Audience Research & Feedback

Below is a questionnaire that has been filled in;

Below is a graph to show some aspects of audience feedback;

Findings from Questionnaire

To gather information for my questionnaire, I based myself in the school foyer at lunch time and asked all available people to fill in my questionnaire. This included mainly students aged between 12-18 but also office staff, teachers walking by and school visitors. I tried to get a balance of different genders too. The questions I asked were mainly to do with the front covers of magazines; I asked if the front cover of a magazine was more influential in buying it over the price. I just wondered because when I go and buy a magazine I often don’t look at price and just see which magazine has the most exciting front cover of the genre I typically buy. I found that the majority of participants, like me, are not loyal to one magazine but drift the market and buy the magazine with the most exciting front cover. However, in a follow up conversation with a group of participants, they said that they do buy the one with the best front cover, but it always ends up being the same magazine they buy. Therefore the front cover is hugely important to represent the content of the magazine on the shelf and to stand out from the other magazines so that it gains the most sales. From previous research in the AS exam, I looked at how magazines were stacked on the shelves – this also plays an important role in marketing because where each magazine is placed either gives it more or less viewing from walkers by – which potentially lead to sales.
A question I asked was “how often do you buy a magazine”, I think that this is important because finding out how regular each individual of my sample buys or reads a magazine will affect the validity of their responses in the later questions. Those who are regular readers will be able to give me a reliable answer and have justified opinions. I then asked a qualitative question; this is where the participant wrote down all they could think of relating to the front cover of a magazine. I got all sorts of responses from some of the younger end of the sample who were perhaps not taking the questionnaire seriously. Most answers however gave me the information what I wanted, meaning that they were rationale and related well to the magazines I have already looked at. The audience expects what the front cover of the magazines includes. Therefore I can go and design my magazine front cover and understand what the audience expects to be included.