Focus Group

Focus Group

I cut this video on a program called 'Adobe Media Encoder' so that my input in the focus group discussion was viewable only. Looking at this video, I can see that I learned a few things from the focus group. In preparation for the video-taped discussion, I made sure to print out a few pages of my contact sheet and then I passed some of these out along the table during the video for everyone to look at and tick/cross/circle which pictures they thought would look best used as the main image on my magazine front cover. As you can see me explaining on the video here, when I took my contact sheets back in I found that people had circled mainly mid shots or close up and photos that my model weren't posing as much in. This portrayed to me that my target audience prefer pictures that are more natural and less forced/posed; - after the video I made sure to take this helpful information into account. 

The focus group discussion really helped me because not only was I shown that natural photos are preferred by my target audience, but I saw that most people had agreed with my original choice of main photo to go with, which was a picture of my model in a floral top crossing her arms at the back of her head making direct eye contact with the camera. This suggested two things to me; - firstly that the fact that my model is wearing a floral top in this photo could suggest that my target audience prefer bright, fun and bold clothing that stands out to them.. also, it suggested that maybe they prefer to feel a personal connection with the model and that direct eye contact displayed in that particular photo covers this for them. After realising this, I made sure to not only use this photo on my front cover but I took into account these results to make sure my magazine's photos were as suitable as possible for my target audience. Furthermore, another aspect the focus group helped me on was that when I asked everyone in the group what price would be best suited for my magazine, the majority of people said around £3.00 or below. My previous price I'd set was a lot higher than this so I made sure to change my price. Therefore this feedback was very beneficial from my focus group.

This class discussion allowed us all to get our own primary research when getting detailed information  about things that would be successful in producing our magazine. We even discussed what doesn't look professional leading us to critisize each of each other's work but allowing us to receive beneficial feedback in how to improve. This also taught me what I should and shouldn't include in my magazine. The focus group was an effective research method as I was able to ask my own target audience relevant questions that could be linked to my own magazine so that I could individually receive feedback that would help me.

Furthermore, the purpose of the focus group was to be involved in getting interactive with others and saying what comes naturally instead of doing independant research on the pros and cons of magazines. The advantages of carrying out the focus group were:

• We were able to receive information from non-verbal responses such as body language and facial expressions
• Results can be easier to understand than complicated statistical data
• We were able to learn about our target audience's personal opinions on many topics which made the focus group reliable as every individual in the group was my target audience's age, so I could trust that their answers could be generalised and be beneficial to the producing of my magazine
• The process of the focus group wasn't particularly time-consuming as each topic was brought up, every person was able to give their input instead of everyone being interviewed seperately which would of taken a lot longer