Production Research

When developing a new product production research is always needed, it's research to help give information about what the product does. The purpose of this research is so the producers are able to see what the audience want in the product and how you can give them what they want.

Production research collects information for a new product. This helps the company release a better product. The research the company has collected will also help with commercial viability and plan the post production process. The information that gets collected covers the suitable locations to film a advert to get the best reaction from the audience. 

 When it comes to researching you need to look for:

• Staff 
• Cast 
• Equipment
• Location
• Risk Assessment 
• Copyright
• Marketing 
• Advertising 

Audience Research

Audience research is finding out about your audience. Demographics and  psycho-graphics are the two types of audience profiling that the audience are put into. 

Demographics looks at your gender, age ethnicity, knowledge of languages, disabilities, mobility, occupation, social class and sexual orientation.  It is also based on how much you earn. It is also based on how much you earn. Psycho-graphics looks at personality, lifestyles, hobbies, opinions and behavior. There is also there is another group called Geo-demographics this looks at audience based on where they live. All this makes it easier to bring out a product by understanding your audience. 

Some do this for themselves but others let companies do it for them, usually data gathering companies. 

Just like other research, primary and secondary are used to collect this data. Questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, online websites. Using both research techniques means they get a mix of answers, in depth but also short. Meaning they can get the specific answers that they need. 

 This is an example of demographics, ethnicity.

Market Research

Market research is the process of collecting information to help you find out if there us a market for your product. The information gathered from market research helps entrepreneurs make the best decisions they can. For your product to be successful entrepreneurs need to understand what customers want. 

When trying to find a place in the market for your product a lot of primary research is used to find out what the audience likes, dislikes, their age, social economic grouping and lifestyle. Questionnaires, focus groups and phone interviews are a great way to collect primary data. Secondary data it also used, looking online at companies such as BARB, Rajar and National Readership Survey (NRS) that already have data for people to use. 

 If you don't look into what the audience want your product will fail in the market, for example if you was to make a magazine about music, you would have to find out information about what your audience want, what magazines cover what type of music then choose a genre of music there isn't a lot of in the market. Another example is when little mix won the X Factor, Simon Cowell (knowing the music industry) was pushing little mix to do the best they could to win the competition. He did this because he knew there was a gap in the market for a girl group, so they would be really successful and do well, which they have done.

It is extremely important within the media industry to use do this kind of research, know what your audience want means there are less competitors, so you would attract a larger audience than if you was to bring out a genre of music that is already big in the market. 

Quantitative Research

Quantitative Research produces data and information that you can count and measure. All this data is usually put into tables, graphs, charts and diagrams depending on what data you're wanting, this makes it easier for the researcher to find what they're looking for. This kind of research is quick and easy to analyse because the surveys are made up of mostly closed questions. 

There are two techniques used in quantitative (primary and secondary research). Primary research is collecting your own data, for example making surveys for people to complete and collect the data. 

Secondary research is data that has already been collected a good way of finding secondary data is to read books, magazines and looking online, taking notes. Also researchers can find this information from companies such as 'Rajar' and 'Barb'.

Rajar, Barb and National Readership Survey (NRS) collect data and sell it to media companies that will then use the data as secondary research. 

This kind of research is mainly made up of statistics but can be manipulated to make the

data look better than it is, also this kind of data doesn't show why they listen to it, that is 'qualitative research'. Although an upside to this form of research is that it's quick and easy to collect the data from surveys that use mostly closed questions.

Here is an example of quantitative research which was gathered from the Rajar website, this shows listener figures over a three month period in the UK

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Qualitative Research

Qualitative research produces data about opinions, views and preferences. This type of research is used to find out what individual people and groups think and feel about a certain media product. To collect the data needed, individual interviews and focus groups are set up to collect opinions, views and preferences. 

 This type of research is very important within the media industry. Focus groups and interviews are a type of primary research, collecting data you need directly from individuals. For example if you was to collect primary research for film reviews you could stand outside the cinema and ask people to fill out questionnaires. This would give you the data you need but short answers and people might not take it seriously. The best type of primary research would be a focus groups, because you get longer to speak to the individuals and get longer / in depth answers. 

Although primary research is a great way of collecting data, secondary research is another technique of collecting data, using someones research they have designed for other people to use as secondary research. For example, instead of standing outside a cinema with questionnaires you could go onto a film review website and collect your data from there. Although this was of research isn't very reliable because anybody could easily make a fake profile, or the film producers could pay the site to add more positive comments, the media can be easily manipulated. 

 This is an example secondary research, individuals opinions / views of a film.  

Secondary Research

Secondary research is research that is carried out with data that somebody else has collected and design / changed to their needs and published for other people to look at and use. It is normally used for marketing research, it's useful because it allows the researcher to identify a new a new topic rather than one that has exhaustively been researched.

As well as understanding your market, you can also use secondary research to examine factors inside your business, such as sales figures and financial records.

Secondary research examples include going online and searching for what you need, going to a library to read through books, reading news papers / magazines and journals. Also other methods such as data collection organizations or periodicals.

Companies such as Rajar, National Readership Survey (NRS) and BARB collect data for other people people to use as secondary research, they usually sell the findings to other media companies who also use it as secondary research. 

This is a graph of  'average weekly viewings' from BARB.

Advantages:

• Because somebody has published the data for people to use, it saves time.
• It is often cheaper than doing primary research and collecting all the data yourself.
• It may allow you access to data you couldn't get.

Disadvantages: 

• In some cases it's quite expensive.
• You may have less control over how the data was collected.
• There may be biases in the data that you wouldn't know about.
• the answers might not fit your research questions.
• The data could be really old therefore no giving you correct answers.

Primary Research

Primary research is original data that hasn't been collected before. The researcher collects all of the data by themselves, this is usually collected by a variety of methods. Methods such as questionnaires, telephone interviews in market research and focus groups.The term primary research is used a lot in academic, market research and competitive intelligence. 


Primary research has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• The researcher can focus on qualitative and quantitative issues.
• The researcher can control the search design to fit their needs, so they can address specific research issues. 
• Primary research allows the marketer to focus on specific subjects and enables the researcher to have a higher control over how information in collects. The researcher can also decide the size of the project, time frame and goal.

Disadvantages:

• Primary research can be expensive in preparing and carrying out the research compared to secondary research. The cost can be for paper for questionnaires or the equipment for an experiment. 
• For it to be done properly primary data collection requires the development and execution of research plan. It does take longer to produce primary research than to find secondary data. 
• By the time primary data has been collected the research may be out of date.

This is an example of a survey, one of the ways a researcher collects their data.

  Different methods to collect data have their advantages and disadvantages also. Surveys are great for if you're targeting a specific audience and wanting quick and simple answers. 
A few disadvantages are that customized surveys could contain certain errors or the respondents could not give honest answers.