PRIMARY RESEARCH INTO THE WANTS/NEEDS OF MY TARGET AUDIENCEBy Kirsty Steward

For this task I will identify what my target audience actually wants within the media they view and to do this I will gain information from primary research such as questionnaires/ focus groups or interviews.However there are advantages and disadvantages with each type of primary research.

QUESTIONNARE

This form of primary research is good as it presents a fixed set of answers to pick from (excluding open- answered questions), it’s relatively quick, information can be displayed in data forms such as charts and it allows the researcher to get a large proportion of data if given to a large group of people.Yet the disadvantages are that open-ended questions can produce large amounts of data that take a long time to analyse, people usually find questionnaires tiring to fill out, some answers may be false and this cannot be proven and no emotion real can be conveyed from the audience.

INTERVIEW

Some advantages of this are that the research is much more personal so more in depth responses can be given and more detailed questions can be asked, there is a higher response rate compared to other forms of research and the researcher can feel comfortable not having to present themselves to a large group. The disadvantages of interviews are that they are very time consuming and few interviews won’t be a good representation of a larger audience and results may be interpreted in different ways.

FOCUS GROUP

The advantages of this primary research are that it is quicker than an interview as people do not need to be interviewed separately, emotion can be clearly seen if recorded e.g. through body language and facial expressions which make answers more effective and the researcher can actually interact with the audience to gain information through a more engaging experiences.However the disadvantages are that if the focus group is small then their answers may not be representative of the whole target audience as the data isn’t proportional, people of the focus group may just answer the same as their peers as they may feel pressured to give similar answers and the researcher’s ability to phrase questions and setting may affect the audiences results.

For my research into what my target audience wants I will be using a focus group and some questionnaires. This way I can engage with my target audience and get more personal and opinionated answers from them when using the focus group and then the questionnaire can fill the gaps and provide me with data that can be displayed on graphs and be a good representation of a larger audience than just a focus group.

QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS

Question 1: What media do you use on a day-to-day basis?Internet – 8/8Magazines – 1/8TV – 3/8Images - 4/8Music – 6/8Other – 0/8

Question 2 :How often do you use media in a day?

10-30 minutes – 0/81 – 2 hours – 1/82 – 5 hours 5/85+ Hours 2/8

Question 3: What do you enjoy about the media in which you use?Entertaining – 7/8Relaxing – 4/8 Informative – 2/8Inspiring – 5/8 Other – 0/8

Question 4:What aspects of media do you enjoy? Genre – 2/8Imaging – 5/8 Editing – 3/8Sound – 7/8 Narrative – 2/8Other - 0/8

Question 5:If you could choose, what more would you want from the media that you use?(Open-ended question)

When asked this question, my target audience’s response overall was that they wanted it to be faster, have less advertisement and more free content. For example one answer was ‘More access to free media’ and another was ‘Faster internet’

Question 6:Our idea for our own Thriller film is a classic murder investigation film. Our idea consists of a group of adolescent teenagers, who go on a camping trip. Their trip however takes a turn for the worse as a psychotic killer murders one of their friends. The rest of the story revolves around the solving of the case and the capture of the criminal as well as focusing on the feelings of the main characters, which will most probably be one of the students/teenagers and a FBI agent solving the case. We will only be producing an opening sequence.

How would you rate our idea out of 10?

10/10 – 1

9/10 – 2

8/10 – 1

7/10 – 3

6/10 – 1

Question 7: In your opinion, how could we make our idea better and what things could we change to improve it? (Open-Ended question)

When I asked my target audience how they thought our idea cold be better, the overall response was that we needed to add something into the story to make it more original and less predictable, for example a twist of events. Here is an example of an answer I got back. ‘Maybe add a twist to the storyline to make it a bit different.’

Question 8:We plan to stick to the common codes and conventions of the Thriller genre so that our film represents that of a classic Thriller film. Do you agree that this is a good idea?

Strongly Agree – 0/8Agree – 5/8 Not sure – 2/8Disagree – 1/8Strongly Disagree –0/8