Research

Qualitative Research - Qualitative research is one of the two main types of research (the other being quantitative) it goes into more detail than quantitative research. It's basically finding out how well things such as your TV programmes are doing but in the form of words instead of numbers which is the case with quantitative. It is mainly opinions and comparisons which helps media companies know what people like about it as well as what they could improve and also what programmes people think it's similar to. Qualititative research comes mainly from reviews and other things for people to express their opinions on such as forums. Qualitative research can also come from books and magazines and other things like that. Qualitative research is probably the biggest type of research in terms of decision making for media companies.

Quantitative Research - Quantitative research is the second main type of research. Quantitative research is research is more number and statistic based than qualitative research and can be done a lot by surveys and polls and similar things. Another way to get quantitative research is to use secondary research and visit websites such as BARB or cinema websites to find things out such as ratings and sales on film tickets. Things such as sales on products like DVD's and CD's are examples of quantitative research and it gives simple statistics and number rather than detailed information. Media companies use this type of research to find out how successful their films/tv programmes are doing by looking at the ratings/box office sales/dvd sales and see if they're in need of improvement or cancellation. Basically an example of quantitative research would be knowing how many people watch your program, but not knowing what kind of people watch your program.

Primary Research - Primary research is a method of research which is done to obtain to new information that hasn't already been done and can't be found elsewhere, research done by yourself. The main techniques to obtain primary research is things such as questionnaires where you ask people to fill out questions which help you find out the information. There are other methods too such as surveys, interviews, vox pops and focus groups which all help you find information about certain things. The main purposes of primary research is to help media companies find out more about their products. For example for a TV program, they could conduct a survey to find out something like what audience the program appeals to most e.g. women, men, children etc. They could use this information in future episodes of the TV show and make it so it appeals to a larger audience so they get more viewings on the show. They could also find out something like who the viewers favourite character is and include more of the character with the most votes to help them get more viewers. It's also more reliable than secondary research because it's done by yourself so you know it's not made up and the techniques of doing primary research ask the audience which makes it more accurate. The disadvantages of primary research are that it requires more time, you would have to take the time to ask questions/hand out questionnaires and you would have to find the right people to ask for what you want to find out as well. It is also quite expensive because questionnaires cost money to print, video equipment, hiring people to do research for you and more.

Secondary Research - Secondary research is research done by looking at what other people have done in the past. Finding out information from things such as books, magazines, websites, videos and more are all examples of secondary research. Primary research techniques such as surveys and interviews can also be used as secondary research if done by another person and the results are used in your own work. It can be used to find out more than you could with primary research because primary research can only be done by yourself and it's difficult to find a lot of things out whereas with secondary research you can read articles from all over the world to find out information and other people may find out information that you can't. If you were a media company you could also find out information about similar programmes to one or a few of the ones you broadcast to see how successful they are. The biggest flaw with secondary research is that it could easily be unreliable or false and because you've not done it yourself you won't know. Another advantage with secondary research is that it tends not to cost as much to do because you can just simply go on the internet or read a book whereas with primary research, if you're a media company, you'd have to pay someone within your company and questionnaires would cost you money to make as well as maybe video recording equipment for interviews and vox pops.

Audience Research - Audience research is basically doing research on the target audience for a certain TV program or film, e.g the target audience for something like Balamory would be young children so audience research would be doing research into young children, finding out what they like to see in a program and possibly looking at other programs with the same target audience to see what's included in them and what's not. It is also about finding out how many people within your target audience watch TV and how many people there are in the country of that age group as well as how interested they are in watching television, for example, if a program is aimed at adults, it would be stupid to put it on at 1PM on a weekday because most adults will be working so they would put it on later at night when most adults would be at home. This will help a lot of media companies because they know how to get more viewers within their target audience because they know what appeals to them and it helps them to know when to air a program so it will get the most viewers possible. The research could be done by doing surveys asking people if they watch the program and what age they are to find out the most popular age group that watch it and they can find out what appeals to their audience by watching other TV programs/films to see what they've included. It could also be done to expand the audience for a particular program/film.

Market Research - Market research is basically doing research into their target market such as if they release a product which is a games device, they would do some research into the games/games device market to find out what a product requires to be successful within that market. They also try to find out who the other competitors in that market are, for example Xbox's main competitors within the games market would be the PS3 because they are both from the same generation and similar in many ways. It is helpful to companies because they find out what other successful products have that make them successful as well as what is required to be successful in that market and will ultimately lead to their products being successful in their target market. Market research could be done simply by looking at other products within that market and looking at specific features which most of the products have in common. It could also be done by handing out surveys and asking something like what features should be included on a games device and seeing what the most popular answers are and seeing if it would fit in that market. It could also be done to research similar markets and potentially enter their product into more than one market.

Production Research - Production research would be done after audience and market research providing both went successfully. A media company may choose to release a media product within the target market that they've researched, aimed at the target audience they have researched. Production research would be researching things to help them make the product such as what technology, personnel, material etc they would need and then see what they have. It is also finding out what skills would be needed to make the product such as being able to use a certain computer program in order to create their product and what personnel they have with those skills, they would also find out if they need to hire someone else to use it if no one they have can. Production research can also be finding out suitable recording/production locations for their product. It can also be planning out time to work on the product and what will be done at what times and things like that to keep it organised. Overall it is basically just doing a lot of research into what they need to make a product and compare it to what they have and just other things they would need to research in order to make production run a lot more smoothly than it might do if the research hadn't been done.