Task 5:Methods of Research
It is important to conduct research before starting a new advertisement campaign because if you have done research, someone else's research for an advert campaign that has been researched could be the same and possibilities you can be sued for a lot of money. That's why it is good to be creative to come up with an advertisement.
There are different types of research for three different purposes such as:
Audience Research: the audience research includes Descriptive Research:describes your audience and their characteristics, Analytical Research: seeks to understand 'what' and 'why' and what motivates the audience, Predictive Research: this considers the 'what if' situations for example what will happen if the company changes their name and lastly Tracking Research: long term research that monitors changes taking place over time; for example, how has the pattern subscription season ticket sales changed for the past couple of years.
The stages for Audience Research is:
Target Audience: describe and define the target audience.
Plan: plan your research
Research: collect the data
Analyse: what did you find out?
Apply: use evidence in your own advert.
Another thing that can be used for audience research is interviewing people.
The Pros of this is that using this can really help businesses make a good advertisement, this is because if a business was to use the stages for the target audience; they can make their advert campaign as best as it can be. The cons of this is that, lets say someone was to hold a interview about this advert campaign the cons would be that; you would need to consume time to interview with enough people and while interviewing people, the interviewer can make the interviewee uncomfortable.
Market Research: when it comes to market research, successful companies are interested in what the market looks like, they are aware who their competition are and they are driven by the potential revenue (growth potential). Successful companies ask these questions, 'what other products are on the market?', 'How competitive are our prices?' and 'what is our unique selling point?'. The pros with the market research is that, for a business it is to see where they are and how they can elevate themselves to another stage. The cons of this is that this research can be expensive and will consume a lot of time.
Production Research: if the market research goes as well as the audience research then a media company might decide to launch a new product. This type of research to allow a company to develop the product and ensure the process runs smoothly. For a company to make an advertisement, they would need equipment such as high definition cameras, headphones etc. The company would need to hire a scriptwriter, actor and a crew. The pros of this is that if the company has the budget for everything to produce the advertisement, then the ad can possibly turn out to be a great and memorable one for the audience to view. The cons of this is that if they are really desperate to produce this ad they could end up on debt if they don't have enough budget the company could end up in serious trouble. Another thing is that if the advert doesn't come out a success the company, a lot of budget would be wasted.
There are 4 different types of research:
Primary Research is when an organisation conducts themselves to find the answers to specific questions. This can be used for questionnaires, surveys, internet forums and interviews or group research. An advantage of this is that it enables the marketer to have higher control over how the information is collected. A disadvantage of this is that the research could waste a lot of time, and it can be expensive to collect data, because data has to be collected independently without any help from previously existing data and it can take a lot of money.
Secondary Research is when information that has been mentioned outside is used, a word for this is called second hand. This is used for magazines, newspapers and newsletters. The advantages of this is that it is easy to do because of the already existing data. The disadvantages of this is that the research may not be honest or accurate also you may not know who did the research.
Quantitative Research can be shown as a set of numbers, can be displayed as charts and graphs and it can be measured. In quantitative research questionnaires are usually used. The advantages of quantitative research is that you can have a large sample of data and its relatively easy to administer. The disadvantages of this is that its hard to design a questionnaire that finds out exactly what you want.
Qualitative Research is all about peoples thoughts and feelings. The good thing about this research is, you can ask subsidiary questions. The downfall of this is that it doesn't ensure accuracy in the same way as the quantitative research.
