The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

Primary research is research with the purpose to get data directly rather than relying on data bought together by research done before. A quote to back this up is from a website (libanswers.unco.edu) which states 'A primary research article reports on an empirical research study conducted by the authors. It is almost always published in a peer-reviewed journal'. An example of my own primary research I done was a questionnaire I done last year for my marmite advert.

This is a small part of a 10 part questionnaire which shows a direct amount of research into the opinion of our product. This questionnaire was to see peoples opinion on an advert we made last year, we asked people a little bit about themselves and then went onto ask about the advert itself. 

An example of some professional standard is this customer survey done by Netflix to see overall what a customers opinion is about their streaming service. Others might include market research, product developments and performance observations.

Some  more examples of primary research includes; focus groups and one-on-one interviews. Focus groups are a very good method of primary research because you can gather large amounts of peoples opinion on something. For example, you could ask a group of 100 teenagers what their favourite animation is, 30 of them could say South Park, 25, Family Guy and 45, The Simpsons. This would be a good example of primary research. One-on-one interviews are also a very good way to conduct research, although you can't ask ask masses of people you can get very detailed opinions asking multiple questions from one person. I think interviews work very well because as I said you can ask 20 or 30 questions a time and get really detailed honest answers every-time, however with focus groups, the answers are more likely to be brief and one-worded because it would be hard to filter long answers from masses of people. (IMAGE, https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/focus-groups.html)

Secondary research involves the summary of existing research. It makes it a lot easier because people have already done the research for you. A quote to support this is from a website (http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/food-standards-agency/market-research-and-consumer-protection/primary-and-secondary-research.html) which states ‘Secondary research makes use of information previously researched for other purposes and publicly available’. An example of secondary research I have conducted was for my 3 minute wonder research last year when I broke down all of the different political views on the then upcoming European elections,

(https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2755794391213805505#editor/target=post;postID=2352474560426557429;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=8;src=postname). An example of secondary research in the professional industry could be objects such as books, journals or anything you might find on the internet. A specific example of secondary research in the creative industry would be a 'how to' video done by somebody else. This is because the tips from the video we're from somebody else therefore you can't claim they were yours to begin with. 

An example of a key benefit for primary research over secondary research is that it is always specific to your needs and you will control the final quality but a disadvantage is that it usually costs more and take longer. An example of a key benefit for secondary research over primary research is that it is usually cheap and quick but an disadvantage is that data can be too old/or not specific enough for your needs. In my opinion as a college student I think secondary research is better than primary research because I don’t have the money or the time to carry out sufficient primary research. 

Quantitative research is all about stats and facts, an numerical form like percentages, fractions etc. These can be presented in ways such as polls or questionnaires. A quote to support this is from a website called libguides (https://libguides.usc.edu › writingguide › quantitative) which say, ‘Quantitative methods emphasis objective measurements and the statistical, mathematical, or numerical analysis of data collected through polls, questionnaires, and surveys, or by manipulating pre-existing statistical data using computational techniques’. An example of quantitative research would be asking people what they thought of a film, to give a little review on what they thought. 

Qualitative research is sort of the opposite to quantitative research, it will never include any stats, for example a film review with somebody's written opinion with no numbers or starts to rate it would be qualitative.  A quote to back this up is from a website called snap-surveys
(https://www.snapsurveys.com) which state ‘Qualitative Research is primarily exploratory research. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research’ Some qualitative research I've done is the questionnaire I've screen shot above. An example qualitative research would be asking people to just give the film a review out of 10 or give it an amount of stars on what they thought of it. 

Some examples of why qualitative research is good to use because you can get very ‘rich’ data and it is very easily adaptable. But some cons to this is that it is expensive and takes a lot more time. Some examples of why quantitative research is good because it takes less time findings can be compared between lots of different groups. Some cons include you can get lot of missing data and it tends to be more expensive. 

Some examples of data gathering agencies include IMDB and Boxofficemojo. The Audience Research Board (BARB) are responsible for complying audience measurements and TV ratings in the UK. They measure what families watch what TV channels and shows to decide revenue for that specific channel. Some screenshots of the layout of the two websites I mentioned above.

Audience research is communicated research that is conducted on audience segments to gather information about what TV shows they watch for examples. Whereas Market research is when looking into analysis into a specific situation facing a company. Some examples of audience and market research is questionnaires, surveys and bar charts (pie charts graphs etc.) It helps companies such as the BBC decide which target audience for their TV shows, for example they would like teenagers and young adults aged 15-45 to watch shows such as Peaky Blinders. Also it helps decide what adverts to show during the breaks of shows (not the BBC because it doesn’t have breaks due to it being government run). For example ITV might want to show a Ben and Jerry's advert in the summer because it tends to be hotter which makes food like ice cream more popular. I have also conducted some market research in the screenshot I have below showing who I will sell my product to. It tells you who the primary audience is for Ben and Jerry's   Some professional audience and market research that is conducted could include customer surveys, opinion polls and data analysing surveys that show you who watches what show at what times.  Another example of audience / market research would be my re-branding presentation for my Unilever product (see image below)  

Production research is always needed when developing new products, it is research to help give information on the product. A quote to back this up is from a prezi by Lucy Singleton which states ‘the purpose of production research is to find out how much it would cost to, gather information on the content of the production and also to discover whether the production is viable for release’ An example of production research I have conducted is my PowerPoint presentation I did last year for my Ben and Jerry’s.  Some more examples would be any pre-production paperwork somebody might complete for a film. (https://louiswesternfilmandtv.blogspot.com/2019/01/pen-pa-paperwork.html) Depict pre-production and (https://louiswesternfilmandtv.blogspot.com/2019/06/magnum-virus-pre-production.html) Magnum pre-production. 

An example of some professional product research could include using BARB, RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Ltd) or photo-books. 

- your rebranding prezi is for market research