audience research
TRANSCRIPT
Audience Research
By Helen Blyth
Audience Research• In order to aim our music video towards
our target audience we first have to discover who our target audience are, and to better understand this we need to know about the different types of audience within the 13 – 18 age limit we are targeting. In order to do this we have the option of many different research methods which all have advantages and disadvantages. These options and their individual merits are as follows:
Research Methods Advantages Disadvantages
Interviews The interviewee is on their own so they tell the truth.
You get to properly know/understand the participating audience.
Interviewer can steer conversation to own advantage.
Time consuming to interview enough people.
Could make the interviewee feel uncomfortable.
Questionnaires Can be distributed on a wide scale.
Easy to evaluate data Can contain both open and
closed questions.
It is tempting to skip questions or fake answers.
Distribution method may collect more of one type of audience than another
Surveys Gets views from a diverse audience.
High reliability.
Not all of the audience sample may reply.
Online Forums Ambiguous personalities allow answers to be honest.
The viral effect catches on quickly, providing plenty of data.
Not all audiences will participate.
Has to be publicised.
Vox Pops Interesting to watch and make. Can go into greater depth and
ask open ended questions.
Needs to be edited which is time consuming.
Discussion groups Can thoroughly cover subjects as the discussion gets different points of view.
Dominant characters influence other participants so they do not voice their own opinions.
Not everyone gets an opportunity to voice opinions.
• We will be targeting a lot of people and will get a lot of replies.
• It minimised the influence we had on our participants.
• We won’t have to print off loads of questionnaires as they will stay on the computer.
• They are within the age groups that we are targeting.
Because of the various advantages, disadvantages and the limitations we would encounter in collecting data we have decided to combine the questionnaire and survey methods because it can be distributed easily and quickly amongst the public, will be easy to evaluate the data collected and can be distributed widely. The Questionnaire will be distributed via email to the entirety of the sixth form, which is the easiest option of distribution but it also holds some merits too, those being:
QuestionnaireThe questionnaires we are using is the one shown below.Please highlight as many answers as appropriate using the highlighter tool:
Age:11-12 13-15 16-18This question was used to ascertain that we had only sent the questionnaire to the sixth form instead of the
entire school. It also shows us the majority of Year Thirteen’s and Year Twelve’s who emailed back, in so doing providing evidence of how successful our research was.
Gender: Male FemaleThis question shows us the reliability of our findings and whether a larger proportion of females should be
targeted with our music video than males which would change the view point of our video.Aspirations after finishing 6th form:Go to University Take a Gap Year and go to University Take a Gap Year and Get a JobGet a Job Travel Undecided Other: ..............Question 3 allows us to see where marketing/advertising would be most useful and to give background
information on the aspirations/motivations of people who listen to different genres of music.Which of the following do you do regularly in your spare time:Go Out With Friends Listen to Music Watch Films Read BooksPlay Sport Play Musical Instrument Play on Computer/ Other ConsoleStudy Get Drunk Go To Gigs Go To Raves Go To PartiesOther: ........................................... ........................................... This question also helps with marketing digipaks. On top of this it shows us background information on our
target audiences consumption and lifestyle habits.Which of the following music genres do you prefer:Hip-Hop Rap Grime Rock Indie
Heavy Metal Alternative Rock Classic Rock AcousticCountry & Western Reggae Dance Rave
HouseJazz Funk R&B Classical OperaOther: ........................................... ........................................... We designed this so we can ascertain our target audience from the sample.
In your opinion, which of the following statements best sum-up the importance of music videos:
Not important at all, only the music counts Quite important, a really bad one can ruin a decent song/ a good one can improve a mediocre song
The quality of the music video is more important than the quality of the song
Very important, a song can only be good if it has a good music video
Music videos have the power to make or break a song
These choices would show us how important our video would become to the different audiences and in particular our target audience
In your opinion, which of the following are important in a good music video:
Humour/ Jokes Well choreographed dance moves
Attractive women Glamorous locations
Attractive men A desirable/ fashionable protagonist (artist)
An exciting narrative Lots of close-up and low-angled shots of the artist(s)
Visuals relevant to the song Live performances of the artist(s)
Visuals irrelevant to the song Other: ..........................................
The options provided to this question were designed to enable us to better evaluate our audience’s needs which in turn will help our analysis of music videos including our own and see how apt our video is to please our target consumers.
On a scale of 1-5 (1 = lowest, 5 = highest), how importantly do you regard your appearance/ clothes:1 2 3 4 5Question 8 is designed to show how the characters in our music video relate to the audience, also it
gives background information on the audience which is always useful in marketing.Which of the following shops do you prefer:
Topshop/ Topman H&M ZARA House of FraserUSC
JD JJB Sportsworld NextPunky Fish
Charity/ Vintage shops eBay Other: .....................................................This again shows consumption habits of our target audience. In addition to this the style of fashion
within each of these shops hints at a certain genre/stereotype of person which enables us to know how to market the male and female character in our video.
On a scale of 1-5 (1 = lowest, 5 = highest), to what extent would you say that your appearance/ fashion sense is influenced by the music you listen to:
1 2 3 4 5Whether the audience is aware or not they are always being influenced by the media they see,
especially in fashion and we wished to discover how aware our target audience was of our influence over them. On top of this if they are influenced by the media they listen to and watch then we need to conform to their genre conventions otherwise the audience would become ostracised.
Many people argue that women are represented negatively in music videos, to what extent do you agree (1 = not at all, 5 = completely agree):
1 2 3 4 5How empowered are our audience? That is what we are trying to discover here. This will clarify how
we portray females and how our target audience would react to our portrayal of men and women’s relationships.
Do you believe that these ‘negative’ representations have the potential to adversely affect young girls (and boys)?Yes, definitely Probably Maybe Probably not
Definitely not Don’t know Don’t careThe last question is designed to make clear the importance of conforming to our target’s opinions. We decided not to have any open ended questions as closed questions are easier to evaluate and with open questions you often get stupid comments and we chose to keep it simple.
ResponsesWithin 3 days of sending the questionnaire out to the sixth form via email we had received 61 replies, proving that our method gained lots of results. However the
results we received were quite biased considering only 14 of the replies were males and six of those were from Year thirteen, thus showing that our method of
distribution although successful with females was not a good way to target responses from males.
Analysis of Responses
25%
75%
The Age of all Participants
13 - 15
16 - 18
The age of our predetermined target audience was specifically targeted because of the nature of our research, although this may be biased because we have not researched a range of ages it works for our research because within our music video we are targeting late teens because the characters are young adults. On top of this more 16 – 18 year olds (year thirteen) replied than 13 – 15 year olds so this may have biased our results a little although we know the age we are trying to target.
As can be seen here our target audience if our results are to be trusted range from predominantly 16 – 18 year olds, however because our research was predominantly 16 – 18 year olds and the percentage of participants in our target audience is larger that the one for all the participants I think that if more 13 – 15 year olds were included in the research the percentage of them in the target audience would definitely increase.
27%
73%
Age of participants who fall into our target audience
13 - 15
16 - 18
23%
77%
The Gender of all Participants
Male
Female
0
10
20
30 26
18
2 4 6 83
Aspirations of all the participants after finishing sixth form
Aspirations
Nu
mb
er o
f vo
tes
20%
80%
Gender of participants who fall into our target audi-
ence
Male
Female
As has already been said more females replied than males this may well bias our results however the majority of the males involved were members of our target audience and so balances out our results.
As you can see the largest number of people intends to go to University so we are targeting an academically aware audience who potentially are of a higher calibre and expect a higher standard of sound, and video. This also means that marketing would be of more use in towns or cities with a University and a large contingent of students.
0
5
10
15 12 11
1 03
6
1
Aspirations of our music video's target audience
Aspirations
Nu
mb
er o
f vo
tes
Friend
s
Mus
icFilm
s
Books
Sport
Inst
rum
ent
Compu
ter/C
onso
le
Study
Drunk
Gigs
Raves
Partie
sOth
er0
20
40
60 55
4028
18 1910
16 21 18 17
2
36
4
Past-times of the participants
Hobbies
Nu
mb
er o
f vo
tes
Friend
s
Mus
icFilm
s
Books
Sport
Inst
rum
ent
Compu
ter/C
onso
le
Study
Drunk
Gigs
Raves
Partie
sOth
er0
10
20
30 28 26
1711 10 8 10
149
13
1
19
0
Pastimes of our music video's target audience
Pastimes
Nu
mb
er o
f vo
tes
The target audience conforms with the norms of all our participants in the way they spend their spare time. The majority spend a lot of time with their friends and socialising in various ways.
The surprising event however is that 18 out of 60 people under the age of 18 enjoy getting illegally drunk! This does not fit with my hypothesis as I expected more teenagers to spend time playing on computerised games rather than reading books or getting drunk.
9%
6%
4%
8%
12%
3%5%
4%5%0%
6%
8%
3%
3%
3%
3%
13%
1% 1% 2%
Musical Genre Preferences of all Par-ticipants Hip-Hop
RapGrimeRockIndieHeavy MetalAlternative rockClassic rockAcousticCountry and WesternReggaeDanceRaveHouseJazzFunkR&BClassicalOperaOther
6%
4%4%
12%
15%
4%7%6%
7%1%
5%
5%
2%
2%
4%
2%8%
2%1% 2%
Music Genre preferences of our target audience
Hip-HopRapGrimeRockIndieHeavy MetalAlternative rockClassic rockAcousticCountry and WesternReggaeDanceRaveHouseJazzFunkR&B
The Indie/Rock (genre of music that our music video is) is one of the most popular meaning that our music video has to appeal to a wide audience of young adults/late teens. However it seems from our target audience that they enjoy a wide range of musical genres so by using elements of different genre we would still be appealing to the same audience but a more niche market.
Another surprising fact that I have learned about our target audience is that although they are all Indie/Rock fans the majority also enjoy opposite types of music like Hip-Hop and R&B.
05
10152025303540
10 12
19
11
38
4
27
912
5
19
1
What makes a good Music Video according to participants
Nu
mb
er
of
vo
tes
0
10
20
6 410 9
22
2
15
4 6 4
13
1
What makes a good music video according to the target audience
Am
ou
nt
of
Vo
tes
As can be seen the majority of the audiences want a music video to have visuals that are relevant to the song and they consider this a crucial part of the production. Our music video should fit this category with visuals connecting to the lyrics.
However we have no dancing in our music video which according to our target audience and all the participants is another element that makes a music video good. Even so a lot of music videos from the indie/pop/rock genre (Razorlight or The Rumble Strips) don’t contain any choreographed dance moves, so the audience must not mind as long as the narrative is interesting.
In addition to this because our questionnaire results are dominated by female responses the results for having attractive men in the video is 7 votes higher by all participants and 6 votes high by the target audience than having attractive women. These results may show the bias involved in our research but by covering that we have both attractive female and male protagonists we are pleasing the genders of the audience.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
16
1
37
1
6
The importance of Music Videos to all Par-ticipants
Importance of Music Videos
Am
ou
nt
of
vo
tes
05
10152025
8
0
20
1 1
The Importance of music video to our target audience
Importance of Music Video
Nu
mb
er o
f vo
tes
These results were quite surprising as I thought that music videos weren’t very important to an audience and that only the music would count, but from this research it seems that a lot more of the audience believe that music videos are quite important and can actually improve or lessen the audience’s opinion of the song.
This knowledge shows why companies spend so much money on the music video itself. Although this does also put more pressure on us to create a good music video for our coursework.
3%
33%
53%
10%
On a scale of 1 (lowest) - 5 (highest) How important is the target audiences
appearance
1
2
3
4
5
5%
33%
47%
15%
On a Scale of 1 (lowest) - 5 (Highest) how Important is the Participants Appearance
1
2
3
4
5
This result is quite surprising as I thought the participants would falsify their answers to seem more modest however they seem to have been quite honest with their answers because the majority say that their appearance is very important to them.
Over half (53%) of the audience we are trying to target appears to be quite vain, so in our production the protagonists have to look presentable and attractive to be appealing to the target audience.
Topsh
op/T
opm
anH&M
Zara
House
of F
rase
rUSC JD JJ
B
Sports
world
Next
Punky
fish
Charit
y/Vint
age
shop
s
eBAY
Other
0
10
20
30
40
5038 40
23
83 3 2 2
103
12 9 12
Shopping Preferences of Participants
Shop
Nu
mb
er o
f V
ote
s
Topsh
op/T
opm
anH&M
Zara
House
of F
rase
rUSC JD JJ
B
Sports
world
Next
Punky
fish
Charit
y/Vint
age
shop
s
eBAY
Other
0102030 20 24
114 0 2 1 1 3 2
7 5 6
Shopping preferences of target audience
Shop
Nu
mb
er o
f V
ote
s
As was expected the most popular shops were Topshop, H&M and Zara, these are mainstream large companies with many chains of shops. They therefore dominate the clothes market meaning that they control the fashion of the time. This means that a lot of people shop there to ‘fit in’ with the fashion.
Due to this we now know that we have a very large target audience who follow acceptable boundaries within society, so they do not stand out from the crowd, so by conforming to popular culture of this period in time our production should go down well with the target audience.
33%
20%
31%
13%3%
The extent to which, on a Scale of 1 (lowest) - 5 (highest) the participants think their ap-pearance is influenced by the music they
listen to
1
2
3
4
5
30%
17%40%
13%
The extent to which, on a scale of 1 (lowest) – 5 (highest) that target audience think their ap-pearance in influenced by their music prefer-
ence
1
2
3
4
5
The results to this question conflict with the previous slide because the target audience all listen to the same music and buy clothes from the same shops with the same fashions, but here the participants believe that their appearance isn’t influenced by their musical taste! This shows that audiences of media texts are not aware of how much the text influences/affects their behaviour.
This sub-conscious external influence is not only down to the music they listen to it is down to all the media they consume.
5%
27%
40%
20%
8%
The extent to which the participants agree with the argument that women are represented negatively in music videos on a scale of 1
(lowest) - 5 (highest)1
2
3
4
5
3%
23%
50%
17%
7%
On a scale of 1 (lowest) - 5 (highest) the extent to which the target audience agree with the argu-ment that women are negatively represented in
music videos
1
2
3
4
5
This slide and the next both relate to the summer research project which is also on my blog. The results of this question are the most unexpected especially considering that the majority of the participants were female.
The majority of the research group sat on the fence with 40% of them saying 3, which is understandable with a mixture of representations of women coming through from different genres of music.
On top of this there is almost an evenly spread proportion of people who think there is a negative representation (28%) and people who think there isn’t a negative representation of women in music videos (32%). This shows that the participants are divided down the middle as to whether there is a negative representation although combined with the fact that 40% chose the middle value of 3, it would seem that they are aware of the negative representations but are also aware of the positive.
23%
37%
17%
12%
7% 5%
Whether the participants think that the neg-ative representations of women in music
videos have the potential to adversely affect young boys and girls
Yes, definitely
Probably
Maybe
Probably not
Definitely not
Don't know
Don't care
22%
38%
19%
13%
6% 3%
Whether the target audience thinks that the negative representations of women in mu-sic videos have the potential to adversely
affect young boys and girlsYes, definitely
Probably
Maybe
Probably not
Definitely not
Don't know
Don't care
The percentages from both these pie charts are very similar showing that the target audience is once again similar to all other audiences.
All of these audiences have shown that they are aware that media texts can affect their audience we can tell this because 0% in each graph have said that there is definitely no potential of representations in music videos to adversely affect young people.
In fact the majority of participants thought exactly the opposite response with 59% in each chart saying either they definitely or probably adversely affect young audiences.
Evaluation
Questionnaires• As you have seen we only used multiple choice
questions, this enabled the results to easily be calculated and put into the visual forms (graphs) that are clear and concise, which they needed to be especially since the results we received were so numerous.
• However also included within the multiple choice questions were ones based on the focus groups opinions to try and gain not only quantitative data to put in charts and graphs but to gain some qualitative responses to give insights into the audiences morals.
EvaluationAdvantages (strengths) Disadvantages (weaknesses)We did not meet the focus group so were impartial and did not in way influence their answers.
We cannot fully comment on the personalities of the audiences as we never met them face to face and there were no open questions in the questionnaire which is a small problem if this was to be done again a focus group of members of our target audience might be a good idea to get to know them better.
Sending the questionnaire out via email was a very impartial method as we sent it to people we didn’t directly know and whom otherwise wouldn’t have received one. If given out by hand the majority of people given to would have been our friends and we could have influenced them. Also the amount of replies was very large although the gender was imbalanced.
By sending the questionnaire out as an email we were not aware of who would reply or not whereas if it was given out by hand we could monitor the number of male and female responses received because the majority of replies were from females.
The research was very good for collecting information to determine demographics of different audiences and helps greatly with the way in which to market our product.
Perhaps by only evaluating and collating data from teenagers and young adults narrows down our sights a little although being teenagers and starring 17/18 year olds in our music video would appeal to a younger demographic.
Target Audience
• I have collated the target audience data to be able to create an audience profile.
• This profile includes all information about our target audience and is a stereotype including everything I have discovered through my research.
Target Audience
Similar Products• The findings of the target audience are
very like the ones we had hypothesised as we had based our estimation on the audiences for similar bands/songs like Razorlight and The Rumble strips whose music is of the same genre and theme