Market Research

Welcome back friends! Last week I created a quick PowerPoint to break my potential audience demographic so I could better understand who I’m making this magazine for. To further understand how I can cultivate this media to best suit my audience or the general public, I crafted a survey. I utilized google form to create a survey with questions on what my potential audience would prefer to see in my travel magazines. They answered based on personal preference and I can use these responses when creating my actual magazine, and even if I choose to not go with the most popular choice in each category, I can definitely rule out any choices that majority of the responses did not consider. Further, I was able to gather 57 responses and while I wanted more, I believe this number can still be representative. All the data I gathered and my opinions on such are listed below:

Above you can see that I created a google form, which was able to reach 57 people who answered these questions based on their own personal preference. Above the questions that I created you can see a quick paragraph I wrote to describe what this questionnaire was and what I wanted from the responses. I also made each question multiple choice for the survey so that it would be easier for people to fill out and hopefully gather more responses. 

Above I listed various potential titles for my magazine. I researched some well known magazines for inspiration and combined that with what I felt fit the vibe of my magazine and was somewhat on trend. Of these names the most popular was Island Time, shortly followed by Travel tropical. While I like the name Island Time and feel it is cute and trendy, I am unsure if it is the right fit for my magazine. I feel this way because the title may constrain or box my into a specific category of only discussing islands. While I do plan on focusing my first issue on an Island, I do want to be able to expand my magazine to other coastal areas. For this reason, I am going to choose Travel tropical as my title, but i may use the phrase "Island Time" as a slogan on the cover so I can incorporate both ideas.

For this question I wanted to find out what my audience would most want to see on the front cover of my magazine and what would be most appealing to them. A vast majority of the responses showed that they would want to see a picture of a small town in the mountains. While I do feel this could be a great picture or series of pictures to include, I do not think I will use it as the single or main picture on the cover. This is because I think this main picture should incorporate a body of water to tie in the tropical theme. I will however use small town pictures in the mountains in my double page spread and still highlight this location.

I wanted to find out which color scheme would be most preferred for my magazine. In order to pick different color scheme or swatches, I looked at what colors where common throughout travel magazines. I also compared that to the main destination I would be covering, which is Puerto Rico. I considered doing the colors of the nations flag, red white and blue, but these colors where not popular as only 5.3% of respondents liked these colors. However, blue, yellow, and orange was extremely popular as almost half of the responses (47.5%) indicated a preference for these colors. 

For the locations that I plan to include in my travel magazine, I researched different places that I plan too visit specifically in Puerto Rico and the different areas I would have access to and could photograph during my time on the island. Around 36.8% of responses showed that pictures of beaches and coastal activities would be popular along with pictures of colorful scenery and towns. I plan of photographing in both of these areas to include pictures throughout my magazine.

I wanted to try and gauge what I should create my main article on, which I would feature on the cover and spend the most time researching for. Almost half of the respondents (43.9%) said they would want to see festival and community celebrations. This overwhelming majority allowed me to make a clear decision, and I will be conducting further research in this area for my main article.

I wanted to find out what advertisements would be preferred in my magazine, and while I on including a variety of different advertisements from different brands, I wanted to see what would be most preferred and rule out certain options. Based on the data gathered I see that cruise lines are popular as 33.3% which is a third of my responses want to see cruise line adds and are interested in the mode of transportation. I will also consider including food and drink adds as well as other travel agency advertisement.

I asked for the ages of the respondents in order to gather greater entail and potentially create my own demographic for this magazine and understand who my target market or demographic would be. However, this data is likely skewed seeing as many of my peers where the ones sent this questionnaire to fill out. This means that it is very likely that majority of the responses being 1-17 is just do to the availability or access I had to willing participants. 

Lastly, I asked what type of activities people typically enjoy in these locations so that I could create other articles and small columns on areas that would be interesting or compelling to readers. I found that many people (45.6%) prefer swimming. I will use this information to include perhaps locations for swimming and take photos on this activity in particular.