Audience Research

Audience Research tells you what you need to know about your selected target audience; media companies put a lot of time and effort into finding out what they need to know about these people.

Demographics are the way in which a media company classifies their audience according to a range of different attributes such as age, gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and occupation.

Most companies involved with media research or production use a scale which puts people into different categories according to their occupation, and the income that it brings in. This scale is based on broad assumptions.

There are 6 different social grades which are as follows:

A = Upper Middle Class - Higher managerial, administrative or professional (Royals)
B = Middle Class - Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional (lawyers/doctors)
C1 = Lower Middle Class - Supervisory or clerical junior administrative or professional (university)
C2 = Skilled Working Class - Skilled manual workers (electricians, plumbers etc)
D = Working Class - Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (retail)
E = Those at the Lowest Levels of Subsidence - State Pensioners, casual or lowest grade workers.

Media companies also take into account where people live when producing a product. This is known as Geodemographics. Knowing the profile of the local population and understanding the issues that affect that community can help a company target a certain target audience.

Another thing that a company may take into account are Psychographics which are important for research as it gives you clues on a person’s lifestyle, for example what interests they have, and what media products they like. For instance, people who have a very active lifestyle would be interested in a product which reflects this; such as health related magazines or sport related websites.