Research

1. Research By Gareth Ward

2. The Purpose Of Research Within a Business Research within a business is everything, it is key to a successful product and is key to a successful company, one of the main reasons behind this is us, the customer. Without customers a business is nothing, and that is why they essentially need to meet our demands and please the majority, this is why they have to put research into what we want and how we want it, as its useless creating a product that we simply don’t want or like. If a company did not research before creating a product it would most likely end up out there within the market, get a large amount of bad review and simply discarded and forgotten about, because it might not have been something we needed or it might not have done it in a good way. Companies are built on research, and without it not much would get done.

3. Methods Of Research Primary Research: Primary research is research that is conducted by yourself, examples of primary research are; • Surveys, Surveys are good because they allow you to collect data quickly and from a large audience however, they are generally closed questions meaning that you don’t gather opinions, and generally collect yes or no answers • Polls,Polls allow you to collect data quickly and from a large audience however, Polls are generally voting on specific things such as, which of the two are better? A or B this means that you only gather of what you ask and nothing more due to the questions being closed. Interviews, One to one interviews can be an extremely useful way into finding out in detail what someone thinks of your product, this is a great way of truly finding out exactly what you need to know. The bad side is, Interviews take a rather long time to get done and wouldn’t allow you to cover many people like a poll would. An interview could be used to find out what a customer thinks to the new branding scheme, you would be able to find out in detail what they like and dislike and what they think would be better. Secondary Research: Secondary research is research that has been collected for you, such as; • Wikipedia, Wikipedia hosts a large amount of information, allowing you to find out practically anything you need to know however, Wikipedia allows any user to edit their data, meaning that not everything is true, and can be considered rather unreliable. • Books, Books are great sources of information, and can be considered rather reliable depending on the authors, however, books go out of date and new information is discovered everyday, so a book published in 2010 probably isn’t going to be reliable in 2014. • Data collection agencies such as BARB, Data collection agencies such as BARB, are extremely useful and effective companies, they allow you to get large amounts of information from a large audience, basically so you don’t have to collect the information yourself. A bad point about data collection agencies is that they probably aren’t going to be cheap, and the data might not be 100% reliable.

4. Types Of Research • Quantitative: Quantitative research is research that is generally based around numbers and percentages. Examples being; • Polls, Polls are essentially just numbers, a certain percentage of the population voted this and another percentage of the population voted that. These could be considered extremely efficient ways to finding out straight forward things such as how many of the population prefer chicken over beef. A company could use this to find out which flavor of there noodles there customers prefer. • Tallies, tallies are generally used for simple counting, such as the number of people who enter a supermarket during 1-2, this generally requires an observer who will count the number of people entering the building, and add it to the tally. • View counts, View counts are essentially the count of how many people watched a specific show or movie in a certain time period, an example being Batman The Dark Knight Rises had 50,635,700 viewers from release in the cinema to 08.22.12. View counts are extremely important for a business as they allow you to find out how well a film has done, and it shows that people generally look to watching those types of films.

5. Qualitative • Qualitative: Qualitative data is things such as opinions and isn’t really based around statistics, this form of data allows more of an in depth idea of what people actually think of your products. • Focus groups, Focus groups are great as they allow to you to find opinions about your products, not just yes or no answers. Focus groups can also be considered rather bad, due to the fact they generally consist of about 6 people, this means you are basing your product of the opinions of 8-10 individuals, which will be representing the audience they fit into, such as the aged 60+ audience. • Observation, Observation is a great way of finding out what somebody thinks by just looking at how they react to it, an example being a new child’s toy. Once the toy has been given to the child its reactions would give you an answer, such as if the child laughs at it this would be a good response but the child might not even touch it this being a bad response. The issue with observation is it doesn’t allow you to find out in detail what people think, which is why it’s probably best used on kids who aren’t old enough to speak yet as their reaction is all you are getting from them. • Questionnaire, a Questionnaire is probably the easiest way of collecting someone’s opinions about your product, as long as the questions are worded correctly, then you can find out exactly what you want from a large target audience. The problem with questionnaire’s however is that they give you only the information that you ask for, and it might not be given in high detail. An example of a questionnaire would be a company simply asking their clients what they think about their service, the client could simply respond telling them what they think and what they could change.

6. Data Gathering Agencies • Data gathering agencies are essentially companies whose trade is information, information such as View counts, sales and best sellers. This is the information that other companies want to find out, as it allows them to base their future products around these figures.Examples of Data gathering agencies are: • BARB (Broadcasters audience research board), BARB is a data collection agency that focuses on TV such as the most popular programmes on a specific date, they do this by commissioning specialist research companies to collect the data that represent the TV viewing behavior of the Uk’s Households, this information allows companies to assess how programmes and channels are doing. • NDC (Nationwide Data Collection), NDC is another data collection company that specialises in much more than just TV viewings, things such as Video surveys and analysis, Manual traffic counts and pedestrian counts and interviews. NDC collect the information they require by essentially having an army of staff with office based all around the UK, this allows them not only to cover such a area area but also a large mixture of audiences • How they are useful: • Data collection agencies are useful within basically any industry as information is key to making good decisions, however within the creative media industry they can be extremely useful as they allow you to essentially get the information which will put you ahead of your competition which is key to making profits and surviving within the industry today. An example of this could be that with the help of one of these companies you can find a gap within the market which has not been exploited yet, which means there is no competition and within the creative media industry this might as well be a gold mine if done correctly. This gap could be a TV programme, a new sauce or even a new toy. The data collection companies could even help you refine this new product by collecting information on your customers and finding out if they enjoyed it or not.

7. Purpose Of Research • Audience profiling: Audience profiling is a task that is required before creating a new product, this is essentially a profile on your target audience, it could contain things such as Age, Gender, Race, Income and Sexuality, these are all things that you will have to take into account. These are all things that throughout the creation of your product, will have to be constantly kept in mind to make sure your hitting your target audience. An example could be if a new toy was being released for kids, the profile could be; Age: 5-10 Gender: Male Likes: Batman, Superheroes and so on, this would allow the company to keep in mind there audience is young and Male and like batman, so there product might want to either copy Batman or be Batman. • Demographics: Demographics is whereby you essentially categorise a section within the population using certain attributes, such as income, gender and habits. An example of this could be the Single mother group, a company who are wanting to create a product for single mother would be looking towards the single mother demographic which could contain attributes such as; Age: 18-21 Job Status: Unemployed and so on, using this demographics they could base there product around them. • Geodemographic: Geographics is more towards looking at the area instead of specific groups, such as the area Darrington will have a higher income than the area Chequerfield. While Demographics refer to the attributes of a population, Geodemographic’s look more towards where they live.

8. Audience Research • Audience Research: Psychographics is essentially the study of opinions, personality, attitudes and lifestyles of either an individual or an area. An example of this could be if you wanted to create a new product for a specific target audience, you would have to perform some psychographics research into finding out what your audience is like, and what they like to do, with this information you might be able to discover a useful product they will appreciate. • Audience research as a whole is whereby the company would use Audience profiling, Demographics and psychographics to find out the information they need about their target audience. This is key within business’s today as the research will let them know what their audience is like allowing you to create a product suited to there needs, which should sell well.

9. Market Research: • Market research differs from audience research, as instead of looking at your customers, you are looking at your competition. Market research is whereby you would put research into the current market, looking for things such as gaps in the market, best sellers and how you competition is doing. This form of information is rather key if you wish to stay ahead in the constantly moving market of today, you could locate a gap within the market and be the first to exploit it by creating a new product for this specific gap, this means you would have no competition sales for a brief time, making you money and putting you ahead of the competition. • An example of a rather competitive market today, would be the console market, each company will have to put massive amounts of research into the other companies products and sales to see if they are required to make any changes to their own products or marketing scheme.

10. Production Research • Production research differs from market research as its to do with the actual creating of your product, this could contain things such as part costs, packaging costs, labour costs and more. Costs such as these is mainly where a company makes it money, as they make their product for as cheap as possible and sells them at much higher prices. • An example of this would be Apple and their phones, the iPhone 5s costs Apple at least $121.93 to make and were sold on release for £539. • It’s rather key for companies to put so much research into the competition, as they might even be getting there labour or parts for cheaper, meaning they can sell their devices for cheaper, which is obviously better for the customer but also for the companies image.