Questionnaire Results

In order to find out what influenced our target audience (16-18 year olds) to buy magazines, we created a questionnaire with a variety of questions on the topic of magazines. We also made sure that I related a few of the questions to front covers, contents pages and double page spreads - as this is what we will be producing for our final product.

The first question asked "What genre of magazine do you usually buy?". 60% listed specific music genres indicating that music magazines appeal to them the most. The other 40% noted that they usually buy fashion or gossip magazines. This straight away concludes that a music magazine will be a big hit within my selected audience.

The second question asked "How much do you pay for magazines?". 80% said between £2-3 and 20% of the target audience said between £3-4. Therefore the price for our magazine should be between £2-3 to be successful and to attract the maximum amount of buyers.

The third question asked "Why do you read magazines?". 60% wrote down that they read magazines for gossip and fashion tips, 30% for entertainment or because of boredom and 10% for gigs. We must now make sure that the magazine includes a lot of celebrity gossip- generally about music artists as we are going to produce a music magazine, and take into consideration their fashion styles. I must also include information about gigs- even though the percentage is not high, it is a valuable convention for a music magazine.

The fourth question asked "Do you buy magazines on a regular basis?". 40% said yes and the other 60% suprisingly said no. With this in mind we are each going to have to create funky, eye-catching magazines that stand out from the rest.

The fifth question asked "What encourages you to buy magazines?". 100% of the audience said they are drawn in by the front covers and the stories that appear on them. So this is going to have to be taken into account when designing our own front covers.

The sixth question asked "Where do you usually buy your magazines?"- in order to find the best location in which to sell the product if it was actually put on the market. 70% said they purchased them from the News agents, 20% said Supermarkets and the remaining 10% selected the option 'Other'.

The seventh question asked "Do you feel the layout and colouring of magazine is important?". Yet again the full 100% said yes, therefore maximum effort must be put into the layout design, colour scheme, and use of font, text and images.

The eighth question asked "Do you always read the contents page?". 70% showed that they do, whilst 30% said that they don't. As the results show that most people do read the contents page we will make sure that it is just as important as the rest of the magazine.

We then linked into this question "Do you think the editor's letter is worthwhile?"- as when researching magazines i noticed that most of them contain an editor's letter. 90% said no and 10% said yes, however we will still be including an editor's letter in our contents as it is part of the codes and conventions used in magazines.

Our final question asked "What double page spreads interest you the most?". 50% said interviews, 20 % said horoscopes/quizzes and the other 20% said problem pages. Based on these results we come to the decision that our double page spreads will most likely be on interviewing celebrities as it seems to be the most popular.

From this analysis it has helped us recognise what our target audience are looking for, and we can now take this information and apply it to our own magazines.
Ellie. Charlie M & Charlie B