Demographic and Psychographic profiling in relation to our target audience

Demographic profiling

This involves separating people into social classes. This is based on certain criteria on which separates people.

• Gender: We are mainly looking to target females as the majority of people who watch soap operas are female, but we also hope it will appeal to male audiences. 
• Race: We are primarily targeting caucasians but we hope to represent other ethnicities in our trailer such as muslims. This is so that our audience is not alienated.
• Age: We are looking at targeting teenagers to people in their mid-twenties. So our target age range is between 16-25. This is because our brand identity is going to be similar to that of Hollyoaks which has a similar target audience.
• Socio-Economic Status: Since our age range is 16-25 and the majority of these people will most likely be in full time education or starting a career we are primarily targeting groups C2-E

Uses and Gratifications Theory

This theory is used to understand why people like media texts as they offer a wide range of fulfilling experiences.There are four reasons in this theory given by Katz, Blumler and Grevitch. McQuale in 1983 stated in relation to this theory that the audience is active and they use the media to gratify their needs. The reasons given are:

• Personal Relationships - The audeince talk and discuss the media text which is beneficial as it will help reach a wider audience. Some issues focused on in the soap will prompt debate and discussion.
• Personal Identity - The audience use media texts to discover who they are. They generally identify with particular stars and characters. In our soap we hope that the audience will be able to identify with our characters as the particular issues we  are tackling effect so many of the general public and therefore they will be able to relate to the characters.
• Escapism - This helps the audience to escape the reality of every day life using the soap as a form of entertainment, a way to relax and fill some time.
• Surveillance - This helps the audience to gather information to satisfy their curiousity and learn how to deal with certain issues within their life which a character may be going through in the soap through watching them.

Young and Rubicam
This theory identified four main groups of people based on there characteristics. These are:

• Mainstreamers - This concerns the majority of the audience and they enjoy familiarity and security so that they are not disappointed. They tend to respond to the bigger brands as they know they are reliable and trustworthy.
• Reformers - This concerns people who want to make the world a better place. They are independent and socially aware
• Aspirers - This concerns people who want to achieve the best they can and reach a higher status. They like things which are modern and trendy.
• Succeeders - This concerns people who have reached a high status and they enjoy being in control and enjoy to have the latest product

Our soap will mainly be aimed towards mainstreamers because they enjoy having a set routine and as we want our soap to be popular with a lot of people mainstreamers would be ideal as routine is important to their lifestyle. As they also like big brands and security, and are already familiar with soap operas they know that soaps are trustworthy, secure and offer familiarity due to the fact that soaps tackle issues common in society and are set around family and familiar places such as the pub and home.

Shannon