Why and how does the media use research?

 MARKET RESEARCH
Target audience, competition and all their info, how many people will buy it, distribution logistics, funding and potential advertisers.

Good research sells a magazine, not to the audience but to the advertisers using...

Audience profiling-
[from IPC. com (eg from NME magazine)]
Stats cover:
-DEMOGRAPHICS
Gender, age, social class ranking (eg. ABC1) & occupation of target audience. Possibly orienta
tion.
-PHSYCOGRAPHICS
Often in lots of detail, naming and creating a person.
Personality of readers.
eg. "NME readers are influential's when it comes to mobile phones." and the knowledge from NME makes them "the authority in music in their peer group."
Values, qualities, attitudes, interests, beliefs.
eg. "They tend to buy a new DVD every month (higher than the national average)"
- Then circulation and readership sizes.


- Media companies mostly hire outside media researchers to do the research eg. Nielson


SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCH
(i.e. Facebook)
[from accessed 9/9/10 Social media research article www. nma . co . uk]

- Which? estimates social media research costs a tenth of postal questionnaires, but of course is only of benefit to companies whose target audiences are in touch with social media.

- Near-instant feedback for minimal cost.

- Coca'cola are an example of a company who are actively using and engaging in social media for research
“The beauty of social media is that it’s so instant and, particularly for youth, you can talk directly to people using their language and where they increasingly socialise and live their lives,” -head of planning Beth Corte Real.
- Dell also use social media to get a better idea of what their consumers want
“The great thing about social media research is it’s two-way and instant,” she says. “...we feel it’s the perfect medium to ask questions and open the floor to suggestions.”
- Can be particularly useful for SMALL COMPANIES WITH FEW RESEARCH RESOURCES as social media research is simple and very cheap.

The article says " While face-to-face research, which can reach a wider demographic, is unlikely to be replaced, the interactivity offered by social media looks set to continue attracting companies of all sizes." though it could be said that as everyone gradually moves online that social media will be able to cover the majority of demographics and will eventually become one of the most used methods of research.

To summarise it is:
- Very quick
- Economically viable (cheap!)
- Two way

but

- doesn't reach all demographics
- can't tell you everything you need to know