Learning Objective One: How media producers define their target Audience

The two main reasons Audience Research is done is to show the estimated size of your audience, and also what the audience would like to see. Researching into your chosen audience is critical to the Video Game industry as without an idea of where your selling point is, then you will not know how to market your product correctly and if the research was done in the first place you could be advertising directly to the defined audience rather than having a guess as to who may buy it. Another reason audience research is vital is you could spend as much money as you like for e.g. selling your 18 rated game to primary school kids, but it won’t get your anyway because these aren’t the age range who will be buying it. So no matter how much you spent it will be a complete waste. Below I will be looking into different media producers in the video game industry and how they define their audiences.

Quantitative research

“Quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques” –Wikipedia

This is data that is represented as statistics or numbers for example viewing records.

Barb: Barb, standing for Broadcasters Audience Research Board Is a website that provides all of the official viewing figures for the UK. It uses companies who specialise in research such as Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect the data that it provides. Data sites such as this are great for companies to use to determine what people are watching. For video game companies sites like this that are able to determine what people are playing and also details on the background of the audiences. I’ve found a great PDF that gives statistics on all sorts of information that will give companies the edge on who they should be focusing their advertising on. This contains information such as the average age of gamers, what games are played most often, top selling games and lots of other useful information. This is the overall statistics for 2012, which could be a downside to information that doesn’t come out as often as some companies may like. For e.g. this document states that 53% of gamers in 2012 are males and 47% are female. Though they are not far apart, a company could decide that they would market their product in 2013 only to males. Information can change like this at any time, especially over a

year. Examples like this are where more up to date information would be useful.

Qualitative Research

This is research from sources such as questionnaires, focus groups and face to face interviews.

Research such as this can be done primary (when the company does the research themselves) or secondary research where another company will do the research and then post it somewhere where other companies can source the information and use it. Benefits of primary research is you are able to write the questions yourself, this can then get you the information you are looking for and this is where secondary research can lack. Getting the information secondarily (what you can find of it) online from different sources won’t always be exactly what you’re looking for.

Socio-economic status

This is research done into different economic groups such as Upper, Middle and Working class individuals. This then determines what each household is watching, giving the company then a start to what area they should market their game too. Whether to pick up the budget, because they know they can sell for higher to a Upper Class group or whether to stick with what they’re doing and bring it out to all markets. Below is a graph that shows what information is checked in this research and what is taken into account.

Psychographics

Psychographics is a research tool where they analysis the audiences lifestyle and try to create a detailed profile for that customer. They do this y asking their customers to agree or disagree with statements.

They put them into such lifestyle groups in terms of their activates, interests, pinions, emotions, values, motivations and lifestyle. The aim of psychographics is to uncover their inner self that such consumer groups, rather than merely the surface characteristics.

Geo-Demographics

This is research further into a country, when they look further in which different parts of the U.K for example want and play what. These are split into their regional identities (e.g. Cockney, Georgie, and Irish). This can then give you where to market that game. Such as a new game called ‘Sim City 5’ is coming out, they can check where the previous Sim City games have sold well such as London and down south and know that is where they should be focussing on advertising their game rather then up in Scotland where they really do not have a market for it.

Demographics

This is research further into each individual rather than certain areas of a country. This has to do with age, gender, sexual orientation etc. From this they can gather whether males or females are playing games more just like earlier in the PDF found here. Information will also tell how to decide which age range your game is for, because if you use swearing or violence but only 10% of 18+ year olds are buying video games you may choose to remove some of this so that so the 50% of gamer’s aged12+ gamers can play bringing in a bigger market.

Size

Size e.g. the mainstream, alternative and niche market will decide on how you decide to take a risk on your idea. You can concentrate on the mainstream market such as Call of Duty but this is then something which can be hated by the alternative or niche market and so will bring in people that are not happy about what is being produced. Focusing on the niche and alternative market will be greatly smaller than the mainstream market and will generally find it passing over their heads but you will generally find these smaller markets to be more passionate about the project. Mainstream markets you need to have a higher concern for piracy (piracy is a concern for all markets, but the more people the more piracy).