Ryan PanchalAS Media

Focus Group

To find out whether I had made a suitable product for my target audience I did a focus group. I did a questionnaire at the start of my assignment, asking my target audience what they would like to see in a classic rock magazine and at the end of the project I carried out a focus group to see if I had succeeded with the construction of my magazine. I asked 7 people from my target audience who are were aged 30-50, and one person from outside of my focus group to see if the opinion of that person changed if they weren’t from my target audience. I asked four men and three women – I asked more men due to my magazine being dominantly read my men. 6 of the people I asked were employed; this shows they would most likely be within my 67% ABC1 profile.

I asked my audience “what are your general opinions of the layout and design of each page? Are they too busy/cluttered? What do you think of my colour schemes? Are there too many colours used? Have I used space wisely?”. For the front page all 7 people said my colour schemes were eye catching and I had used space wisely, they said it was very well made. Overall I had no negative feedback from this page. For my contents page I had very positive feedback. 3 people said it was their favourite page of the 4. Other comments were “very good” and “professional”. For the double page spread I had some balanced feedback. My audience replied “more space between questions”, “too much writing”, “too much to read” and “too much going on”. Others went on to say it was “good”. To improve my double page spread I would have to reduce the amount of text to make my target audience satisfied.The bar chart to the right shows the answer to the question “Is the text and lettering eye catching and easy to read? Do you think any of the text throughout the 4 pages are too small or too large?”. 6/7 agreed that the text was perfectly sized.

To the left is the answer to the question “Are the artists I have included relevant to the genre of my magazine and the target audience? Are they interesting features and would you read them? 7/7 said they were relevant to the genre of my magazine.

To the right is the bar chart for the question “Overall do you think my pages fit together as a magazine?” 6/7 said yes. The person that disagreed said the background colour schemes do not match; therefore they do not fit together.

To the left is the bar chart to the question: “Would you pick up my magazine off a shelf and buy/read it? Why?” 6/7 said they would read it, the person who wouldn’t read it was the 18 year old. They went on to say “from the perspective of a classic rock fan I would read it”. They Overall they went on to say it looked like similar Classic rock magazines on newsagents shelves and it looks to a professional standard.

Ryan PanchalAS Media

After this I asked all 7 people of my focus group one strength and one weakness of any page of my magazine. The results were as follows:Strengths:Good titleStrong coloursvery good overallInteresting layoutcolours of the text and fonts are suitableprofessionalOutstanding

Improvements:Make colours more consistent on all pages. (either all grey or all purple) More black and white imagesNo improvement to be madecolours are too dullMake backgrounds more interesting rather than plain coloursMake images more interesting – change clothing perhaps?double page spread too cluttered.

These improvements are all very slight changes I could make to better suit my target audience. If I was to make these changes then my magazine would be representative of my audience’s opinion. Overall my audiences opinion tell me that my magazine is professional but could be made marginally better. The average mark out 10 my audience gave me whole magazine was 8.

Below: Me carrying out some of the focus group