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 common terminology 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 planning and 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.