Market Research

Today I have started an 8 part essay concerning market research, so far I think I'll need to expand on the product reach section.

Task 1A
Market Research


Audience Data

This is quite literally the data collected to represent the audiences active in interpreting media content. It is a way of categorising different kinds of viewers, a vital process to the industry as it will tell give them the information they need in realising the audience awareness, product reach and basically how to sell the content and how well it will sell.

Audience data gives the industry a clear idea of how consumers are interacting with media, what form they use primarily, when, why and most importantly the distinguishable characteristics of those individuals. These include age, gender and social class, which are the most vital attributes of a person as a consumer. Once this data is known, for example, Age: 16, Gender: Female, Social Class: Lower Middle Class, assumptions can be made about this person and their interests in the media. A 16 year old is likely to be interested in popular culture and unlikely to be a listener of classical musical, females are often engaged in fashion, a Lower Middle Class person is likely to have a reasonable amount of money at their disposal and therefore if the content requires some form of non-standard payment (purchasing a DVD as opposed to watching on television) we can assume they wont be deterred by this. These are of course generalisations and there will always be exceptions to people’s interests when based simply on these parameters, but it is the most accurate way of assessing the market.

The BARB (Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board) is the organisation the United Kingdom that is responsible for collecting data on the audience of media content. It was created to replace an already existing system that compiled audience data for the BBC and ITV, the organisation is now owned by BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Five, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. People participating with the organization have a box that records the programmes they watch and the users are then able to indicate the individual watching (their age/gender) at that time. This is how the ratings are collected with each box being representative of over 5,000 people.



Audience Awareness

This refers to the way in which people become aware of the available media content. There are various ways people learn about different media products, the most common being word-of-mouth, advertising on television and the internet and films/programmes featured in press releases like magazines. There are obviously sub-categories for these outputs but generally they cover the entirety of a consumer’s exposure to the media.

These days age group is the most definitive factor for media exposure, young people and adults are likely to discover things on the internet, the elderly will probably be more likely to see things on television and infants are less likely to need as specified advertisement as other age groups. As for gender, magazines are very often created with either men or women in mind (FHM compared to Cosmogirl), meaning media targeting either gender would obviously opt to promote through these kinds of magazines. Social class could be said to have less of a bearing on the placement of promotional materials and more the content (linguistics, features attractive to those classes) however slots will be chosen to coincide with certain programmes on television which appeal to the given classes (Jeremy Kyle could be said to be a more working class show). In this way also, programmes and advertisements are aired at certain times of the day, when certain people are likely to be watching television (just after school hours will be aimed at children and teenagers). To look further at the spectrum of audience awareness sub-cultures are also something taken advantage of in the sense that people who follow a sub-culture are all exposed to the same or similar media outputs, and therefore effective advertisement to these people is made simple providing the product will appeal to that sub-culture (an advert for a heavy metal album is likely to be aired on a channel like Kerrang).








Product Reach

From a business perspective, a successful product is one that generates large profits and this will likely mean it is a product that can merge with other existing products. A perfect example of this would be The Simpsons, the most well known animated sit-com ever made. It’s possible to obtain practically any piece of merchandise that bears its logo or images of its characters. Its massive popularity due to its wide appeal (it’s content can appeal to all age ranges, genders, social class, personal interests etc.) means all other industries will be eager for a metaphorical ‘slice of the pie’.

There are of course products that are intended for a certain audience and engineering them to appeal to a wider audience would be damaging to the contents credibility on the market, as it would not meet the correct criteria to sell. This brings us back to the idea of targeting sub-cultures with a product. The idea of a sub-culture is that it appeals to large groups of people sharing the same interests and values with regards (in this instance) to media products. Someone who associates with the emo or goth sub-cultures with likely to have disregard for various figures and ideologies in the media because they are not accepted as ideals within their chosen sub-culture. For example you would not expect to see Miley Cyrus collaborating with Marlyn Manson as it would not be a profitable venture considering the differences between fans of the both artists.