audience research

I conducted a survey in order to receive the information on which I needed to base my magazine on. I needed to find out what my target audience wanted to see within the magazine. This was so that the magazine I create would be appealing to a wider audience which would increase sales. I created this survey on survey monkey and posted the link on to facebook, I found that the results received weren’t all serious enough or as reliable as I hoped so I asked as many friends and family possible to answer the survey as well, as honestly as they possibly could. I received 43 results in total of mixed genders of 55% male and 45% female. Here are the questions i used;

Are you male or female?

Male

Female

-The results I received for this question are the following; 55% male (24)  45% female (19)

How old are you?

-The results received for this question stated that there was 1 13 year old, 1 14 year old, 4 15 year olds, 15 16 year olds, 10 17 year olds, 2 18 year olds, 6 19 year olds and 4 22 year olds

How much disposable income do you get on average a month?                                     

None

£10-£20

£20-£30

£30-£40

£40+

-The results received were the following

none 4.7% (2 people)

£10-£20 20.9% (9 people)

£20-£30 7.00% (3 people)

£30-£40 16.3% (7 people)

£40+ 51.2% (22 people)

Do you currently buy and magazines? (if yes please state bellow)

-The results showed that 31 people do currently buy magazines and 12 people do not. Here are the magazines that they buy;

kerrang – 7 people

rocksound- 3 people

nme- 5 people

q magazine- 6 people

shout- 4 people

vogue- 2 people

more- 4 people

How much would you be willing to pay for a magazine?

None

£1-£2

£2-£3

£3+

-Here are the following results;

None 9.3% (4 people)

£1-£2 18.6% (8 people)

£2-£3 44.2% (19 people)

£3+ 27.9% (12 people)

What style of bands would you like to see featured within the magazine? (if theres any in particular please state)

Indie – 14 people

Rock- 10 people

Metal – 6 people

Jazz- 2 people

Reggae- 1 person

-bands that were stated, Bombay Bicycle Club, Foals, Everything Everything, Gold Panda, Fleet Foxes, The Maccabees, The XX, Alt-J, Bon Iver, Editors, Metronomy, Vampire Weekend

What would make a magazine more appealing to you to buy?

Free items

Posters

Competitions

Exclusive interviews

Front page

Price

-here are the following results received, the people completing the questionnaire were able to tick more than one box with this question.

Free items 51.2%  (22 people)

Posters 72.1% (31 people)

Competitions 25.6% (11 people)

Exclusive interviews  25.6% (11 people)

Front page 37.2% (16 people)

Price  25.6% (11 people)

What do you usually spend your money on?

I don’t spend

Gigs

Music

Clothes

Food

Sports hobbies

Books

Magazines

Other (please specify)

-here are the following results received, the people completing the questionnaire were able to tick more than one box with this question

I don’t spend 2.3% (1 person)

Gigs 46.5% (20 people)

Music 39.5% (17 people)

Clothes 67.4 (29 people)

Food 55.8% (24 people)

Sports hobbies  23.3% (10 people)

Books 18.6% (8 people)

Magazines 16.3% (7 people)

Other (please specify) 41.9% (18 people) – specified results –

Public transport- 7 people

Phone contract- 4 people

Films/cinema – 5 people

Smoking- 2 people

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND ON A MAGAZINE?

WHAT MAKES A MAGAZINE MORE APPEALING TO BUY?

My quantitative data show that people would rather the magazine was based on indie/ rock styled music. They also would rather an average price range, not too cheap or not too expensive. Statistics showed that free items and posters were very important to the readers, therefore I would need to think about including these. The front cover is also thought to be important so I shall have to think very carefully when creating this. I found out that a very wide area of people spend their money on fashion. This could be a very good idea, to mix fashion in with music within my magazine, as there isn’t a magazine out there that focus’ strictly on this area. That would make my magazine more successful and more appealing as it would act as a one off magazine that you cant get anywhere else.

Over all I feel that my research was fairly successful. All of the information that I set out to find out was completed well and the data received was very helpful. My research has given me a clearer idea on how my magazine will be and what content it will have in it. This is very important for sales and I feel that with the data I received I can push this to its maximum by including small bits of what everyone likes. Im incredibly glad that I got roughly a 50/50 male/female divide whom answered my questionnaire. This is because I hoped to base my magazine on both genders which would open further doors when selling. This helped me a lot with my data.

The age range that answered my questions ranged from 13 to 22. I feel that I should have aimed the research ever so slightly higher, perhaps aged 16 to 25, so that the magazine had a more student base around it. I think that perhaps I could have chosen a better audience to target instead of just posting it to the entire of facebook, as the results are anonymous, and some weren’t quite so serious. To change this, I would choose a fair, selected amount of people of the target audience of my choice to answer the questions. This would probably work much better. I also feel that I could have got a bigger amount of results, to have a wider spread variety of findings to add to my research. I feel that I used a good variety of questions to get fair quantitative data. My questions had information to do with both demographic and psychographic information therefore I received a good wide range of results. If I was to redo my research id insure to have a larger group of people answer my questions of the correct age range. If I was to take this research further I could focus a new questionnaire on indie and rock fans that are boys and girls and/or like fashion as this would give me a more precise idea of what content to put within my magazine however, I do feel that my magazine could still be very successful with the information that I received.