Audience Categroisation

Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media texts, they will spend a great deal of time and money ascertaining if there is anyone out there who might be interested in their idea. By doing categorising audiences it helps the media industry know who they are targeting. There are three ways of categorising: Demographic, Geographic, Psychographic profiling.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic are the characteristics of the population, which are normally used in market research to that you know who you are aiming you media product at. So common ones are:

v     genre

v     age

v     race

v     income

v     disabilities

Age: at different ages peoples needs and wants change compared to other people of different ages. This is why businesses create things to target different age groups for example nappies for babies, toys for children, clothes for teenagers and so on.

Gender: is normally used when advertising products. When marketing the product the business has to think who the product is more suitable for. For example women are going to prefer cosmetics more than men, and men are going to prefer fast cars more than women. So when applying this to a film by adding in gender pacific things this can appeal to their potential audience, or if wanting to appeal to both men and women the film should include unisex subjects and/or both gender specific products/activities.

Psychographic profiling

Psychographics marketing involves dividing potential customers into groups, according to their psychological characteristics such as personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. Most marketing involves certain demographics, which refers to factors such as the age, location, marital status, ethnicity and religion of the person in question. Psychographics goes beyond demographics to ask questions on their lifestyles, behaviour and attitude of the person to build up a more detailed picture of who they are. This then gives us an idea of the type of people which will watch certain genres of films.

When a profile of a person or group's psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a "psychographic profile".

Psychographic profiling can include:

v     Life style

v     Personality

v     Values

v     Attitude

v     Interests

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides markets into geographical areas. We use geographic segmentation because people in different areas show different characteristics and behaviours in a particular area than people in other areas. An area can be divided by the town, the region or the country. By doing this if you wanted to target a pacific country or town to show your film you can do geographical research to see what that area prefers more. This saves you having to try to make your film appeal to a wider audience when you are not even targeting them.
Geographic segmentation can include:

v     Political views

v     Different climates

v     Population numbers