Audience research is essentially any research conducted on a specific sample (i.e. the audience!) in order to find out about their attitudes, behaviours and habits – i.e. to understand them. The sample can be made up of any group of interest – whether this is nationally representative, or focused on a particular age, gender, region, ethnicity etc. The definition of ‘audience’ is important, but changeable. Show
The purpose of audience research is to answer a range of business questions, such as to find out what interests them, who influences them, what problems they have, what they think of existing products or how they feel about branding and service. Audience understanding research helps companies communicate with their audience and integrate their views and opinions into their products and services. The difference between audience research and market researchQuite often ‘audience research’ is confused with ‘market research’. The main difference between the two is that audience research is conducted on specific audience (people) segments to obtain information about them. On the other hand, market research is conducted to gather information about the market within which the product or service aimed at the audience operates in. It can include competitors, pricing, PEST analysis etc. However, the phrase ‘market research’ is commonly used as the term to encompass both types of work. Audience understanding vs audience researchAudience understanding and audience research is, in effect, one and the same. It can come in many guises with audience understanding being the bed rock of techniques such as customer discovery programmes, customer insight programmes, influencer mapping, UX or customer experience reviews, innovation research and so on. Reviews of non-users is also considered to be audience research or understanding. Importance of audience research
Defining the audience research problemWhen designing an audience research project it’s always useful to distil your business problem into a single sentence and check that each question goes some way to answering it. Ask yourself what am I ultimately trying to achieve? What do I need to know to make a difference to what I’m already doing or I’m aware of? Matching the audience with the right questionsIt is crucial to ask your sample audience the right questions if you want to get relevant, useable outcomes. There are a few demographics to keep in mind when conducting audience research, some of which include: age, gender, education, income, region etc. They tend to be objective labels. They are often called standard demographic questions. Demographic question are often used at the beginning of the survey to make sure you are talking to the right people. They can be used for screening out those considered not relevant. Knowing these traits and characteristics will help you make sure you’re asking a relevant group of people. For instance, if an independent school asks those who don’t have children about their views on school entrance criteria and the appeal of extracurricular activities, it will give irrelevant results. That group will not be making decisions about which school to attend; hence they’ll end up with the opinions of people who have little influence of the final decision and design marketing collateral to appeal to the wrong people. Whilst demographics are clearly required to ensure a relevant sample, they are also frequently used during analysis to dissect results and narrow down the sample into smaller groups (e.g. those with one child vs. those with multiple) Choosing the right audience research questionsThere are generally two types of research:
With historical research, more descriptive and analytical research design is needed. Whereas with predictive research, questions need to be designed in order to connect A with B and make associations which often requires more stimulus and/or qualitative questioning techniques. Examples of audience research questionsEvery project is of course unique, but there is often commonality among the themes explored. Besides demographic descriptors, typical areas might be:
Types of audience research methods
Types of primary and secondary researchQuantitative audience research – Research focusing on statistics and facts rather than emotions, for instance questionnaires/surveys.
Qualitative audience research – More open research in the form of telephone, face to face or Skype interviews, often focusing more on feelings and emotions rather than collecting numbers. These techniques are more in depth compared to surveys
Social media analytics – A post on social media can reach millions of followers within seconds, hence observing the analytics of your social media feed is useful. This can be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Quantitative in terms of the sheer scale (an example of big data) and qualitative in terms of ‘free range’ responses to any given question. Bulletin boards or chat room/forums – This can also be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Quantitative in terms of the sheer scale at times (either by virtue of length of programme, or number of members) and qualitative in terms of ‘free range’ responses to any open questions. How to choose the right audience research method for your projectIn order to achieve valuable audience research, it is important to first think about what you are trying to find out and what type of data you will need to present useful insights i.e. qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic or observational.
Sampling techniquesPicking the right sampling technique is crucial in order to get a population representative of the people you are trying to understand or influence. There are several sampling techniques that you can choose from, of which we have detailed five below:
Avoiding sampling biasSampling bias can be created when certain individuals are less likely to be picked or vice versa. This can often happen if the wrong sampling method has been chosen, or you don’t have access to the full sample universe. There are two ways you can reduce such bias:
Audience research advantagesThe main strength of audience research is that you are confident that the campaign or claims that you have published are directly relevant to your target audience, as they are from the demographics that you are aiming towards. Hence, you are at some level assured that, for instance, the product or service that you are introducing or have modified will be well received by the target population. Another positive is that it helps to somewhat confirm thoughts, emotions and general ideas of your audience. Maintaining a relationship with your customer base is crucial and audience research provides you with the feedback that you require to meet customer needs. The range of audience research techniques is an advantage as it allows you to completely tailor the research to your need. If you want more detailed information, you can go for qualitative methods, whereas if you want statistics then you can go for quantitative. Finally, depending on the method you choose, audience research can be very time-efficient. Audience research disadvantagesAs successful as audience research can be, it does have a few limitations. One such limitation might be not defining the audience sufficiently enough. As a result you may end up with respondents who are not fully relevant or representative of your target audience. Although you will receive valid results, the findings will not be representative of your target audience and thus will be of limited, or no use. It’s also essential to be clear from the outset about the research aims and what you want to get out of the research. Without this you get carried away with the ‘while we are there let’s ask them this’. In this case you will again end up with valid results but it might not give you any usable insight, rather it might replicate what you already know or didn’t need to know in the first place. Adding extra ‘want to know’ questions also risks diluting the respondents concentration (and thus response quality). – Good, firm stakeholder management can be an antidote to this, as can the ruthless application to each question of ‘so what if I know this?’ Audience understanding research checklist
And here are a few more things to think about when setting up an audience understanding project:
Table 1 – Do’s and don’ts of audience understanding research Audience research in practiceAudience research is a huge part of businesses and is used widely across all sectors to improve their brand. A few examples include: Lego – After research, the company found that just 9% of the consumers were female, which resulted in them developing products that would be more appealing to girls. McDonald’s – Following research, it was identified that a common question was regarding serving healthy or organic food. They then decided to incorporate healthier options and launched campaigns to show where their meat is reared. Nest – Nest is another innovative company which bases its decisions on customer surveys, asking questions on functioning of current products and how they can improve them. Flight Club – A modern experiential social club who informed both its offering and launch strategy through audience understanding Audience research is essential to stay relevant to your customer base and be an innovative and successful company.What the researcher is trying to determine has changed or not is called the?The independent variable (IV) in psychology is the characteristic of an experiment that is manipulated or changed by researchers, not by other variables in the experiment. For example, in an experiment looking at the effects of studying on test scores, studying would be the independent variable.
Which of the following statements concerning the use of fear appeals is not supported by research?Which statement concerning the use of fear appeals is not supported by research? Fear appeals are generally less effective than messages that do not provoke fear.
Is observing and copying another person's body language and is a form of?Mirroring is behavior that copies the words and gestures of another person during communication with them.
Which of the following examples best shows how expectations can be self fulfilling prophecies?Which of the following examples best shows how expectations (i.e., schemas) can be self-fulfilling prophecies? Teachers who expect that some children will do well in school actually lead those children to perform better.
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