1. PRIMARY RESEARCH INTO THE
WANTS/NEEDS OF MY TARGET
AUDIENCE
By Kirsty Steward

2. For this task I will identify what my target audience
actually wants within the media they view and to do
this I will gain information from primary research such
as questionnaires/ focus groups or interviews.
However there are advantages and disadvantages
with each type of primary research.

3. QUESTIONNARE
This form of primary research is good as it presents a
fixed set of answers to pick from (excluding open-
answered questions), it’s relatively quick, information
can be displayed in data forms such as charts and it
allows the researcher to get a large proportion of data
if given to a large group of people.
Yet the disadvantages are that open-ended questions
can produce large amounts of data that take a long
time to analyse, people usually find questionnaires
tiring to fill out, some answers may be false and this
cannot be proven and no emotion real can be
conveyed from the audience.

4. INTERVIEW
Some advantages of this are that the research is
much more personal so more in depth responses can
be given and more detailed questions can be asked,
there is a higher response rate compared to other
forms of research and the researcher can feel
comfortable not having to present themselves to a
large group. The disadvantages of interviews are that
they are very time consuming and few interviews
won’t be a good representation of a larger audience
and results may be interpreted in different ways.

5. INTERVIEW
The advantages of this primary research are that it is
quicker than an interview as people do not need to be
interviewed separately, emotion can be clearly seen if
recorded e.g. through body language and facial
expressions which make answers more effective and the
researcher can actually interact with the audience to gain
information through a more engaging experiences.
However the disadvantages are that if the focus group is
small then their answers may not be representative of the
whole target audience as the data isn’t
proportional, people of the focus group may just answer
the same as their peers as they may feel pressured to give
similar answers and the researcher’s ability to phrase
questions and setting may affect the audiences results.

6. For my research into what my target audience wants I
will be using a focus group and some questionnaires.
This way I can engage with my target audience and
get more personal and opinionated answers from
them when using the focus group and then the
questionnaire can fill the gaps and provide me with
data that can be displayed on graphs and be a good
representation of a larger audience than just a focus
group.

7. QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS
Question 1: What media do you use on a day-to-
day basis?
Internet – 8/8
Magazines – 1/8
TV – 3/8
Images - 4/8
Music – 6/8
Other – 0/8

8. Question 2 :How often do you use media in a day?
10-30 minutes – 0/8
1 – 2 hours – 1/8
2 – 5 hours 5/8
5+ Hours 2/8
Question 3:
What do you enjoy about the media in which you use?
Entertaining – 7/8
Relaxing – 4/8
Informative – 2/8
Inspiring – 5/8
Other – 0/8

9. Question 4:
What aspects of media do you enjoy?
Genre – 2/8
Imaging – 5/8
Editing – 3/8
Sound – 7/8
Narrative – 2/8
Other - 0/8

10. Question 5:
If you could choose, what more would you want
from the media that you use?
(Open-ended question)
When asked this question, my target audience’s
response overall was that they wanted it to be faster,
have less advertisement and more free content. For
example one answer was ‘More access to free media’
and another was ‘Faster internet’

11. Question 6:
Our idea for our own Thriller film is a classic murder investigation
film. Our idea consists of a group of adolescent teenagers, who
go on a camping trip. Their trip however takes a turn for the
worse as a psychotic killer murders one of their friends. The rest
of the story revolves around the solving of the case and the
capture of the criminal as well as focusing on the feelings of the
main characters, which will most probably be one of the
students/teenagers and a FBI agent solving the case. We will
only be producing an opening sequence.
How would you rate our idea out of 10?
10/10 – 1
9/10 – 2
8/10 – 1
7/10 – 3
6/10 – 1

12. Question 7:
In your opinion, how could we make our idea
better and what things could we change to
improve it?
(Open-Ended question)
When I asked my target audience how they thought
our idea cold be better, the overall response was that
we needed to add something into the story to make it
more original and less predictable, for example a twist
of events. Here is an example of an answer I got
back. ‘Maybe add a twist to the storyline to make it a
bit different.’

13. Question 8:
We plan to stick to the common codes and
conventions of the Thriller genre so that our film
represents that of a classic Thriller film.
Do you agree that this is a good idea?
Strongly Agree – 0/8
Agree – 5/8
Not sure – 2/8
Disagree – 1/8
Strongly Disagree –0/8