Target Audience Findings

I have received 16 responses to the questionnaires and have arranged the answers in pie-charts and graphs as follows:

Most participants go at least once a month but nobody went more often than once a fortnight.

This clearly shows that most people prefer the mainstream cinemas of Vue and Odeon (nearly 70%) against the independent Cinema City.

Twice as many people prefer to watch films on DVD than go to the Cinema.

This shows that the most popular genres across the age groups were, surprisingly, Adventure and Drama. Under 25’s enjoyed the most Adventure, Fantasy and Science Fiction, whereas the over 46’s preferred Drama to anything else.

Most participants to my survey who prefer to watch DVDs, which was half of them, surprisingly stated that they found out about the films by Cinema Trailers. TV and word-of-mouth closely followed this statistic, but the use of billboards appears to be wasted on the majority of people. “Other” advertising includes text alerts and posters in bus stations and on buses/taxis.

This graph shows the answers for people under the age of 26 and those over 46 years old. With regard to my predictions, it is true that older people prefer going to Cinema City than to the Odeon or Vue cinemas and that they enjoy watching DVDs at home. It is true too that young people prefer the mainstream cinemas, as none of them answered that they like to go to Cinema City.

This graph shows the answers for the under-26 age group. With regard to my predictions, young males certainly prefer action, horror and sci-fi films compared to young females, but it is interesting that both sexes like fantasy films.

In conclusion, I have discovered that most people in my survey visit the cinema at least once a month and they prefer the Vue/Odeon mainstream cinemas to Cinema City. Younger people like Adventure, Fantasy and Science Fiction genres, whereas older people like a mix of different genres and only have a particular preference to Dramas. Half of everyone I surveyed preferred viewing films on DVD and another quarter, on TV and internet. With technology continuing to grow in these areas, I would expect this proportion to rise in time as I believe that this is a growing trend for people of ALL ages.


With regard to the possible link between how films are advertised and by which method we watch them, it is quite surprising to see that cinema trailers are the best way to find out about films (it received a 75% score) yet only a quarter of participants actually prefer to view films at the cinema. Perhaps if we like the look of a film trailer while we’re at the cinema, we will wait until its DVD is released – bizarre! However, these findings are closely followed by TV, internet and word of mouth so perhaps we shouldn’t judge the cinema trailer quite so highly.

Having spent a long time researching and producing an opening to a thriller film, I am somewhat disappointed to find that only half of all my participants like the thriller genre – and very few of those are in my age group.

With regard to my predictions, my findings show that younger females do indeed prefer Romantic Comedies compared to younger males who, in turn, prefer Action, Horror and Science Fiction (typically boys’ movies). However, it was interesting to find out that both sexes enjoy Fantasy films which I would have expected more young females to have liked.

There is definitely a trend that older people prefer to watch films on DVD and when they do go to the cinema, they prefer to go to Cinema City which, as I have researched previously, does cater more to the older generation as it is cosy, comfortable and has more facilities than the mainstream cinemas. As predicted, nearly all young people in my survey prefer the Odeon/Vue cinemas to Cinema City. I am not surprised by these findings as I have noticed this trend whilst going to the cinemas myself and waiting in the queues with my friends.