Looking at How To Carry Out Audience Research

Today in lesson we looked at how to carry out effective audience research which will help us to meet the needs of our target market.

The two main types of research data that can be gathered is known as:

• Quantitative -is statistical data that can be put into charts and graphs and be easily analysed.
• Qualitative - is harder to analyse as it goes into more depth and is mostly opinion based.

Both of these types of data can be collected using a mixture of open and closed questions. The questionnaire must not involve leading questions. For example, "Don't you think"or "Would't you agree". We will not involve these  questions in our questionnaire as we want to know what  our target audience really thinks so we can effectively use their ideas to improve our trailer.

We must consider:

• Psychographics
• Demographics
• Niche v Mass audience
• Uses and gratification
• Actual audience
• Target audience

As well as producing a questionnaire we could also set up a focus group of about 8 people and have a discussion for around 15 minutes. This would entail open ended questions as to keep the conversation moving and show the purpose of the questions, which is to determine:

• what popular culture is
• what values are important to the genre
• where they think there is a gap in the market

In our groups, in lesson we came up with some ideas for questions we could ask, These are: 

• What do you think is currently missing in these types of films?
• What are you sick of seeing?