Audience of my magazine

Before producing my magazine, I will need to outline my target audience in more definition. I will first of all do this using GRASS.

Gender

Race

Age

Socio-economic status

Gender

The audience of my magazine will be women. It will include both female and male artists/bands, however will only have feature articles and shoots on mainly female artists, based on womens' fashion, lifestyle and music. The whole look of my magazine will also probably be more feminine.

Race

My magazine can be aimed at any race, it really all depends on their interests and lifestyle, whether my magazine would be for them.

Age

The target audience for my magazine will be 16-25. I think audiences of this age will be more interested in the genre of music, the type of artist and the fashion that I would want to include in my magazine.

Socio-economic status

My magazine will be focused on group D,  Lower working class. Audiences of the age I am aiming my magazine at will probably be students at college/university with small part-time jobs  or have just  begun a working career.

I will also outline the audience of my magazine using  YOUNG AND RUBICAM'S CROSS- CULTURAL CONSUMER CHARACTERISTICS:

This form of physcographic profiling will characterise my audience in terms of personal aspirations.

The category I would place my audience in would be the mainstreamers. The mainstreamers make up 40% of the market, which will help to make my magazine for sellable and familiar with everyday people. This group seek security and conformity and tend to try and fit in with the rest. I think as my magazine will be all about current trends and music and the indie/alternative genre - which seems to be very popular at the moment, I would say my magazine would really be about 'fitting in'.

From the lifestyle groupings I would place my target audience as KIPPERS which are the 'Kids in Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings'

I will now use The uses and gratifications theory to help outline my audience even further. This theory is basically about how audiences use media texts to fulfil basic needs. There were 4 major categories with this theory identified by Blumler, Mcquail and Brown. The category I would place my magazine under Surveillance as my magazine is basically going to keep my audience up to date on recent artists, music trends and fashion. The audience will be gaining new information from my magazine. I could also place my magazine under Personal Identity, the audience will be kept up to date on current trends and music but the magazine will feature artists with style and lifestyle if the indie/alternative genre, people reading the magazine may find music/artists inspirational and may try to copy or base their style or lifestyle on aspects from the magazine.

Using Maslows Hierarchy of needs I can determine the needs of my audience. There are four D-Needs in this theory before reaching Self-Actualization. The D-need I think my magazine will fulfill will be Belonging needs, which is basically social needs. Malsow says we have an innate need for the love and affection of others. I think this need will apply perfectly to the magazine I want to create as it is really all about keeping up with trends and fitting in to a social group or scene. People who read this magazine may be aspiring to look a certain way or have a certain type of lifestyle to fit in with their social group.

I will make my product appealing to the audience using AIDA, 

Attention- I will have to make my product eye-catching  particularly to the target audience of my product. It will need to be unique to any other magazines of a similar genre but also familiar enough to be able to indentify the type of magazine that it will be.

Interest - 

Desire- My magazine I would have to be able to convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs. My magazine will convince people that it will be able to keep them up to date, on trend and therefore able to keep them fitting in.

Action- I will need to lead customers towards taking action or purchasing. 

Satisfaction - If all these are used, the customer can be satisfied with the product and may be a repeat customer and give referrals of the product.

I will need to use relevant artists, styles, colours,layouts  and images if I want my magazine to appeal to the target audience, especially on the front cover as this is what will initially catch the customers' eye.

PRIMARY AUDIENCE RESEARCH 

For my primary research, I created a questionnaire which would investigate into the music genre of magazines and also investigate into the fashion element of music and magazines. I asked mainly females aged around 16/17. Here are the results of my questionnaire:

From these results I found out that music magazines and fashion magazines are quite popular, so I think if music and fashion were put together into a magazine it would be even more popular. Also from the results of my questionnaire I have found that my genre of Indie/alternative is quite a popular genre, I have also discovered that all of the people I asked who said indie/alternative/rock said that they were influenced by certain artists. As I figured that these artists may reflect the indie/alternative genre I did further research into these artists, the artists were: Kate Nash and Rebecca Ferguson.

Kate nash     After looking at Kate Nash, I think she is a great type of artist that would fit my magazine really well. Her style fits the genre perfectly and so does her music, she also seems quirky and fun which is exactly how I would like my artist to be portrayed.

Rebecca Ferguson   I also think Rebecca Is a good type of artist that I could have in my magazine. Her style is really quirky and quite edgy, but more suited for an older audience I think, as well as the type of music she sings. I want my artist to be a bit more fun and current.