Research and development

Task 2 – Research and development

When it comes to researching there are many forms of research that is taken by the media industries. The 2 types of research used is market research and production research. Market research is where you gather any valuable information you can find and then you use it to target your own market. Market research is important because it is all about gathering information about your consumers need and preferences. Production research in media is important because the company wants to make sure they save money because the project they are making would be really expensive. There is a lot of production research to be done like, staff, cast, equipment, location, risk assessments, props etc. All of this research is done to save the most amount of money on the project and to make the most amount of profit the company can.  One way of a researching is by using questionnaires. This is because they are usually short and snappy and don’t take long to fill in. Also questionnaires are used for large populations. Also, surveys are used to carry out research. These are ideal because surveys gather data about people’s needs and desires. Surveys are carried out on individual people so you will always get a precise answer from the person taking the survey. Although questionnaire’s have advantages they also have huge disadvantages. The main disadvantage is customers and the general public may not be 100% truthful when they come to answer which won’t give the correct information that is required.  They may be dishonest because they may be bias or they may be trying to protect their privacy. Stopping dishonesty is an option by telling the respondents that their privacy is valued and that the questionnaire protects their personal information. Another great research method is taking interviews which is direct face to face. This has a lot of advantages because this method is reliable. This is because the interviewer has full control over the interview and is able to keep the other person focused and on track to give the answers that are required for the research. Face to face interviews are in exact moment and the interviewer is able to capture the other person’s emotions to identify if they are being honest. Also, chatting to the other person face to face is excellent as you can talk about what is required for the research. Although, there is a lot of advantages this research method is probably the most time consuming because you have to interview individual people one by one which could take time but often leads to accurate and useful results. Another great way research method is focus groups. This is a method where you gather certain people who you think would be confident to participate in a planned discussion that talks about a certain topic in this case it would be about advertisement. Focus group have advantages over other research methods like surveys etc., this is because there is multiple people that are talking and influencing each other on different ideas. The person that organised the focus group can then note down many ideas that are being talked about. Also, because there is different people in the focus group the ideas can be totally different and you can look through their ideas and put them forward for your research. For a focus group to be successful everyone must be good at communicating as it is an important skill when it comes to discussing ideas. People can become annoyed and distracted so someone must be able to put them back on track on talk about the research topic. Confidence is also key as they must be comfortable enough to talk openly and communicate with freedom. Like every research method there are disadvantages. For focus groups participants may take control of the debate and they may end up impact the end result by using bias, the person in charge must be able to take control back. People may have difficulties keeping on track on talking about the research topic. All of these research methods are called primary research. Which means they are specifically designed to meet your unique needs. Research includes focus groups, surveys and interviews which I have all mentioned. As well as primary research there is secondary research. This is when you use previously completed studies and you apply the results that already exist to your own situation. These are really easy to find as they are really common on the internet as everyone uses the internet. Other sources of secondary research include newspapers, reports and pamphlets. However, these sources can be really vague and even though they are easy to find the research may not meet your specific needs and may not help. This is why Primary research is then used as you are able to use surveys, focus groups and interviews to gather specific ideas and answers you require for your project. Also, secondary research like newspapers can contain a lot of bias which can be unreliable and may not help gather your ideas. The internet in general may contain bias so it may not be the best answer in the long run. Primary research is more precise as you are able to talk to someone face to face rather than browse the internet. Furthermore, when it comes to research there is more to it than just taking surveys and questionnaires. This is because we had to research really deep into John Lewis and research what type of background is used and what type of props and clothing is used. To develop our ideas we researched and studied that John Lewis adverts are targeted towards middle to higher class people. This is because John Lewis is posh and fancy and their products are expensive to the average person so they target their products to the wealthier people. I also researched and found out that certain clothing is used in their advertisements. People in their adverts wear John Lewis type clothes which is usually a Christmas jumper. So the team decided and that the actors would wear Christmas clothes and pyjamas to illustrate and emphasise that’s it’s a Christmas advert and that it is a John Lewis style advert. Also, we developed our ideas by researching into props. The most important prop we researched is the advertising product. We studied that John Lewis like to use teddy bears and other cute similar props. So we decided to also use a cute teddy bear as that is what we are advertising. This is important because we are trying to persuade our audience to buy the teddy bear but we are also trying to fill them with emotions. We are filling them with emotions as we researched many songs and after listening to loads of songs we found a song and decided it would be the best for our advertisement.