Institutional Research - Glamour

"Glamour" Magazine is produced by a well known publishing company called "Condé Nast". I researched Condé Nast and found out that it was one of the first British publishers on the internet. Condé Nast also produce Vogue magazine, and GQ magazines, two of the most popular and successful magazines ever! Condé Nast Interactive's stable of websites now attracts over 2.6 million unique users with 46 million pages viewed each month; 250,000 people have requested to receive emails from them on a daily and weekly basis; and over 200,000 unique users currently access their content on mobile phones.
Condé Nast also have a style website, www.stylefinder.com which has a huge age range of 15-45!
I feel that this publishing company would be appropriate for my magazine as its magazines have a similar age range to the audience I am aiming for, and as they have produced similar magazines and I know these have been very successful I would be very confident in using the company. The magazines they produce are mainly aimed at a female audience, like my magazine, but they also produce some male magazines, so I know they would have experience in producing content aimed at males.

Institutional Research - Stuff

"Stuff" Magazine is published by a "global media company" called Haymarket.

After researching Haymarket I found that they produced magazines of a similar genre, such as "What Hi-FI? Sound and Vision", based on sound and vision gadgets, and other magazines mainly aimed at an older male audience such as car magazines and radio magazines. They also have online magazines such as www.pistonheads.com demonstrating that the audience would be computer literate. They produce other magazines in the USA and Australia.

Haymarket say "Inspirational, witty and friendly, it has become the best-selling gadget magazine in the world." This shows that Haymarket is a very large and successful publishing company for technology magazines.

Product Research - Stuff Magazine

Product Research - Stuff magazine

Product Research - Fashion page

Product Research - Glamour Magazine

Audience Research Writeup.

From my audience research, I handed out questionnaires to the girls who I thought would fit in to my target audience. As my target audience is girls who are aged between 14-18, I handed them out to people of this age group around the school. I also carried out a focus group, where I handed out magazines to my target audience and watched them flick through, noting down which pages they stopped at and why.

In the questionnaires, I found that the majority of girls are interested in fashion, hair and makeup, so I would definitely like to base my magazine on this. I also noticed that many girls were interested in technology, and that the new mp3 players and mobile phones were very popular amongst them, indicating that they like to be kept up to date with new technology. Because of this, I have decided that I am also going to base my magazine on technology, as well as the fashion aspect. I find this very interesting, as normal magazines for teenage girls are only based on fashion, hairstyles and makeup, and normal magazines for teenage boys are usually based on technology or sports. By mixing these, I feel that it will be very successful as there is nothing like my magazine out there at the moment.

As my audience are aged between the 14-18, many of them do not have jobs so can not afford to buy items in fancy designer shops. Girls this age usually buy their clothes in the usual high street stores such as Topshop and H+M. Because of this, I am going to base most of the clothes in the magazine on these sort of shops, as I am sure this will be more appealing.

In my questionnaire I also asked the brands of makeup that they like to wear, and I received a mixed bag of responses. Many of them buy high street brands such as Maxfactor and Rimmel, but many buy the designer brands such as Clarins and Benefit, therefore I am going to make sure the makeup I include in the magazine is from a wide variety of brands.

I finally asked how much they were willing to spend on a magazine, and the majority said £2-3. I have therefore decided to base my magazine at £2.49.

I also carried out a focus group where I got 5 people from my target audience and watched them flick through a technology magazine and fashion magazines. In the technology magazine I noticed them stop on a page featuring the new iPod range, and a new mobile phone from Sony Ericsson, so I have decided to include something similar in my magazine. In the fashion magazines, they were stopping at pages which included makeup tips and advice for hair care. This helped me as it showed what the audiences main interests are and what catches their attention.

Product Research - Stuff Magazine

Questionnaires

I handed my questionnaire out to 20 people, and these are the responses I got:

1. How old are you?
14 (4)
15 (4)
16 (4)
17 (4)
18 (4)

2. Which of the following are of interest to you?

Make up (17)
Hair (16)
Fashion (18)
Technology (11)
Food (3)
Travel (4)
Music (18)
Movies (14)
Celebrities (7)
Sport (5)
Animals (2)

3. Which of the following would you like to read about in a magazine?

Make up (16)
Hair (14)
Fashion (18)
Technology (7)
Food (1)
Travel (2)
Music (18)
Movies (14)
Celebrities (6)
Sport (3)
Animals (1)

4. Which of the following magazines do you read?

OK (5)
Hello (3)
Look (9)
Elle Girl (7)
Elle (2)
Vogue (3)
Teen Vogue (6)
Bliss (2)
Now (8)
Heat (4)
Glamour (10)

5. Which of the following high street shops do you shop in for clothes?

Primark (17)
Dorothy Perkins (4)
Debenhams (6)
Next (3)
New Look (7)
Miss Selfridge (12)
H+M (18)
Topshop (12)
River Island (10)
Oasis (4)
Warehouse (2)
Accessorize/Monsoon (4)
Other (JD sports, Bay, Jane Norman, Zara)

6. Which shops do you shop in for footwear?

Primark (3)
Faith (14)
Debenhams (2)
Next (0)
New Look (5)
Miss Selfridge (6)
H+M (2)
Topshop (7)
River Island (8)
Oasis (2)
Accessorize/Monsoon (1)
Office (7)
Ravel (0)
Dolcis (2)
Foot Locker (2)
JJB (2)
JD Sports (2)
Other (Mr Shoes)

7. Which brands of make up do you wear?

Benefit (5)
Maxfactor (7)
Rimmel (6)
Gosh (4)
MAC (5)
Loreal (4)
No7 (6)
17 (2)
Miss Sporty (4)
Bobbi Brown (4)
Urban Decay (3)
Too Faced (1)
Sleek (4)
Clarins (1)
The Body Shop (3)
Collection 2000 (7 )
Other (The Natural Collection, Smashbox, Laura Gellar)

8. How much do you normally spend on a top in £? (please circle one only)

1-10 (2)
11-20 (9)
21-30 (7)
31-40 (2)
41+ (0)

9. How much do you normally spend on shoes? (£)

1-15 (1)
16-30 (12)
31-45 (6)
46+ (1)

10. Which phone do you own at the moment?

Majority: Samsung U600, Sony Ericsson w610i, Nokia 6500, iPhone, Sony Ericsson w580i

11. How many phones have you owned in the past, including the one you have now?

1-3 (9)
4-6 (7)
7-10 (4)
11+ (0)

12. Do you own a music player, if so which one?

Majority: iPod nano, iPod mini, iPod touch, creative ZEN, archos, sony)

13. Which features are important to you in a mobile phone?

Internal Memory (2)
Appearance (14)
Music Player (12)
Camera Quality (10)
Size/Weight (12)
Video/Image Editing (6)
Games (3)
Brand (8)
Battery Life (9)
Touch-sensitive (3)
Bluetooth (18)
Other

14. Which of the following games consoles do you own?

Nintendo (9)
X-Box (4)
Sony Play Station (8)

15. Which radio stations do you listen to?

Capital FM (9)
Kiss (8)
Choice (9)
X-FM (4)
Virgin (1)
BBC Asian Network (5)
BBC Radio (6)
Magic (o)
Classic (0)
Heart (0)

16. How much are you willing to spend on a magazine?

£1 (3)
£2 (9)
£3 (7)
£4 (1)

audience research..

I have finally decided on what I want to do. I am going to make a magazine extract, including a front cover, an article, an advertisement, a page on style and a page on technology.

I am going to be aiming it at girls who are aged between 14 and 18. The magazine is different to normal teenage magazines as this magazine not only features beauty and style but it also features technology such as iPods and the latest mobile phones.

So far I have created questionnaires and handed these out (i am going to collect these soon) and I have organised a focus group with some family members who fit in to my target audience. In the focus group I will hand out current magazines for teenagers to them and watch them flick through, I will note down which bits they stop at and which bits are of most interest to them as this will help me to decide which things to include in my magazine.