1. Methods Research
Farah Ojaghi

2. Primary Research
Primary Research is when the researcher personally has to go out and conduct their own research because it doesn't already exist in any other media platforms. The researchers will create their own observations and focus groups to help them with information that they need to collect. This information will help for future production in the film that they'd be creating, because if the researcher was going out to find out if a certain demographic would understand what the film would be about and they didn't; they could change certain points of the film to make sure the audience understands.

3. Types of Primary Research
For example, if the researchers had a focus group they would let them watch the film then ask the questions about what they liked about certain aspects of the film and if they didn't like any parts of the movie this focus group audience would normally be mixed with normal cinema goers and then they would have film critics there so they can advertise the film before it has come out to the public.
Observations can also be used when looking if the consumer will enjoy the product you could see how they react to some situations and link these situations to the product and if the reaction is good then you will know that they will enjoy the product.
Surveys can also be used by researchers, if they are aiming a product the a game to teenagers if would probably be better to do online surveys because teenagers are on the internet all the time and it will be easier and simpler to do.

4. Pros and cons for focus groups
A negative of this technique is that it doesn't always work, for instance, film critics could hate a film but then audiences could love it. This happened with the film 'Flashdance’, it grossed $93 million (when it only cost $4million to make) and it won an Oscar. Showing that with the focus groups you can't always trust their opinions on the product you want to sell. On the other hand, film critics can be right, like when 'John Carter' was released there was a low turn out of audiences and an average of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film only made $73.1 million when it cost $250million to create which put Disney in a bad light for releasing a film that didn't even break even. Overall, I believe that primary research in needed just so the researchers know what type of audience and market to dedicate their product too and to make sure that if their product is a film, the audience will get the jokes and other features that have been put in.

5. Pros and cons for observations
A negative is that it does leave a lot of answer unanswered because it’s only the researchers guessing what they think their audience likes or doesn’t like as well it would be very time consuming because you will have to make sure the consumer is acting naturally and doesn’t know you’re observing them.
A positive of this technique though is that it’s easy to do even though it is time consuming you can go any where and there will be your target audience there.

6. Pros and cons of Surveys
A positive is that it’s easy and quick to collect the data and you will be able to get answers to see if teenagers would enjoy the game you’re wanting to create and it will be a large amount of data as well and you can get easy measurable answers because it would be quantitative data.
A negative of this though is that the survey answers may not be truthful so the information may be unreliable because the teenagers might have filled it out and haven’t completed the survey seriously which could mess with the results.

7. Secondary Research
This is where the research already exists in media platforms and the researcher can just get the information easily and they don’t have go out and get it themselves. Meaning if they are trying to find out who plays video games the most they could go on the internet to find that adult women (18+) 36% which is higher than both males and teenagers.
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8. Secondary Data Example
You can look at social media to be able to see what type of products are being most talked about, also to see what the audience likes and dislikes.
Magazines can be used for secondary data to see what’s most popular at the time, for example if they were going to bringing out a new lipstick they would look in different magazines that would show what the audience is looking for at the moment.
You can also look at surveys that already exist and get the information from them. For example if you were looking to see what’s the most popular magazine you could look at the National Readership surveys which will give you information on what’s the most popular general magazine and the most popular womens magazine.

9. Pros and cons of examples
Social medias positive is that you can easily collect the data just by looking online and you can pin point your target audiences age easier using this. A negative though is that it would take a lot of time because some people on forums for example may not be truthful or may not be serious when being on these forums so that shows this would be very time-consuming
A negative of looking at magazines is that it will be time consuming because the researcher will have to keep on trying to pinpoint what answers they are looking for and because they’re not getting the research themselves they might not be able to get proper answers that suit their questions.
Online surveys are probably the best thing to use when doing secondary research because it’s all based on statistic and when using trusted sites you know they’re all be true but a negative of this technique is that you might not always find what you’re looking for and the researcher might see that it’s better to do primary data just because they know they’ve personally done it so they can trust the statistics.

10. Quantitative & Qualitative Data
You would generate quantitative data in a questionnaire that has closed-ended questions with specific answers for the person to choose for you to be able to get numerical and measurable data. While with qualitative data you would use open-ended questions so researcher would be able to get in depth thoughts, attitudes and opinions for those questions so they would be able to form more in-depth results and this information would be immeasurable. For example if media producers were wanting to create a new programme they would look at surveys with quantitative data and see what the results are for popular TV channels and look which of their shows are most popular i.e. if looking at data gathering agencies, Sky Atlantic shows on BARB that in May that Game of Thrones was the most popular TV show and with this statistical evidence they could then go onto qualitative data and go on to the most popular Game Of Thrones episode of season 4 and then look at forums of what the audience thinks of specific moment and what they enjoyed. The advantage of quantitative data is that it’s easier to read and find what’s most popular but with qualitative data you get a more in-depth explanation from participants on what is specifically liked and why they didn’t like the least popular programme.

11. Data Gathering Agencies and how they’re useful to the Media Industry.
The role of these agencies is that they are used so people can find data straight away and it gives proper statistics and helps researchers in the media industry because they are able to get the data straight away from them so they can immediately link it to their product and will be able to see if their product is going to do well in sales.

12. Data Gathering Agencies
National Readership Survey (NRS) was found in 1956 it is the most valued research in use for print and advertising agencies in Britain and it covers over 250 Britain news brands/magazines. The website tells me that 89.6% of Great Britain’s adults consume newspapers or magazines across print and digital. If media producers were looking to create a weekly women magazine they could look at the latest results on NRS and they would see that ‘OK!’ magazine is the most popular when selling 4225 print copies followed by ‘Take A Break’ magazine. These magazines focus on celebrity lives and some other real life stories; the media producers might try to create a similar style of magazine to what these are because of this data NRS has given.
Broadcasters’ audience research board surveys TV programmes over a variety of different TV channels from Sky to normal channels like ITV. An overall statistic they have given is that 495 programmes in 2013 had audience of 18+ million each. They do a weekly survey and a monthly survey of which programmes have been the most watched. This survey website also tells us about the most popular genres, which will help if media producers are wanting to create a TV programme, they will be able to understand what sort of programmes most popular which would be a Sport show with a percentage of %. Also if they wanted to know which TV channel they wanted to put their programme on they could see which is the most popular channel which would be the BBC and the specific channel would be BBC %.

13. Audience Research
Audience profiling is making sure the product is aimed properly at the audience that are meant to be buying the product. The researcher would have to think who would buy the product in the target audience, like which gender is the product aimed at or for example if it was teenagers who liked gaming there would be percentage of the teenage population who didn’t like gaming so they’d have to make sure the percentage that did like games enjoyed the product.

14. Demographics
This is sorting people out into sections such as age, gender, ethnicity, social class, occupation, level of education and sexual orientation.
For example, group E are people who are casual workers or state pensioners so if creating a product for this audience you would have to make sure the product was cheaper.
Another example is that if the target audience is in group A, who are high managers or professionals. The product being created for them would need to make sure it is sophisticated and maybe linked to their work so it could help them with it or if creating a film make sure that they could escape into the film and forgot about work.

15. Geodemographic
Geodemopraphic is about where people live, meaning where your audience lives. This means that you would have to make sure when creating a product it would be not offend any countries like if selling a product in China like a green hat for men or if the hat has green on it this symbolizes that a man is cheating on his wife so you would not sell this product at all in this country.

16. Psychographics
Psychographics – This is your personal lifestyle and how you are as a person and how much income they might have and what type of products they’re going to like.

17. Using Demo & Psychographics at the same time
This would be useful when creating a game because you might choose a higher demographic group like C1 and then you would see what psychographic group they’d be in for example they could be quite a few of the psychographic sections so the media researcher would have to think which group would most likely play this game and aim it them specifically. For example, if they were an ‘explorer’ you would be able to create a game that would exploit this, creating the game to what they like.

18. Market Research
This is where they look at the competition that their products will have to be up against and see if their product might survive in the industry. See what competitions sales are, see what price they sell their game for, see what certificate they’ve put their products for.
An organisation will want to know how much the competitor is selling their for example, game for. They would also might want to know the plot for the game and certificate for example if this game is certificated as an 18 then the researcher could make their product a 15 so there is more of an audience for their product.

19. Magazines
If you were looking to launch a new magazine you could look at the National Readership Survey and if you were wanting to create a ‘general magazine’ you could look and see what type of magazine is selling the most.

20. Another example
Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) is the official body of measuring radio audience in the UK it is owned by the BBC and RadioCentre with 310 stations on the survey. They announced that 48.1 million adults thats are 15+ in the UK listened to the radio stations each week for the seconds quarter of 2014 which is actually 270 thousand people down than the first quarter on Although 90% of the UK listen to the radio every week. If a producer of BBC wanted to know which of their shows were least popular so they could cut one they could go to this website and they would see that ‘BBC Asian Network UK’ has the least views of 552 listeners or the seconds lowest would be ‘BBC Radio 5 live sports extra’ views at 919 viewers.

21. Production Research
Rather than looking at competitors and other products in the market production research is where they make sure everything runs smoothly, they will also choose all locations, actors/actresses and how much everything is going to cost and make sure they have enough money in the budget for what they want to do and make sure they’re not going out of budget.

22. Examples
One example for actresses/actors I would look at the website ‘spotlight’ to ask if they wanted to have a audition and this would lead to one of them getting the job. This is important to use in the media industry because you will able to get your actresses/actors easily for when you are wanting to advertise your product or if you’re creating a film you know you will already have them booked.
To get crew members like camera operators and art directors and you don’t have a big budget you can go to ‘The Knowledge’ you have a lot of choice and the examples below are just a few things you can get here. You can get locations here as well as the accommodation. This is very important in the media industry to do because you will be able to have everything set up and waiting before you get there and you know you won’t have to waste money because everyone will already be there.