Demographics

What are demographics and why are they used?

Demographics are the statistical characteristics of human populations, such as age and income, that are used by businesses to identify markets for their goods and services. Demographics are used to identify who your customers are (now and in the future), where they live, and how likely they are to purchase the product you are selling. By studying your customers and potential customers through demographics, one can identify changing needs in the marketplace and adjust to them. For the businessperson, identifying the demographic groups that will be most interested in your product can mean the difference between success and failure. This is especially critical for the small businessperson who might have less room for error than larger companies.
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For example, a company that sells high-end RVs would want to know roughly how many people are at or nearing retirement age, and also what percentage of them will be able to afford the product. This information will help the company to decide how much capital to allocate to production and advertising.
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 This demographics table tells us how hierarchy is divided into society. When deciding my magazine I must look at which group I would aim my target audience to. With this social grading system I can make sure my magazine provides products and story's that the certain grade can relate too. There would be no use in placing highly expensive clothes to a grade E audience aimed magazine as the consumers would not be able to afford and invest in the advertised products. However, grade E users may buy highly expensive magazines aimed at grade c1 and above because although they may not live a luxurious life they can still also read about it. Reading an expensive magazine like vogue will give them a break from their life and teach them on the higher class life even though it may not be aimed at them with pricing and content placed within the magazine. With the help of this social grading system it will help me to make the right decision on my price and content.

For my magazine I have chosen my magazine to be aimed at an age group of 16-20 year olds where it will apply to both sex. With this group of people being quite a young age group it means a lot of them will be at university, education or just starting out in the workforce therefore the audience will be in band D/E. The reason for choosing an audience of this age is because a lot of the celebrity's that are part of the RnB genre are in their 20’s so the audience will be able to relate and are more interested in celebrity's that are the same ages of them. To the male sex, women in the magazine are also seen as sexy from this genre so therefore I  will have to put young and good looking artists in order to sell the magazine. An example of a typical female celebrity found in magazines of RnB genre would be Nicki minaj.  However for females they will look at the female artists as role models. I took a mini survey to see how much this age group would pay for the magazine. From looking at results from my surveyors  it said that they would pay quite a lot for the magazine but it would have to come out monthly in order for them to be able to afford it. I also made sure to check other prices for magazines of this kind and they were all priced around £3.99, so I thought I should stick with a conventional price however feature on average 60 pages.  In my magazine I will feature tickets to live festivals in the UK that a lot of young people like to attend. Some examples will be cream fields, tomorrow land and V festival. I will do this because it will interest young readers and this audience to buy my magazine. Also with them scoring band D/E in the grading system it may be a once in  a life time opportunity with them not being able to afford tickets to these festivals with them being so expensive and with them not having a very big income from having to pay University fee’s etc.