The nature and purpose of research in the creative media industry.

Primary Research. In the Media industry primary research is critical to the success of the product in question. Primary research is gathering first hand information from methods such as questionnaires and surveys and then using the information to better understand what is expected by the industry. The method primary research enables the marketer to focus on specific issues and it also enables the companies to have a higher level of control over how and where the information is collected. In the Media primary research techniques such as questionnaires, surveys, forum chats, interviews and comparison with existing products are used to make sure that the product that is being produced fits within the gap in the market. Techniques such as questionnaires and surveys would be useful when taking the target audience into question. When the game developers have decided what target audience they have for the game, they can begin to model questions that would be relevant against the product plan. Questionnaires are useful to use for market research because they are an unthreatening way to approach people and the public like to give their opinions on things so many will be happy and willing to take part in your questionnaire. People will usually make the survey short for maximum response, but as for long questionnaires, as long as the questions seem natural and logical to the reader, then they will happily complete the survey after the first few questions have been answered.

Primary Research examples For instance, this is a questionnaire for game market research. This is not the best questionnaire in existence however it gets the basic idea across of what sort of outcome the producers and companies will get from the answers in the survey. Questionnaires are a good method of primary market research because they are easy to create and not incredibly time consuming or costly which would be good if the company didn’t have many staff to work on the market research. The advantages and disadvantages of using primary research are as follows. The advantages are you can research exactly what you want in the method that you want to without having to rely on others work, you may interoperate the results in any manner you choose, the information you gather will be relevant for the time/ place/ situation in which you are studying and it can be tailored to your needs exactly. The disadvantages are it takes a lot of money and is incredibly time consuming to conduct primary market research which could be a problem depending on what you have at your disposal. Also, there isn’t always a guarantee that you will be able to collect the information you need and if you if it will even be completely reliable.

Secondary Research In the Media industry secondary research is also vital to the success of the product in question. Secondary research is gathering second hand information from methods such as the internet, people and books. The information is used to better understand what is expected by the industry. The method of secondary research enables the marketer to focus on specific issues and it also enables the companies to use less resources in collecting information because with secondary information, you don’t have to use a lot of money or staff to do the research which is an advantage Methods such as internet research, library research, data collection organizations, newspapers, magazines, journals and periodicals are often used by media researchers when conducting secondary research. The issues with using second hand research like this is that sometimes the information can not be used in the way you want it to be or it isn't always relevant or accurate.

Secondary research examples The National Readership Survey was established in 1956 and provides the most authoritative and valued audience research in use for print and digital advertising trading in Britain.The survey covers over 250 of Britain’s major newsbrands and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve. When in the early stages of production, a media producer would use this site to see what is either already on the market or how well a certain product is doing in the market and what its target audience is. magazines.pdf magazines.pdf For example, if a media producer was designing a new magazine for teenage girls, they could go to this site and get the statistics for which magazines aimed at teenage girls are most read and then they could use this to their advantage.

BARB The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) is the organisation that compiles the audience rating and television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was created in 1981 to replace a previous systems whereby ITV ratings were compiled by JICTAR, whilst the BBC did their own audience research. genre?_s=4 genre?_s=4 If a producer was creating a new television program, they would first have to see what was already popular in the market. By using BARB they can see the weekly tv program ratings for any television show they choose.This would be useful for any producer wanting to do any primary research because the data is all quantitative there for easy to understand and put into charts.

RAJAR The Radio Joint Audience Research Limited was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the BBC and the Radio Centre. Prior to this, the BBC and Radio Centre’s previous company (The CRCA) carried out their own measurements independently of each other. _InfographicQ22014.pdf _InfographicQ22014.pdf For any Radio media producer, finding out how many people use which different platforms to listen to the radio is crucial.

oFcom The Office of Communications commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging authority across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material. This is important to any producer. They would have to do research on which product in the media is the most popular and how it was accepted and viewed by the audience. For example if the producer was designing a new laptop, they would research how many people use laptops and which brand was most bought in the past year.

Types of Research

Quantitative and Qualitative In Primary research there are two different types of data you can collect; Quantitative and Qualitative. Quantitative data is numerical and based on fasts and can be displayed into chart. To generate quantitative data you would do a questionnaire or a survey. You would ask short closed questions such as ‘how old is your car?’. To generate qualitative data you could still do a questionnaire, however the questions would be open questions. Such as, ‘what is your favorite tv show?’. Qualitative data is more descriptive whereas quantitative would give you numerical data. Both are critical when conducting primary research.

Quantitative data For quantitative data, the website Barb gives average weekly viewing hours for TV shows along with every TV shows statistics. This would be incredibly useful for a producer because these statistics can be useful to see what tv show is popular and trending for that week or specific time period. For qualitative data for a show for example- made in Chelsea, you can go on twitter and search the hashtag ‘madeinchelsea’ to see the comments and reviews of the show. Also you could check the newspapers and tv magazines for reviews and comments that are in there.

Data gathering agencys Data gathering agencies gather information about a certain type of media that is available to look at on the internet to be used for research purposes.

ofcom The Office of Communications commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging authority across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material. This is important to any producer. They would have to do research on which product in the media is the most popular and how it was accepted and viewed by the audience. For example if the producer was designing a new laptop, they would research how many people use laptops and which brand was most bought in the past year.

rajar The Radio Joint Audience Research Limited was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the BBC and the Radio Centre. Prior to this, the BBC and Radio Centre’s previous company (The CRCA) carried out their own measurements independently of each other. ographicQ22014.pdf ographicQ22014.pdf For any Radio media producer, finding out how many people use which different platforms to listen to the radio is crucial.

Audience research To create an effective and popular media product, you have to how to target the right audience and how to communicate information to them in a way that will interest them in your product. As the media industry opens more, competition for customers and audiences will become more of a challenge. Therefore, knowing who your target audience are and what they like is crucially important.

Demographics Demographics is simply the way in which an audience can be grouped according to different varied socioeconomic and personal factors, such as, age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, social class and sexual preference. Many companies judge people on these factors and then put them into groups based on these facts. The yearly income is also looked at which means the scale can have very broad assumptions.

Geodemographics Geodemographics is the study of the population and its characteristics, divided according to regions on a geographical basis. This involves application of clustering techniques to group statistically similar neighborhood and areas. The main source of data for this study is the census. However, periodicity of census data being high, other sources like country court judgments, property valuation and household council tax bands data are also used. For example, educating Yorkshire could essentially be more popular in Yorkshire because of the familiar accent.

Psychographics Information about peoples lifestyles is important to advertisers and media producers. It gives them information about what interests they have and what type of media products they’re likely to be attracted too. People are judged upon their- political views, religious beliefs, concepts of parenting, social attitudes, environmental awareness, hobbies and interests and attitude towards authority. People with an active lifestyles are likely to buy sports/health magazines, watch travel/sport related programmes and visit sports related websites.

Psychographics The advantages are that it creates a lot more variety within groups chosen by demographics. The disadvantages are that some people will fit into more than one group which makes things more complicated.

Market research As well as looking at audiences, the media companies are also interested in looking at the market that their product will have to survive in. This involves what the competition has to offer and compare similar media products already in the market to see what the commercial opportunity's are.

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Production Research Production research provided content and gathers information to allow the company to develop the new product. Research viability of actually marketing the product (cost) and investigating what technology you will need to make the product and also what staff you would need for the project. Checking suitable studio recording and production locations is also important to make sure there is somewhere suitable to actually create the product. Thoroughly research and planning production stages is done to ensure that the project will run as smoothly as possible.