Different Types Of Research

When creating a piece in the media industry, whether it be a major motion picture or a radio advert, a surprisingly large amount of research goes into creating it. There are varying amounts of research however they all fall into two categories, quantitive and qualitative. Quantitive research is the type of research that is completely data based. It can easily be put into graphs and is usually delivered by asking your audience structured pre-determined answers. An example of quantitive research would be a multiple-choice questionnaire.  Qualitative research is research that is based more on individual opinions. This is more difficult to put into graphs as, if it is done properly, every response should be slightly different. An example of qualitative would be a focus group.
Another, more simple, way research can be categorised is into Primary and Secondary research. Primary research is research that is done personally by you. For example if you write, hand out and collate a questionnaire that would be primary research. If you were to induct a focus group yourself, that would be primary research. Secondary research is if the research is done by someone else and you use the data for your own research. This is allowed and is often done by large companies. It is a way of confirming your own research with someone else’s.
Psychographic data is data that goes a tad deeper and looks at why people do certain things. For example if I were to conduct psychographic research into Toys ‘R’ Us, I would look at why people shop there and what things get them to shop there. Psychographic data is important because it tells us why the consumer does something, which then can tell me how to get the consumers to buy my product.

Geodemographic research is research that assigns certain attributes and buying attitudes with customers locations. For example there is a bigger market for gloves in Russia than there is for California. Geodemographic data is perfect for finding out where your product is successful and where it can improve on. This would be very useful for a local company looking to advertise as they can see if anyone within range of their business is paying attention

http://marketsegmentation.com/what_are_psychographics.html