if id came out in December. Also a lot of viewers get bored of watching the same thing so want new and exiting things, so its always a good idea to keep new ideas in mind when creating a project.
Niche
Niche is basically the opposite to mainstream, for example there could be a certain amount of people that only like once genre of film and they will not change their mind about it, so when you create a film them people can either like it or dislike it.
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is one of the methods used by producers to decide on their target audience. BARB is an online website where TV channels give their figures on all the shows that have been broadcasted. Anyone can see these figures, but its mainly produces who want to start a new project, the only downside to BARB is that the data is only quantitative and doesnt give you any information about the audience that watch the channels. BARB does let you see how many people are watching a channel or certain program at anytime time. This helps producers find the peak times of day with certain channels, as not all the channels will have the same viewing peaks.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is a more up front way of getting data, by asking people for their opinions so that the company can get facts and use them for statistics. Using this method requires the producer or an employer to go round to the public and ask them questions that will define their target audience. There are a few ways of getting this type of data, for example you can go out in the streets and have face to face interviews, this is a fast way to get information as it can be done quite quickly. Another way is to make a questionnaire that can be given for people to complete. This way of getting research can be more effective than quantitative research as you are getting more information about the viewers that you can work on when creating a show for example. Also this way uses primary research and not secondary so there can't be any errors.
No comments:
Post a Comment