Evaluation of Audience Research

The research carried out has been successful in shedding light on the audience I hope to attract to my Media Products whether being the Music Video, CD Case or Magazine advert. The demographic I have concentrated on should be more than likely to enjoy them.
The primary method I used to gather data was a questionnaire. While providing easily graphed quantitative data it does not provide as much qualitative data as an Interview would. However it does provide a few key lines of opinions which I have used within my research as well as to shape my own personal opinion. So the strength of the method used is the ability to create a visual demonstration of the results through the graphs, but a weakness is the inability to provide in-depth opinions of the audience.

Also another strength of the method is the ease of getting the data. Doing a questionnaire is normally no more than a 5-10 minutes task where as an interview, even with 10 questions, can take up to 30 minutes. What this means is that while 12 have done my questionnaire out of those 12 I may have asked to do an interview only 1 or 2 may have agreed due to having their own studies or work to attend to.

When evaluating the questions themselves I feel on the whole they are entirely successful but I do feel that I should have asked “What is your preferred method of listening to music” along with “What technology do you use to listen to music?” because it would have provided more specific results instead a general picture of the technology they own.

When it comes to evaluating whether the demographic I have mentioned throughout the Audience Research is accurate for my Productions and the Blighters band I can now confirm it does. By having a mixed gender group between the ages of 16-25 with social aspirers, mainstreamers and individuals who I know from attending gigs all can enjoy Indie type music I have now got relevant data for my Media Studies work.

Just by looking at those attending gigs for bands such as Arctic Monkeys, Death Cab For Cutie, Radiohead you can see similar qualities between the demographic mentioned. That is because all the bands fall under the indie / Alternative music banner.

However a large weakness of my Audience Research is the fact I have solely concentrated on single demographic. While this provides good information for my own projects it doesn’t provide me any data to compare tastes or differences in consumption of music. I can say that within age range of 16-25 everyone owns some form of music playing device however I can’t say that mainstreamers are more likely to own an Apple IPod where as Individual aspirers are more likely to own a Zune MP3.

In conclusion I would say my Audience Research is a success on the whole but if I did come to do it again I would more than likely design more questions to compare differences in music tastes and consumption.

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