GC 2.1- Investigating Demographic

The Bath Chronicle currently sell around 16,000 copies of their newspaper per week however their readership is around 57,000. Lynne, from The Bath Chronicle, says that The Bath Chronicle is a family friendly newspaper that is usually purchased by a parent in a middle class family and most of the other family members in the house will also read the newspaper. Lin also said that because Bath is a modern city, The Bath Chronicle looks more modern than a lot of regional newspapers as they know they need to appeal to a trendy audience.

The core needs of the demographic are food, a home, entertainment, and a social life. Whatever the Chronicle do to develop their content for the fresh target demographic shouldn't breech any of the core needs, as these are the most basic things that the need to keep at a constant.

From market research that The Bath Chronicle have done, they discovered that young people between the ages of 14-25 are reading their newspaper when they live at home with their family however when they leave the home and become independent the amount of young people reading The Bath Chronicle decreases, showing that the people purchasing the newspaper are mature, working house owners.

By looking at people social class we can make an educated guess as to what they would be interested in purchasing and reading about. The Bath Chronicle know that they are targeting a middle/upper class audience therefore it is beneficial for them to have features about purchasing homes and cars, donating to charity and their events like the Love to Shop awards as their audience are likely to have the income to act upon their interest in fashion and style.

Young people take influence from family and friends with different aspects in their life and this graph displays where young people are influenced.

Slideshare (2011) Consumer Behaviour- Family, social class&life cycle. [Online] Accessed on: 17.02.2015. Accessible at: http://www.slideshare.net/rainbowlink/family-social-class-life-cycle?related=2

Looking at the graph above, it isn't surprising that young people will read the newspaper when living at home with their family as their family provide values such as moral principles, manners and motivation in education. As teens begin their adolescent to young adult stage of life they take more influence from friends, therefore when young people leave the home they lose most of the teachings their parents enforce and have more influence from friends with things like style and fads.

Teenagers are Digital Natives, Youth Net (2015) say that the internet is now a natural space for teenagers to go.

“Young people’s use of ‘new media’ allows them to create a continuous stream of multiple conversations, interweaving differing media formats. They associate the internet with a strong sense of community.”

Youth Net. Young People’s needs in the digital age. [Online] Accessed on: 16.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.youthnet.org/what-we-do/key-facts-and-figures/media-factsheet-young-people’s-needs-in-the-digital-age/

The internet offers a lot more to teenagers than what they can access from a book or a newspaper. It is fast, easy to access and also free.

Pew Research Centre. Teen and Young Adult Internet Use. [Online] Accessed on: 16.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/teen-internet-use-graphic/

This table above shows how often young people of different ethnicities and income access the internet. The darker the colour of the square, the higher the percentage of teenagers accessing the internet. 

From the table I can see that white teens and teens from higher income families access the internet more regularly than teens from a black or hispanic background and a lower income family. The majority of young people living in Bath fit into the white, higher income family bracket meaning that Bath's young people are potentially accessing the internet very regularly- an online news platform would likely be the most appealing.

In 2014, Pew Research's internet survey showed that 87% 18-29 year olds are Facebook users and an average of 72% of high school-university students are Facebook users, which is the vast majority of people in these demographics.

YouGov (2014) discovered that 61% of 13-18 year olds with a mobile phone also own a tablet. They have also presented what teenagers use their tablets for.

The Guardian (2009) did some research into what teenagers are interested, these points round up the results they discovered.

M. Stanley (2009). How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City. [Online] Accessed on: 19.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/jul/13/teenage-media-habits-morgan-stanley

This information is interest and The Guardian did research into teenagers interests however rather than sharing the straight and reliable results they seem to have concluded their results in an informal way. Therefore, these results may not be entirely accurate, The Guardian may be showing some bias against teenagers and writing their conclusion in such a way that presents all teenagers as lazy computer geeks.