Audience Research

Proposal:

I am going to look into the audience's age and lifestyle

and find out about the relationship between them and how they consume films (and where) and how they hear about films (and what makes them want to see it)

I will create a questionnaire and analyse the results to find out how the use of audience segmentation can help us see how exhibition and marketing effects the audience. Also, how differences in the needs and wants of the target audience effects the way the product is marketed and exhibited to suit them.

Questionnaire:

Here are some pictures of the questionnaire and the results.

Analysis:

After looking at the results of my questionnaire it is clear that age and lifestyle determine how films are consumed and marketed.

Young people usually go to the cinema or watch DVD's. They are targeted differently to adults when marketed because they are a modern generation. Merchandise is used to win over really young children because they always want the latest thing out and adverts promoting this merchandise will cause children to craze their parents for such items. Tv and trailers appeal to all age ranges really as the majority of people watch television for several hours a day or week. I have found that music and supermarket choice were less influential when marketing for children, however fashion, culture and music seem to be taken into a lot of consideration when advertising for young men, young women and adults. This could be through things like the type of marketing or features that they include to grab the target audience's attention. For example: the soundtrack used on a trailer.

Young adults seen to have the largest intake of marketing types. 16-20 year olds have heard about films through a large selection of marketing methods, however the most successful appears to be the use of trailers. Magazines are another successful way to market films to the young adults apposed to newspapers and reviews which are likely to catch the attention of an older audience.

By asking people their favourite/ preferred supermarket to shop in, I can try to loosely determine their "class"- this is something else that might inform marketing choices. This would be done by catagorising the methods of marketing but futhermore, the catagories within the methods of marketing. For example: Magazines- what kind of magazine a certain film will be advertised in.

Social groups would influence the genre of film that people favoured. Genre wasn't something i looked at when creating my questionnaire, so the inclusion of social groups did not make much of an impact on the results.

All in all, from looking at my questionnaire, i have found that different age groups consume films in different ways and find certain marketing techniques more effective than others, meaning that audience must be segmented in order to meet the needs and wants of every group. The wide range of marketing options are there to cater for different individuals; age and lifestyle are definitely factors that influence this. However, there is a lot more to think about when it comes to audience. Exhibition runs in the same way, by segregating groups to market and exhibit films to. There is also a clear overlap in some group: marketing: exhibiting methods because there is always going to be people that do not fit the stereotype of the group and therefore a 12 year old could watch a film in the same way as a 32 year old and they could both find the same marketing method the most effective.