Scenario

-Describe the different research you would have to undertake if you was asked to produce a movie for a 16-25 year old demographic group.

1. Primary Research:

My primary research would include making questionares and surveys for my target audience which is 16-25 year old demographic group people to answer to gather quantative information  and a little qualatitve information such as what favourite genre films they like, when they usually go to the cinemas and how much they want to pay , etc.

   2. Secondary Research
Looking on the internet or reading books, magazines etc at research that has already been done and published to find out things that would help with making my product such as what type of films have done well in the past and what my target audience like to watch more due to tv ratings.

   3. What quantative and qualative data would you research?
I would research quantative information to find out what audience ratings are for movies like mine and what gender watches films more, either male or female. However with qualatitive research i would be finding out things like why people like certain movies and what types of films as quantitive gives more information about things.
4. what market research must you then do ?
For market research i would have a look at rivals in the media company that are also making films around the same time and also see what time of the year people most go to the cinema to see what time would be best to bring my movie out, in order for it to be a successful product.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is research already published, and is the cheapest form of research because the data already exists for people to look for. Secondary research can be split into internal and external researc.
Sources of External Research are:

• Periodicals -

Primary Research

Primary research involves collecting original data, it is often done after the researcher has found problems when collecting secondary research. Primary research can be done through many ways suchs as Questionares, direct observations,telephone interviews and many more.
There are some advantages of primary research rather than secondary research and these are:
1. It addresses specific reseach issues that the researcher wants and as they are doing that themselves they can make sure the research fits there needs.
2. It gives the research control, not only does primary research enable the marketer to focus on specific subjects, it also enables the researcher to have a higher control over how the information is collected. Taking this into account, the researcher can decide on such requirements as size of project, timeframe and goal.

However there are also Disadvantages:

1. Compared to secondary research primary data is more expensive to set up as you need to pay for the cost of making the questionares and other forms of getting the research.

2. Primary research takes longer as in order to be done properly it requires the development and execution of a research plan.

3. As primary research takes so long, by the time it is all prepared it may be out of date.

4. May not have a lot of responses.

Purposes of research

Theyre are three purposes of research.


1. Audience Research: Audience Research is where information about a target audience for a particular media product are collected this is very important because in order to have a successful media product you have to be able to communicate with your target audience in an effective way, to be able to get to know them, what they like and what they dont like, to make sure that you are providing what they wont otherwise no one will want to watch it.

Audience Research is about investigating:

• Statistics about the audience's profile for a particular media product.
• The extent to which all audience memebers are aware of a particular media product.
• What members of the target audience think more about particular products and their services and products and also their patterns of behaviour and the potential use of the products.

2. Market Research: Marketting in the media is very competetive, media producers often get researchers to undertake detailed market research into thier target audience in order to sell products better, they are also interested in what the other competitors in that market and what their products are like, the reason they do all this is particularly to find out how much money there is in their products.

3. Production Research: This is done after the audience research and market research has took place. Production research is to provide content and gather material that will allow the company to develop the new product, investigate the technology and personal available and check out the suitable recording and production locations.

Methods and sources of research

Secondary research is used from existing research/information it can be found in books, internet, newspapers, film archives, cd roms and many more, rather than primary research where you cant rely on information that has already been found by other people, you have to find information yourself by doing things like surveys, questionares, interviews, however theyre are websites that can be used and they are data gathering websites such as Broadcasters audience research board (BARB) and the Radio joint audience research Ltd (RAJAR)you can find things out like how many people buy certain magazines and are they mainly men or womemn,these are surveys and questionares set up by people that media producers such as magazine publishers have to subscribe too to find out who theyre target audience are and to make sure that they are providing the right things for that audience in order to make their products a success.

the picture below shows results from a survey that has been done, to find out the mot popular magazines.

In my opinion i believe that secondary information is better as the person who actually wants to know the information will know its more reliable as they have done it themselves, also it is more up to date as there would be no point getting surveys for example that have been done years ago to try and find what people like now.

 

The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

Research is vitally important in the media as it informs productions and also can give us statistics on our audience. Two types of research are quantitative research and qualitative research, quantittresearch is just statistic, it is an amount of something for example like programme ratings, hits on a website and cd/dvd sales, this research is done to find out how popular certain things are by knowing how many people watch a certain tv programme for example. Qualitative research this type of research is usually used in the market research, it provides more information rather than just a number of people and it is used for things like reviews on all different things, news coverage and just general discussion.