Processes of Research

He started of by asking questions which would help him find what he is looking for over the internet

·         What is the history of this niche audience?

·         Where online does this audience hang out?

·         What peripheral interests are shared among this group?

·         What types of offline publications are there?

Through the internet he wanted to find online communites that would focus on dubstep.He looked for groups on 

·         Websites

·         Record labels

·         Artists

·         Blogs

·         Forums

·         Radio stations

·         Magazines

Step By Step: 
Examine an audience near to him (Dubstep Demographic Research) 

Give Yourself a Brief History Lesson 

Cruise SERPS (search engine results pages) and make a note of communities and popular sites 

Have a look at some of the more popular publications 

Check out related searches for other ideas 

Check out some websites you have researched popularity through DoubleClick Ad Planner 

Hunt for Directories

Document URLs for quality and relevance

Other Forms Of Research

Benefits and Drawbacks of each 

Experiments: A test to see if something is true.

- A benefit for an experiment is that it is factual as you know you are getting real results because they have tried it out. You would need to use a controlled group to get  compared answers (e.g. if your testing on a group of women, test men as well to compare)

- A drawback for this is that you have to get lots of results back e.g. experimenting on loads of pople to get a clear answer overall. Also a lot of people may not want to participate and you would have to persuade them.

Participant Observation: the researcher participates in the activity in order to better understand it.

-A benefit of this is you are able to get a clearer understanding of what your researching because your experiencing rather then just reading or hearing about it.

-A drawback of this is that you could be influenced by it after e.g. if you had to observe ganags you could be persuaded to join them after. Another thing is that you may get too involved in what your observing and may be distracted away from what your reseaching. You may also have a biased opinion on what your researching and your not thinking from both sides.

Historical Research: looking at the history and development of something, or studying old examples of something and comparing with contempary examples.

-A benefit of this is that the background information you find could help add a richer context to your research piece because you can see how times have changed over the years.

-A drawback of this is that your research may be out of date and have no help to you if your researching a modern piece (e.g. if you were researching technology there is noting to compare it to).

Rhetorical Analysis: analysis of the techniques used to persuade the audience (can tell us something about the audience and the purpose of the text). 

-A drawback of this is that it shows you what the makers of that product think of the audience and that doesnt help us because the audience will respond differently to it which will be no use to us.

Comparative Analysis: research that compares/contrasts behaviours/ media products.

-A benefit of this is that you can use it to steal peoples ideas and could use it to identify the development of sub genres

Competitor Analysis: close analysis and rating of a range of competitor's products.

-A benefit of this is gives a fuller veiw of the market, what your up against, and what your better then or different from.

-A drawback of this is that if you analyse someone elses product and its poor you will gain no help from it.

Interview VS Questionnaire 'Ding Ding Ding'

Compared to the Questionnaires, a one on one interview is much easier and more effective to do. Your able to get in depth answers from your person and information you wouldn't be able to see on a questionnaire. Another good thing about it is that you can follow up on peoples answers and ask them another question to find more information.

A disadvantage about a one on one interview is that people may be uncomfortable because there not anonymous and may not want to be fully truthful. Whereas with a questionnaire because it is anonymous they will put the truth knowing no one will know its them.

Boomtastic Fantastic Super-Duper Audience Research Questionnaire!

Cheyne ‘Is a G and a Dope kinda Gaal’ Bernards Boomtastic Fantastic Super-Duper Audience Research Questionnaire 

We had to re-do a questionnaire Miss gave us that had ten mistakes in and that we had to improve. Some problems that come from questionnaires are that the questions are unhelpful.Some of the questions are either just a yes no question which doesn't give us much information or help us any further.Other questions may be pointless where the answers they respond won't give any relevant information. Many people who do questionnaires may lie or put fake information because they may feel its a waste of their time and may want to rush through it. Things that I changed on the questionnaire was changing the question 'name' to 'age & gender'. I did this because getting their names would be a waste of a question as it has no relevance to the piece and doesn't give us any further information. However by asking them their name and age it helps us put them into groups and see which age group and gender group download the most. I added the question ' What is a reasonable price that you would pay for CD, DVD & Games?' after the question ' Do you feel guilty about downloading material without paying for it' because i think that if they say yes to the question we would want to know how much they would pay to stop them illegaly downloading. Another question i added was ' Do you download material more then you buy hard copies' because i think this lets us know how many people actually buy hard copies anymore considering the use of downloading media has risen. 

Effective Media Advertising

Feedback from our Focus Group

As a group we came up with some conclusions to which ones are most effective. We found out that most people do not like Pop-ups as we associate them with virus' and bad websites. We usually don't like them as they distract us from what we were doing and we usually would just click off the box without taking in the actual advertisement.

We thought some banner advertisements were good as they come up at the top of the page and don't block what you were watching/reading. There effective ecause nowadays they have ones with images and videos in promoting trailers. Some also have a 'click here' sign which would lead you to the main website where you can find out more information.

For mobile advertising we thought that it would only be effective if they were advertising something alongside the consumer being able to win or get something. (e.g. Orange wednesdays Buy 1 get 1 free ticket) 

As a group we came up with the idea that if we combined contextual advertising and pop-ups it may be effective because at least the pop-up would be something your really interested and that may appeal to you more, rather then a random advert which you have no interest in.

The Focus group itself was good but i think you would have to make sure you have checked the Demographics (social class, age, gender) because it woul be pointless if you had a focus group with different people interested in different things.

Audience Figures

Why are Ratings/Audience figures so important?
 

For companies, rating and audience figures are important because it gives them a clear outline of whether or not their shows are being watched or not. If a company was airing a Pilot of a TV show and saw that they had really poor ratings, they may come to the conclusion that their show won't do to well and should scrap it all together, therefore saving money and time.

Another reason could be that if the ratings are good the advertising company will pay more for the spot because they know so many people are watching the show, Also if the ratings are good the actors appearing in the show can request more money from the makers.

Why & How Media Companies Use Research

Things you would research in the Media:
(e.g. For the release of a Magazine)

• Target audience
  
• Who your competition is
  
• How many people will buy it
  
• Funding
  
• Distribution
  
• Content (figure out what you will put in it)
  
• Advertisement

I looked at TV Easy made by IPC Connect and had to analyse the way in which they describe and categorised their audience. From a first glance at the magazine I can see that it is targeted at Soap fans through the use of the bold lettering and big images of the soap stars. Knowing that in this country the Soaps (Eastenders, Coronation street, Emmerdale) have a huge fan base and are popular TV shows the advertisers know that the magazine will sell well because of the content (spoilers, exclusive information). The Demographics of the magazine states that the average age of the magazine reader is 44, predominately females read the magazine and 27% of upper class (ABC1) people buy the magazine.

Psychographics (How the audience feels, thier interests, attitudes, their beleifs)

Social Media Research
Social Media Research is a way of finding out what your target audience and the consumers want from a product or brand through social networking sites e.g. Twiiter & Facebook.
Companines like Coco-Cola and Lynx use these sites as a way to keep contact with fans of the brands group and allow them to post suggestions and ideas. These suggestions will then be looked upon by the marketers and taken into consideration. “In response to high volumes of feedback to provide handles for all in-store orders, we trialled and will implement them for store collection soon” (M&S Direct’s Facebook research project)

Social Media Research

5 August 2010 By Sean Hargrave

In my opinion i think that Social Media Research is a good way to get information from consumers because social networking is a fast way of communicating with people from all over the world, therefore the researchers will be able to get far quicker responses from fans rather then apporoaching them in another way.
Anothr advantage of Social Networking research is that it is very cheap to do. It's economic and good value for money.