Unit 6 Task 1: Defining Audiences for Products

There are a range of techniques you can use to define an audience for certain products and concepts.

Quantitative Research

When you are applying quantitative research the questions you ask are often narrow yes or no answers. Your findings rely heavily on numerical data and quantitative research is often done by a form of surveying asking people on the street to answer a few questions, knocking on doors or even by telephone calls. The major disadvantages to this method is that most people you approach will find you an annoyance, and circumstances can lead to them not answering correctly or rushing through without much thought. An advantage to this method is that as the results can be so general you can devise them to your will and can make your product look better or persuade new audiences to look at your product.
For example.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research on the other hand asks questions that are broader and provides unstructured answers that provides the 'why' and not the 'how'. It is set up in focus groups targeting a certain demographic within a relaxing environment usually with incentives for the interviewees. This makes them feel more open to answering questions which results to more detailed and well thought through answers. A disadvantage to this method of research is that your results are not defined and can be messy and time consuming to analyze manually.

Audience Profiling

Audience Profiling allows the researcher to find out the audience they want to interview before hand, so they can specify the exact questions they want to ask and put across the right message to the right audience.
 It might include details like age, sex, educational qualification, work experience, financial background, field of work, interests, mood, orientation, bias, food habits, religious background, physique, health condition etc.
It can be oraginised  by demographic

You can also use psychographs to understand the audiences behaviour and personality traits. They label a particular type of persons and assess their views and spending habits. They put the audiences into groups that suggest their position in society.

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