The purpose and nature of research in the creative media

The Purpose and Nature of Research in the Creative Media

Explain the Purpose of research:
The purpose of research in the creative media sector is to help collect information that can help with planning and potential profits to a product that is currently in production.

Focusing on the importance of audience research:

Market: When creating a product it is important to check the market to see whether or not the product is suited towards it, if the market is doing well with products in that specific area and whether or not people are buying in that market.

• Trends: In marketing the most important thing is to make sure your product is in the right trend (which is the most popular at the moment). So you need to research the most popular trends in products in order to find what will be the best trend to place your product in, then remake it towards that trend.
• Age: It is most important to find the correct age when making a product, it depends on what style it is and what kind of product it is as well such as a new kind of game or a bike.
• Gender: Gender is one of the most important for a product, say if you were to make a new kind of car it depends on what gender it is targeted at such as the F series of range rovers.

Audience: Research into the audience is crucial when making a product, because when making your product it has appeal to a distinct audience so it will sell well to said audience.

• Getting an Audience: Getting an audience is one of the difficult parts of the job, the best way to find an audience is to ask college students, give leaflets requesting people to come and asking some people that you know.

Production: When working on a production, many things have to be taken into consideration, such as budget, location, Legal and ethical, forms that need signing and who will be employed as part of that production. 

• Budget: Budget is where you need to focus on what you will need like equipment, actors and how to pay the, so you will need to figure out how much these things will cost and determine what option is most cost effective.
• Location: for any subject of media whether it is news, documentary or a film it is always important to have the proper location, you need to complete the proper paper work to secure a specific location that has what you require for filming.
• Legal and Ethical: In any production you will usually run into these problems, meaning what you should do and what is the right thing to do by the law.
• Forms: All paper work needs to be filled in advance before you even think of doing your work. this is a key part of production planning and needs to be done first.
• Employees: Employees are the most important part of any plans in production because you might not be able to all of what you have planned by yourself.

Primary Research: Primary Research is where you make the results, data and statistics your self from questions "you" ask others through various focus groups, survey and questionnaires that you hand out. The purpose of these methods is to gather data and determine which is the best market to put the product you are having questioned in order to determine where it belongs in the market and what age is suited to and who would want to by it.

Face to Face Interview:

• Advantages: People are less likely to lie in a interview because it will go on record and it will define whether or not you get a job.
• Disadvantages: You can't control what they like or don't like about the you it is really just a gamble even when you when you are qualified.
• Example: The best example of a face to face interview would be an interview for a product and whether or not a person thinks it is good or for a film role.

Focus Group:

• Advantages: You can get honest feedback based on what people think.
• Disadvantages: You Can get very different answers based on other people's interpretations.
• Example: A good example is a focus group that are reviewing a pilot for a new television series, there is a chance that they might like it, but it all depends on what they think.

Questionnaire:

• Advantages: It can be more resourceful to get data from a questionnaire and it allows you to be commented on your work as well.
• Disadvantages: The results from some answered questions can be more complex then you think, such as receiving double the answer for the same question, not answering some of the questions and writing down a comment in multiple chice which just needs a straight answer.
• Example: An example for this would be questionnaires on the internet that ask people what are their favourite shows.

Secondary Research: With Secondary Research you take your data and results from more than one source such as people or books and the internet, then gather the results together into your research. You can even use this form of research towards your work online through online surveys in order to get the results for your product may be on the international circuit. The purpose of this is the same as primary research, forwarding the results of your product and finding out what markets it belongs in and what type consumer will be buy it.

Library Research:

• Advantages: One of the advantages is that you can get different interpretations on the same subject which can allow you to see it from any point of view.
• Disadvantages: The answers that you find may not be up to date and could be some what questionable.
• Examples: An example of this is when writing a review on a book or doing research for an article that could be about a certain event.

Internet Search:

• Advantages: Its faster, it allows you to get the answers from people in different regions.
• Disadvantages: Not all answers are correct so it is better to find multiple answers on the subject and then find out which is the most likely to be true.
• Example: For basic information, such as when checking a news article.

Online Survey:

• Advantages: Allows you to communicate your idea's with more people which can help you develop a product with people who agree with the idea's you have come up with.
• Disadvantages: Some people that you send them out to may not answer and you might get low results due to this.
• Examples: They now use online surveys on Youtube to check what they like to watch.

Quantitative Data: This is based on quantities of information and looks at it in statistics and mathematical results such as the results from a questionnaire, answers to a certain question online and the results in a bar chart.

• Advantages: Looking at the mathematical results and statistics can help towards finding a target audience and maybe the age and gender of the people you would like to sell a product to.
• Disadvantages:it doesn't give the preferences of the people, so it means that jut because a lot of people are watching something, does not mean that they like, I mean it could the case that someone left the television on and nobody's watching it, so this means that the numbers may not always be right.

Qualitative Data: This is used to organize and identify different opinions such as when one person likes an Idea and the other one doesn't so it is all working which is liked the most.

• Advantages: Other people's opinions are important and can help you towards developing a product based those opinions.
• Disadvantages: The disadvantage of this is the advantage as well because of some many different opinions it can be hard to tell which is best for the product you are making.