Other aspects that are taken into consideration include: age range, gender, social class, income (disposable income), employment and psycho-graphics.

Magazine producers have to consider a number of factors when deciding on the audience that they’ll be aiming their magazine towards. They have to think about the genre of the magazine, whether they choose to target a niche (a specialized market that focus’s on one particular element of the market, usually aimed at different ethnicities) or go universal (they choose to target a mass market).

Age Range:For my magazine, I have chosen to concentrate on my audience from within the age range of 16-24. My magazine is centred around the concept of new music, focusing mainly on the indie/rock/experimental genres, and it is because of these genres that I chose this age group; I think that from the age of 16 up to the age of 24, people of both sexes, are more open minded and therefore are able to accept, and try, a variety of different genres.

Gender:

My magazine will be targeting both sexes as, by doing this, I think my magazine would appeal to a wider audience, and if my magazine was really going to be distributed, attracting a wider audience would result in me receiving a larger profit.

Targeting both males and females could be seen as a challenge,

as stereotypically, the two genders have completely different and separate interests to one another. For example, men are assumed to be into ‘harder’ music genres, such as rock, as they are stereotyped as being strong and ‘manly’, whereas women are seen as weaker therefore it is assumed that they listen to softer music, such as pop. However, as stereotypes are hardly realistic, I don’t think that me aiming my magazine towards a more generalised audience will be an issue.

Audience:

*Disposable Income: When someone has a

Social Classes & Income:

When looking at social classes there is a lot to take into account; there’s the amount of income that a household receives, the matter of employment, so, whether or not someone is working or unemployed and psycho-graphics also links in with the discussion of social classes.

However, when looking at social classes, magazine producers have to be careful to not

Employment:

People both young and old can be in employment. This effects the amount of money

stereotype certain classes. For example, they cannot presume that a man from an upper class won’t read a grime magazine just because he’s got a higher status and, probably, won’t relate to the magazine’s content.

The reality of it is, that anyone from any background can be interested in any genre magazine, this fact makes it harder for magazine producers; they have to distribute a magazine, of a specific genre, that can relate to everyone but not, because no magazine is marketable to all audiences, they have to find a balance or a middle ground of some sort.

they have and also the amount they have to spend. As you can probably work out, being in employmentlinks in with the issues of income and social classes.

significant amount of money left after TAX, bills etc- is dealt with –people with a lot of money usually have a lot of dispoable income.

Psycho-graphics:

This term is new to me so the research I carried out on psycho-graphics helped me to develop an understanding of what it is and what its about.

Through my research, I found that psycho-graphics is basically splitting a market into groups, based on the attitudes and ideals of a potential target audience, these ‘graphics’ vary depending on the type of market being focused on. With psycho-graphics, a market can be split into many groups using a number of different and detailed methods.

Some of the groups…

Succeeders: People who are successful and self confident. They tend not to buy aspirational products and follow their own ideas of what is a good product

Reformers: These people are creative, caring, selfless and not brand conscious

Aspirers: The people belonging to this group, want to belong to classes higher than themselves

Mainstreamers: The largest group, usually, conformists who buy "safe", big brand products

Strivers: The people from within this group are status oriented. They seek money, approval and social status. They are known to be buyers of "aspirational" goods

Explorers: These people seek novelty and are known to want to try new things. They are likely to be early adopters of completely new products,

Constrained: These people are poor and sometimes struggling

I plan on aiming my magazine towards 3 of the Psycho-graphics shown previously. These are…

- Mainstreamers: The largest group, usually, conformists who buy "safe", big brand products

- Explorers: These people seek novelty and are known to want to try new things. They are likely to be early adopters of completely new products

- Constrained: These people are poor and sometimes struggling

[As this is the largest group, I thought it would be the most sensible psycho-graphic to aim my magazine towards. Also, as they are known for buying ‘safe’ I thought that this would be

another reason to aim my magazine at mainstreamers.]

[As I mentioned beforehand, I’d like my audience to be open minded to the range of genres that may feature in my magazine. After reading through the description of this particular psycho-graphic, I think I’d be targeting, mainly, the people

from within this group.]

[I plan on making my magazine ‘free’, this way, the people from within this group are able to read my magazine.]

The decisions I’ve made and expressed here, may or may not stay the same. During the course of making my magazine I expect the psycho-graphic groups I’ve chosen to aim my magazine at will change or I will end up aiming it at additional groups as well as the ones I’ve chosen. Either way, I expect my decisions to change an number of times before my magazine is finished.

Other groups:- Spectators: These people read the magazines

- Joiners: These people tend to talk about the magazines, get involved with them

- Collectors: These people follow the magazine, the web site and could be described as the ‘fans’

- Critics: These are the people that get involved, send in letters telling the magazine what they think of articles, gigs and the magazine overall

- Creators: These people create the ‘blog’ version of the magazine as well as promoting the latest trends as well as the specific music tribe

- Achievers: These people are ambitious, well-educated and family orientated. They tend to go for the sophisticated, low key marketing approach and only takes cues from the people they admire

- ‘Authentics’: Creative entrepreneurs, individual, and community orientated, these people don’t like marketing approaches that are too ‘hard sell’

- Heartlanders: Often less educated than Achievers and Authentics, Heartlanders support traditional values and are slower when accepting new things and change

- Trenders: Unmarried, young and style conscience. The people in this group are aspirers in the sense that they want to be ‘Achievers’. They respect their opinions and love to use technology

- Self-sufficients: Slightly older than ‘Trenders’ but still in the same income bracket, the people in this group are practical and have their own mind. ‘Fancy’ things don’t impress them as they prefer plain things that have a sense of comfort