Why I Asked The Questions For The Questionnaire

Unlike many questionnaires people are asked to complete, I chose to give the person questioned anonymity. I felt this would make each form impersonal, and people may be obliged to be more truthful, especially about their age or sex, throughout the questionnaire as they would know that the information couldn’t be tracked back to them.

The first two questions asked were, in fact, ‘sex’ and ‘age’ of the person. These would help me categorise my results more easily once all were collected, into groups such as boys/girls or under 30 years old/over 30 years old. This could clearly indicate whether certain age groups prefer certain types of music and consume different types of music to other age groups, or whether one particular sex seem more likely to go to music events or pay more for a music magazine.

By asking how the person most commonly listens and learns about music, I can get an idea of what music sources appear to be most popular and therefore might be worth including in my own production. The next question, asking which particular genre’s of music the person is interested in, would also help me learn what to include in my magazine. If a particular genre, or several genres, appeared to be most popular (from my results) then I may choose to focus more on these particular ones. The next question is also very similar, not only helping me discover which genre of music people enjoy but also any individual music artists that they favour. This would help me captivate the greatest potential amount of consumers for my magazine and could also encourage certain solo acts or bands to approach the magazine, so as to reach out to the specific audience who are guaranteed to like their genre of music.

As visiting music events, such concerts or festivals, is such an important aspect to many budding music fans, by finding out which ones they’ve been to, I would be able to add more pages into my production that would be of interest to the prospective consumers. It would enable me to write articles on the particular events people seem to enjoy most. I could attend the events myself and get feedback from people there, or even ask readers to send their comments or pictures of them at the events, therefore making the consumer feel more connected with the magazine and more likely to enjoy reading it.

I knew from the start that my main source of help for creating and producing my music magazine would be from looking at and learning from original music magazines that are already on the market. By asking, in my questionnaire, which music magazines the person finds of most interest and also what attracts them most to particular music magazines, can help me in my decision of what to issue in my own production. Some people may buy certain magazines for the competitions they offer, whereas others may buy them for the free posters included inside or the free gifts that come with the magazine. I therefore asked these questions as I was interested in whether, by adding extra ‘bonuses’ to buying my magazine, it would make a difference in the volume of consumers I would gain.

The next question I put on my questionnaire was for very similar reasons to the previous few; ‘the type of music magazine articles you’re most likely to want to read’. The purpose of this question was simply just to gain more knowledge on what consumers, of magazines like the one I was going to create, enjoy reading- and therefore would be happy to buy a particular music magazine for.

To help discover the popularity of music magazines in general my next two questions asked how often the person buys music magazines and what the maximum price was that they would be willing to pay for a music magazine. The first of the two questions would help me decide how often I would want to publish my magazine. If many people answered that they bought magazines on a weekly basis, or possibly even more often that that, I would look at making my production a weekly publicised one. However if they answered that they buy it less often than that I may wish to look at creating, printing and distributing them on a fortnightly basis or possibly even monthly. The second part of the question would show me what prices would seem too high for a music magazine, therefore gaining no interest from the public. By getting a good idea of what I could sell the magazine for, I could then further budget the rest of my production and issuing costs so as to not overspend and ensure I still gain a profit at the end of it.

‘All-time favourite song’ was the final question on the questionnaire. There was no specific reason for asking this question except for genuinely finding out what song’s different people classify as their ‘favourite’. I thought that if I left the questionnaire on a humorous, unsystematic question then people would feel more comfortable and will be more likely to hand it in or send it to me. It would also bring a smile to their face, which is always a good thing!