Audience research

To produce a successful media company you must target the right audience to where you plan to release the product. It is important to do audience research because it shows you who your target audience is and what they like and dislike to see.
Audience research is about gathering statistical data about the size and profile of the audience for the media product you are releasing. What members of the target audience like and dislike about similar media products already in that area of the market

Market research

Aswell as doing audience research and production research media companies often look in the market that there product will be launched into. Market research involves looking at what the competion in the market have to offer and the price range and the type of people it is sold to such as the highworking class. They also compare similar media products already in the market to see what there comercial oppurtunities are.
For example if you where going to launch a new mountain bike magazine you would look into a number of things-
The Class of people that buy that stlye of product, such as middle to lower class
Freebies that are given away in the same stlye of magazines such as coloured shoe laces
The price of the other magazines
The genders and age range of the buyers
If there is space in the merket for a similar product already being sold

Qualative research

Qualative research is research based on opinions and attitude and also prefrences ralther actual facts and figures, One of the main ways these are carried out are in focus groups  as they allow the person conducting the research to find out direct feedback from a small distinctly targeted group of indivuduals

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is research that invovles collecting facts and information that can be counted, the information is then used to produce numerical and statistical date. BARB provides weekly quantitative data for broadcasting.http://www.barb.co.uk/. they provide data on weekly viewing figures on TV Channels watched.

Secondary research

Secondary research is research done by others ralther than first hand research. secondary research invoves accesing research already gatherd by third partys such as websites or buisnesses. It can be found in many things from news papers and the internet to Tv shows such as the news and magazines and even social networking sites such as facebook or twitter. Advantages of using secondary research is that its takes very little time at all to gather as all the research has been done beforehand although for the more reliable information you might have to pay for it. A disadvantage of using secondary research is that you dont always know if it is reliable or not due to the fact you didnt conduct the research yourself, another reason is that it can be to broad with the results for example if you only wanted to know how many people watch a certain TV programe in england but it gave you the results for the whole of the United Kingdom.