Audience Research for college magazine cover

I chose a series of 10 questions to ask students about their opinions on a college magazine, magazines they currently read and their interests.I did this to help me produce a college magazine cover that would attract and persuade most students to buy.




This is a copy of the questionnaire answer sheet I used to record the data I collected from my peers.

 

 

What did I find out?

• Out of the 15 students I asked, 11 of them were male and 4 of them were female. This would mean that the results I have are more male opinionated, I should have balanced the gender more equally.
• All of the students were positively sure that they would like an informal magazine as opposed to formal, also that they would prefer more pictures than writing, suggesting a more visual magazine rather than alot of information.
• The majority of the group I asked would prefer a unisex aimed magazine, however 2 of the students so a small minority would prefer a magazine aimed at their particular gender.
• Two thirds of the group I asked said they would be willing to pay between £1-£2. 3 of the other 5 people would pay less than a £1 and 2 students would be willing to pay between £2-£3. This shows me that none of the group would be willing to pay a lot of money for a college magazine. I also know that the students weren't keen on a high price because of the low demand for subscribers. Only 3 would consider subscribing to a college magazine, whereas 12 said no, they wouldn't.
• From my questionnaire i can clearly see that students spend most of their disposable income on clothes, food and music or video games, these being the top 3 choices. The majority of the group (13 and of 15) said they spend their money on clothes. Only 1 person said they spend their disposable income on both, perfume/aftershave and other magazines. This suggests that perfume and aftershave adds aren't the best thing or the most important thing to have in college magazine, but to have clothing brand advertisements or music advertisements would suit the students more. It also tells me that either the students wouldn't like buying a college magazine from the minority of students buying other magazines, or it could suggest we don't have much competition.
• The images to include in the front cover are a vital part of the attraction to students as 13 out of the 15 said the images draw their attention to magazines in shops etc. The other most popular attraction were the colours, suggesting that the magazine needs to be eye catching, but also the colours need to complement each other, to make them look appealing but not messy and cheap. The title was an attraction for one third of the group I asked, meaning that they choose their magazines by reputation or by brand, again suggesting the college magazine not to look cheap or tacky, but polished and top of the range. Very little students were interested or attracted by the price of the magazine.

This is the results for the question 'choose four from the following options, of which you would like in the content of a college magazine'
These were the results, shown in a pie chart.
Music and film were the most popular.
Horoscopes were the least popular.
However this could be because of the one sided gender of the students I asked.

 

This shows the different magazines that students currently buy, not all of the students currently bought any magazines, and some of them bought more than one. Here you can see the most popular was NME and the other option. This indicates the sort of style magazine the students are interested in, and whether they even like magazines.





What could I have improved or done to get better results?

I personally wasn't able to ask a varied group of students, instead I was limited to my peers in my class, which gave me a more male populated set of results, and technically a group with the same interests, as they were in the same subject. I could have asked a wider range of people, giving me more results and more to evaluate, also i could have made it more equal so that the opinions were from females as much as males. I only had ten questions to ask, to improve I could have come up with more to ensure that my research would help me to make the most appealing college magazine cover to the students standards.