Task 9: Audience Research

For this task I have to sum up all of the research I have gathered from the questionnaire I produced in the last task. The task was to create a questionnaire that attracted a target audience; my target audience was primarily vegetarians and vegans. Having a target audience is crucial when creating a product, as you need all the information you can possibly gather to produce a good quality product that attracts your target audience. By creating my questionnaire, I gathered enough information to create good quality recipe cards that are appropriate for vegetarians/vegans; mainly, the questions I asked where to find out whether people cook their own meals, and what they may put into their meals (meat substitutes). The first question I asked was ‘what is the reason for you becoming a vegetarian?’ and I feel that the answers I got gave me a good body of research. The main answer was that my audience are against animal cruelty, or that they simply do not like the taste of meat, and after seeing this I have decided that all of my recipes shall contain tofu, as apposed to Quorn as a meat substitute, as I would also like my recipe cards to appeal to both vegetarians and vegans, seen as some of the people who took my survey answered the ‘would you ever consider becoming a vegan, or occasionally eating vegan food?’ saying that they could occasionally eat vegan food, or that they are in fact a vegan, and I feel that my recipe cards should also appeal to them.

I did find that trying to get people to partake in my questionnaire was quite hard, but seen as I am working on my own I did not need as many responses as the other pairs. All in all, I got around twenty-four responses, which was an ideal amount for me. I gathered this information by posting the link to my questionnaire on Facebook and other social networking sites, but I also put the majority of the links on vegetarian forums, as I knew that I would get a good body of research and that all of the answers would be sincere.

Task 10:

Summary of ResearchWith the results I have gathered, I have found out that most vegetarians and

vegans have chosen that lifestyle because they are against animal cruelty, and that most vegetarians would consider eating vegan food from time to time. I also found out that the majority of people that partook in my survey prepared their own meals, which gives me confidence in that people will use the recipe cards if they were to ever be produced. The vegetarians that did my survey also said that their favourite meat substitute was Quorn, but as I would also like my recipe cards to appeal to vegans, I am going to use tofu.

Results and Analysis

What is the reason for you becoming a vegetarian?As you can see from these results, most vegetarians have chosen that lifestyle because of animal welfare issues. Finding this out did not help me with the designing of my recipe cards, but has been very useful when researching about vegetarians. The other two most common answers where

ethics or they didn’t like the taste of meat. These answers have also not influenced the design of my recipe cards but have also helped me with further research into vegetarians.

Do you cook your own food?The majority of the people that answered this question said that they did, in fact, cook their own food. This has helped me a lot when finding recipes to use in my recipe cards. I have decided to go for simple recipes that everyone can cook. I have chosen to do this as I want my

recipe cards to appeal to most people, as well as my target audience.

What is your favourite vegetarian meal?When looking at these results I found that most people enjoy eating a certain curry over other kinds of food, and that surprisingly not many people enjoyed eating vegetarian pizza or pasta. I used this research to my advantage, and decided

to use curry based recipes in my recipe cards, I just need to find out what country I would like to base them on.

Do you occasionally fish or any other type of meat?I found that the majority of vegetarians do not eat any type of meat, including fish. But some vegetarians do occasionally eat some sort if meat. I found this very interesting as, as far as I am concerned I thought vegetarians ate nothing meat based. Regardless of this, none

of the recipes I’m going to use contain any meat or fish.

Which meat substitute would you preferably eat?Even though the majority of people answered saying they prefer quorn as apposed to any other meat substitute; I chose to use tofu in some of my recipes, as it matched my theme and is less costly, this is what I wanting to achieve, as my target audience is

going to be mid-teens and students, and they would not be able to afford foods such as quorn, and Linda McCartney products.

Would you ever consider going vegan, or occasionally eating vegan food?

After doing some further research about vegans, I was not surprised that the majority of people said that they couldn’t be a vegan. The vegan lifestyle is extremely restricted, even down to what clothes you wear. However, some people did say that they could

occasionally eat vegan meals. So I have to choose some vegan appropriate recipes in my recipe cards.

Do you buy organic food products?

I found that most people only occasionally bought organic products. Organic products are usually quite expensive, as I found out after some further research. I think more people should eat organic products, but as they are costly I decided not to recommend them in any of my recipes. I felt it would be better to let the consumer

decide what they wanted to eat by thereselves.

What is your favourite country for food?

This was my favourite question. This question helped me build the foundations of my recipe cards. The main answer I received was that most vegetarians enjoyed eating italian food. I did consider using italian food in my recipe cards, but then thought that I would try an

oriental theme, as according to my results not many people enjoy it as much as other cuisines, and I would like to change this.

Do you eat your five a day?I was surprised by the results on this question. I thought that most people did not eat their five a day, but as I found out that most people did I had to appreciate this and show this in my recipes. The recipes I have chosen mostly contain vegetables, although there are a few that are more indulgent.

Do you prefer to cook your own meals or eat microwave meals?

This helped me with my audience research a lot, as most of the people that where questioned said they prepared their own meals, I felt like no matter what if my recipe cards where to go into shops, that people would actually use them, as apposed to just buying ready meals.

Conclusion

After collecting all of my research, I found that it helped me put a lot of ideas together. The fact that not many people voted for chinese as their favourite cuisine, made me want to choose an oriental theme more, as I felt that vegetarians should feel that there is more things out there for them to eat. I was also pleased when I found out that most vegetarians did not eat meat, and they mostly at their five a day. It really helped me with deciding what recipes I wanted to use. By doing this audience research I feel like I have a lot more knowledge about vegetarianism, as I was intrigued to find out more about the lifestyle.