Defining the Audience

Age

• Age is important when classifying audiences. 
• People of similar ages often have similar and dislikes. 
• You can make broad statements about different age groups which, whilst they won't apply to everyone in that group, will apply to the majority. 
• People in their 20s are more likely to live at home or rent than people in their 30s. 
• People in their 60s are less likely to have children still at home than people in their 40s. 
• Media products often have target age that they aim for. Different media products will have different average consumer ages. 

What does this mean?

Companies make assumptions about people of a similar age having similar likes and dislikes in terms of products, in this case, print products.

What can it tell you about an audience?

It tells print products about people of a certain age demographics their likes and dislikes of a product, genre or topic. 

Gender

• Gender is quite a simple way of classifying your audience as there are only two main categories. 
• Finding out about your audiences gender can help you make a product more appealing to them. 
• Men and Woman often have different interests and values and therefore want different things from their media products. 
• Products that are aimed very clearly at one gender can often push away the other.  

Psychographics

Psychographics is the study of values, interests, personality, attitudes and lifestyle. A questionnaire is the most common way of finding out these traits so individuals psychographics can be established. 

• Every advertiser wants to target a particular type of audience. Therefore, media companies produce texts that target a particular "type" of audience. 
• In terms of commercial media, much of their funding is generated by advertising revenue. Their product needs to appeal to a specific type of audience so that advertisers will pay to promote their product. 
• Most media products can define their "typical" audience member, often with a psychographic profile. 

Resigned - Rigid, strict, authoritarian and chauvinist values - orientated to the past and resigned roles. Brand choice favours safety, economy and familiarity (older).

Strugglers - Alienated, disorganised with few resources to rely upon part from physical/mechanical skills (e.g.: car mechanic). Heavy consumers of junk food, alcohol and lotteries also trainers. Brand choice involves sensation and impact.

Mainstreamers - Focus on stability and security, purchase familiar/trustworthy brands, consume largely "mainstream" media. 

Aspirers - Seek to improve themselves, consume high status brands; believe status is achieved through conspicuous consumption. 

Succeeders - Feel secure and in control - buy brands that support their status. 

Explorers - Energy, autonomy, experience, challenge, new frontiers. Brand choice highlights, difference, adventure, sensation, indulgence, instant effect - the first to try new brands. (Younger - Student)

Reformers - Focused on social environmental concerns - buy products which reinforce a caring ideology. 

Hierarchy of Needs

An american psychologist, Abraham Maslow, suggested that we all have different layers of needs. We have to achieve certain needs before going on to the next layer. Basically, we all need to be able to eat and sleep in safety before we can go on to more complex social needs, such as getting married. His Hierarchy of Needs suggests that once people have their basic needs met like housing, food, safety, shopping, technology, and a job they can then go on to satisfy successively "higher needs" that occupy a set hierarchy or system of ranking. 

Maslow studied well respected people such as Albert Einstein, and American presidents, and he studied one percent of the healthiest college population. 

He came up with this pyramid where basic needs are at the top something called "self actualisation". This describes a person who has gained the respect of a lot of other people - perhaps a prime minister - and has a high level of self esteem and self respect.