Magazine Assignment

Audience Research Bodies
1.  What does RAJAR and BARB stand for?

RAJAR - Stands for Radio Joint Audience Research

BARB - Stands for Broadcasters Audience Research Board 

2. Who does each agency work for and how are they funded?

RAJAR - The company is jointly owned by the BBC and by the RadioCentre the trade body representing the vast majority of Commercial Radio stations in the UK.

BARB-  The company is owned by BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) and is a not for profit company limited by guarantee.

3. What reasons do they gives for collecting audience figures?

RAJAR - It was set up by the BBC and the RadioCentre in 1992 to measure their audiences using the same system.

 BARB commissions research companies to provide the services that our users want, including the production of audience viewing figures. It replaced the BBC’s Daily Survey and Commercial Radio’s JICRAR survey. It was started to provide the industry standard television audience measurement service for broadcasters and the advertising industry.

4. What type of research methods do you think they use to get the information on audiences?

The company research could you primary research by using questionnaires/surveys and carrying to interviews and focus groups to find out their audiences views and to find out what they think. 

5. How relevant do you think their work is to media producers and why?

Their work is incredibly relevant to media producers because they can find out what types of audiences they are targeting and what type of shows people most enjoy and are interested in watching. They can minor how many people are listening to radio stations so they know if they are doing well showing that the product is good, they can also weigh up the competition. 

6. Do you think they are also beneath to the consumer and why? 

Yes I think it is beneficial to the consumers  because they can see how shows are popular and worth watching, shows with a large audience will encourage others to catch on and see why it is so good, where as a show showed as having a low number of viewers will discourage people watching it if people don't seem exited by it and therefore not watching it. 

7. Do they produce qualitative or quantitive information for producers?

They both produce quantitative information because it gives data, figures, and facts about how many people are watching the programmes. 

What is market research?

Market research is the action or activity of gathering information about consumers' needs and preferences.

Why would it be used?

• Identify potential customers - Finding out questions like: Who is going to use your product/service? How old are they? Are they male or female? Are they married, single or divorced?
• Understanding your existing customers: Why do customers choose your product over competitors? What do they value? Is it service, product quality or the prestige associated with consuming your product/service? Who influences their buying decision? W
• Set realistic targets - From the information you collect they'll  be able to set realistic targets for areas such as growth, sales and the introduction of new products/services.
• Develop effective strategies - From your research the company will be able to make informed marketing decisions about how to price your product/service, how to distribute your product/service, which media channels to use (eg: newspaper, radio or direct marketing). 
• Examine and solve business problems If you’ve identified a business problem, research will help you work out what is happening. For example, if your sales have fallen you might discover that brand awareness has also fallen.
• Prepare for business expansion Research will help you identify areas for expansion and test the market’s readiness for a new product/service. 
• Identify business opportunities.
• 3. What sort of information would market research find out?
•  If you are launching a new product it can help identify whether it is appealing, who your target audience is, how big the market is, who the competition is and how you are positioned in the marketplace. An example of find out research is stopping people in the streets and asking them to fill in questionnaires, or cold callers visiting homes, phone calls from companies asking them to answer questions over the phone, or emails. 
• 4. What is production research?
• Production research is the collection and analysis of information for the content and production of a media product. It helps to provide content, research commercial viability and plan the post production process. 

Consumer Magazines:
Fashion
Music
Sport
Gossip

Fashion Magazines: 
Vogue
Elle
I-D
Cosmopolitan
Dazed and Confused
Tatler
Vantity Fair

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These are five examples of popular fashion magazines. Elle, Vogue and Tatler are all designed using a similar format; they have the name of the magazine displayed at the top of the front cover in a large font size and bold colour which matches other important parts of text on the front cover which has also bold but with a smaller font; which highlights them and helps them stand out to the reader. I have noticed that in some of the magazines such as Elle, Tatler and Vogue they use their models to cover up the name of the magazine because the editor wants the model to be the hierarchy of information and to look at the model first. They may also do this because as it is a fashion magazine they want the main focus and immediate attraction to be around "fashion" therefore the model gets most of the attention. Even though you can't always read the word "Elle" or "Tatler" on these particular magazines because one or two letters are covered or on the front cover of "Vogue" the "G" has been replaced with the models face; you can still recognise and what magazine you are picking up instantly. The women used for the front covers of all the magazines are either popular celebrities, or beautiful, well-known glamour models, they may photograph these types of women for a fashion magazine because they are instantly recognisable which evokes immediate reader interested, similarly they may use them because the reader may want to look like them which is important for selling a fashion magazine.

 The colouring used for the magazines Vogue and Tatler are very bright and jump out at the reader as it looks eye-catching; so they are more intrigued to read it and see what is inside. Where as magazines like Dazed and Confused use black and white as a way too stand out and look different against the typical brightly coloured pink, girly colours maybe targeted for a unique, quirky type of audience. Some magazines use small snip-its of text scattered all over the page to help encourage the reader to buy it by giving away intriguing bits of information where they have to buy it to read more on whats happened. Some of the words are larger and more noticeable than others such an in the Vogue magazine the words "Megawatt fashion" is one of the largest bits of text to get fashion  fanatics excited about reading the latest fashion trends in the magazine. Also they use the word "Beyonce" in a large font size because it relates to the image used and informs them that there will be something about her in the magazine; encouraging them to buy it. The style of language used varies between magazines have the are targeted towards different target audiences. Tatler for example, uses more formal language as they are targeted towards more well off people as they put phrases like "How to get your son into Eton" and "Not to posh to punch" and "Who will inherit London" which hare all things that higher class people would want to read about. Where as Vogue's style of language and what they have chosen to put on the front page is more colloquial as they are particularly aimed towards teenagers and young adults.

  Magazines such as Dazed and Confused and i-D have less written content on the front cover than other fashion magazines because they may be more circulated around the culture of fashion and people rather than clothes and beauty like other fashion magazines such as Vogue and Elle. Elle use a lot more taglines to advert  what is in the magazine similar to Vogue. I have noticed there is a reoccurring them to the front covers of i-D magazines and that is that each model on every cover has their right eye covered, which is different to the other fashion magazines. This helps them to stand out and be more recognisable because as soon as you see the right eye covered you instantly know its an i-D magazine and gives them a trade mark. Below are some examples of the reoccurring theme used on the i-D magazines.

Report on the Purposes and Methods of Research

I am writing a report aiming to explain in detail the types of research by using elucidated examples of the methods and what different purposes they are used for. I am going to be explaining the difference between primary and secondary research and the types of data these methods produce showing where would be appropriate to use these and weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of both types. I will also be discussing how audiences are categorised and how this helps media producers.

The two main methods of research are primary and secondary. Both produce imperatively important information when researching for a product but produce very different types of information. Primary research on one hand produces qualitative information which is mainly based on the subjects’ opinions and views; this is research that you collect yourself. Primary research is acquired from new data that has not been collected before. The qualitative information can be gathered from surveys using questionnaires or interviews with groups of people in a focus group. The responses more personal and cannot be measured. On the other hand secondary research produces quantitative information that can be directly measured and can be seen as factual information and data rather than opinion. Secondary information is data existing data that already exists which can be found using sources such as books and the internet; the research is done by someone else and can be measured then shown on charts and graphs.

Both types of research have advantages and disadvantages to them; it depends what product you are researching for and what information you are trying to collect. The pros to primary research are that as you have collected the data yourself it is more reliable; you know that the information you are using is genuine and credible. Moreover the data can be better interpreted as it is your own, also information you have gathered is likely to be more recent and up-to-date than secondary information that for example could have been posted on the internet years ago and the data may have changed over time. Such as research on a radio station, if you are trying to find out what is your target audiences favourite musician/band then by doing primary research it enables you to get accurate information about current celebs whereas researching on the internet may give you results from the past and out dated celebrities which would be a waste of time for today’s audience.  Furthermore using a questionnaire as primary research it allows you to target your questions which are unique to your product enabling you to find out specific information you need. For example if you were trying to produce your own magazine and you wanted to find out how much would you spend on a magazine you can ask your target audience this in a direct way which you may not otherwise be able to access in books or on the internet. Although the cons of obtaining primary information are that it’s more expensive as you need to collect, store and analyse the information yourself. It is also extremely time consuming as you have to collect all the data yourself for example standing around asking for people to fill in your question (which they also may not be happy about) where as simply googling information is much faster and easier therefore less time consuming. Primary research also faces the problem of the data collected not being accurate if people filling out the survey are in a rush or not willing to give out personal information. This brings me onto the advantages of secondary research. For one is it a lot less hassle, cheaper and much easier to access lots of information quickly by for example typing whatever you want to find out into the internet or reading a book and is more available; you will roughly find at least some of the information you are looking for. On the other hand like primary it has its disadvantages, secondary research is much riskier as the information you are accessing could be out-of-date and could potentially be unreliable if you use sources such as Wikipedia for example which anyone can hack into and changed the data. In addition the data you are trying to find is not unique to your product so might not be as useful. For example if you want to find out people favourite places to eat for a magazine you might get limited information if any come up on your search engine which will not be as effective as asking people of your chose target audience directly.

When designing a new product such as a magazine it is important to understand how audiences are categorised so that it helps media producers to market and design their product correctly to meet the needs and requirements of their costumer. One way audience are categorised is demographic profiling, which is a way of describing a group of people according to various factors. They are defined in terms of their: age, gender, class, economic status, geographical are, religion, race/nationality which is quantitative information. Another way of categorising people is using geodemographic profiling which is a way of describing people based on where they live; this is also quantitative information. Finally psychographics is a way of describing people based on their attitudes, opinions and lifestyles; this time this is qualitative information as it is opinions based rather than factual. Psychographic profiling can also categorise audiences based on their needs and motivations, desires and interests, beliefs and attitudes. Media producers now attempt to create ideologies/ personalities for their products that mirror the target consumer; this helps them work towards meeting this target in order to meet all their consumer’s needs. Media producers such as a magazine company may use ideologies as a target person; they try and meet all the needs and desires for. For example, Abbie is a 20-year-old Sales Assistant at Newlook; she’s single and spends a lot of time shopping with her three best friends Lucy, Sophie and Molly. Media producers will use “Abbie” as a target to design their magazine towards in attempt to meet their target audiences’ needs that may be like Abbie. Media producers also use audience research bodies such as RAJAR – (Radio Joint Audience Research) and BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) which produce viewing data for clients, such as broadcasters and advertisers, a minute by minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels. This produces quantitative information because it gives data, figures, and facts about how many people are watching the programmes. The information is vital for assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have performed and provides the basis for airtime advertising trading. Their work is incredibly relevant to media producers because they can find out what types of audiences they are targeting and what types of shows people most enjoy and are interested in watching. They can minor how many people are listening to radio stations so they know if they are doing well showing that the product is good, they can also weigh up the competition. Similarly this research is beneficial to the consumers because they can see how shows are popular and worth watching, shows with a large audience will encourage others to catch on and see why it is so good, where as a show showed as having a low number of viewers will discourage people watching it if people don't seem exited by it and therefore not watching it..

In summary I have been doing a lot of research for my own magazine that I am currently designing, catering its content towards a chosen audience focusing on a particular genre. The audience I have chosen to aim my magazine towards is people between the ages of 16-28 with the genre focusing mainly around celebrity culture and music. I found primary research was the most effective method for me as most of the questions that I have asked are more opinion based, where the questions are unique to them.  The purpose of this survey was to find out the audiences likes, dislikes and interests by breaking down the topics down into simple questions of things consider before designing my magazine. I’ve made sure my questions are too-the-point; short, relevant and easy to answer so that my questionnaire isn’t overly time consuming so that the subjects fill out all of the survey accurately and do not lose interest and rush. By doing this it will help me form a vivid idea of what sorts of things to include in my magazine in order to make it successful and for my target audience to enjoy reading. The methodology used was a questionnaire and the data has been calculated by giving my survey to 10 people between the ages of 16-28 and getting them to fill out my survey anonymously in order to acquire honest, accurate answers. In contrast I found that secondary research wasn’t as useful for my research as primary, for example I couldn’t find out my audiences favourite clothing shops or radio stations from reading a book. However I could use audience research bodies which I found incredibly useful one of which was called RAJAR which gave me information on what type of programmes and radio stations my audience  most enjoy and interested in watching/listening too on a wider scale.

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