1. How Media Producers Define Their
Target Audience.
Media producers use research to learn about their audiences before creating a product that may not
appeal to the audience they had hoped for. From their results they may change or edit a potential
idea to adapt to their target audience. Media producers define their target audience in six different
ways; quantitative research, socio-economic status, psychographics, geo-demographics/regional
identity, demographics and size.
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is when researchers ask people for their opinions in an organized manner so
they can produce hard facts and statistics to guide them. For the results created by the surveys to be
reliable it is important to survey people in large numbers to make sure they are a representative
sample of your target market.
Socio-economic status
Socioeconomic status is a commonterminology meaning the social standing or class of an individual
or group. It is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation.
Psychographics
The business dictionary says that psychographics is an analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a
detailed customer. Market researchers conduct psychographic research by asking consumers to
agree or disagree with opinions statements. Results of this exercise are combined with geographic
(place of work or residence) and demographic (age, education, occupation, etc.) characteristics to
develop a more 'lifelike' portrait of the targeted consumer segment. This is useful when planningand
researching a music video, as companies can categorise their audience into Standard occupational
classification, Geo-demographics and Age and Gender.
Geo-demographics/ demographics
Geo-demographics classify people by their neighbourhood or surroundings according to the
characteristics of those areas. Demographics refer to the characteristics of the population whereas a
geo-demographic classification links people to where they live.
Although not all of the research techniques above will be used to define their audience every time
they are there for when needed. Some may find one more useful than another therefore prefer to
stick with that one.
Creating a music video for a particular music genre means that my target audience is already picked
out although with my own research I can learn about my audience in more detail and ask particular
questions that would be relative to the music video that I’m going to be creating. I feel Quantitative
research would help a lot in my own research as it gives me the chance to closely question my
potential audience with specific questions in a survey.