Demographics

Demographics is a widely used method to discover the most recent statistical characteristics of the population. Media companies use this method for marketing and deciding on their target audience. Commonly examined demographics include...

• Sex - The sex is important to determine the demographic e.g. girls will want to see a music video of love, boys will want to see a music video of girls dancing around with hardly any clothing (stereotypical demographic)
• Age - Young people will not be in the same demographic as older generations, this is because for example the older generations have no interest in drum and bass or seeing young girls in bikinis etc.
• Social Status - Stereotypically, the higher class will want to listen to classical music and will want to see nice pleasant things or things that express their wealth.
• Occupation and Industry - A successful law firm will want to listen to possibly classical music or something like that, also they will not have as much time to listen to the music of their choice because they are working for the majority of the day.
• Marital Status - If you are single you will more than likely listen to a lot of love songs but not the happy kind the ones where the girl is struggling to get the boy or something of that sort, when you are in a relationship you listen to postive and happy music that you and your partner like, this will widen the demographic from one person to two people.
• Children - Children will obviously not listen to songs that have any sexual connotations or any taboo language. They will want to hear happy, cheerful and light lyrics and there demographic is pretty straight forward.
• Household Tenure - This is the money that people have left over once they have finished paying all there bills. This is a very important demographic because most people have children or pets that they need to pay out for so the better the income the more that they will have left over to spend on the music.
• Income - People with a lot of money can spend more, those that are poorer need to have deals or special offers on the music. This is very important because if you price for example a CD at £15.99 the person with lower income might not be able to spend out that money for just one CD.
• Education - Well-educated people are known to like classical music more than those that havent been to a bording school or a private school, your education influences how you socialise so who you socialise with has an effect on what music you like.
• Mobility - For example, if there is a person in a wheelchair and the music is dance music, they might not like it because they cant dance so the music company would either have to change their target audience or they would have to have the music video without people dancing.
• Location - In the poorer areas it is harder to get to the people because they might not be able to afford the things like the internet. In the wealthier areas access to media is unlimited so it would be easier to get to them.
• Race - Race (Culture) is important when establishing a demographic. For example jamican music is a part of the Black-African persons culture.
• Disabilities -
  If a person cant hear then there possibly is no demographic. If someone has sight problems, the music industry will add bright lights to help them see. Apart from that, disabilities shouldnt really affect demographic profiling.

Media companies would ask themselves...

- Where do these people sit on the Social Grade Scale?

For example, in terms of age, if you're a student according to the Social Grade Scale they would come under E (explained in the Social Grade Scale blog post)

- Where do they sit in relation to Socio-economic Values? 

For example, if their occupation is of a builder and they have a reallyy nice car and a nice house they would be classed as 'Social Climbers' (defined in the Socio-economic Values blog post)

Asking themseleves these questions would determind whether they would like to Broadcast or Narrowcast and who to.