Audience Profile

When considering the category of which a One Direction fan would fit into, I would presume their main priority to be that of 'Status'.

'Big ideas and plans for the future' - Stereotypically one would assume that a fan of the band would be a young female teenager whom has outrageous dreams about personal relationships with the band members.

'You care a lot about others' opinions' - I would expect fans to encourage friendship group conversation about the band, adopting it as a common interest amongst the individuals. Furthermore, friends could be a possible influence into the likeability of the boy band.

'You make a special effort to be noticed' - Assumptions would arise that One direction fans would support the group on a fashion basis, wearing band mechandise such as hoodies and t-shirts more often than the usual high street fashion.

'In appreciation of beautiful things' - Expectations of the audience assume that the reason for fans of the band are mainly due to their physical appearance, which may have encouraged individuals to start listening to the band.

When testing my audience profile, I decided to send out a survey on Survey Monkey to One Direction fans to see if my hypothesis was correct. I posted this upon various One Direction forums, collecting only a few reponses. However, these are still valid to either support or contradict my theory.

My primary question was; 'What is your gender?'. Here, out of my 12 responses, my hypothesis was proved correct with 100% of respondants being female. Also, supporting this I predicted that the majority of the audience would be young teenegers. Again, this was seen accurate with 11 out of my 12 respondants being in the age catergory of 11-15 years old.

Although I didnt specifically presume, it was shown that most of the boyband fans prefered the music genre of pop, with only 1 respondant favouriting the R'n'B genre. I believe this was predomantly down to the fact that One Direction fall into the music genre of pop and therefore, fans adopt to other artists with a similar style to the boy band.

Next, I asked the question; 'What is your fashion style?'. The answers to this question, surprised me the most by contradicting my original hypithesis. It showed that 82% of respondants opted a casual style, just wearing the ordinary jeans and t-shirts. I predicted that the boyband fans would wear One Direction merchandise, but only 2 people supported my hypothesis by selecting this answer therefore, disproving my inital stereotype.


From this point on in my survey I chose not only to use quantative questions, but also qualitative, allowing me to get a deeper insight into the answers of the fans. The first question I asked was; 'Why did you start listening to One Direction?'. I predicted that the predominant reason for this would be due to their physical apperance however, my results ranged from this to having the band help a respondant through hard times. A common response was fans started listening to the boyband after their hit release, 'What Makes You Beautiful'. This would support that the fans main prioty is staus based due to characteristics including 'The appreciation of beautiful things'. For the fans this may be the messages or deeper meanings behind their songs or even the voices of the boys themselves. 

Furthermore, when I asked 'Why do you like One Direction' this supported my hypothesis to a greater extent due to the majority of respondants saying that the boyband are 'cute'.  In addition, canidates also support the band due to the personalities of the individuals, which in turn, also attribues to the lyrics put across to their fans.

Additionally, to show that my results were valid I asked 'Have you always liked One Direction?' In response to this, 92% of respondants clarified that they have always liked one direction for a number of different reasons. However, one person disagreed after having got tired of the boyband but futhermore, fell for the artists again due to new releases.  These results therefore show I asked individuals from a fan based forum.

Moreover, I assumed that fans would have outrageous dreams about dating members of the boyband. Although this is seen to be incredibly stereotypical, this was proved correct with 100% of my audience claiming that yes, they had wished for a member of the band to be their boyfriend.

Penultimately, my assumption of fans encouraging friendship group conversation about the band was also correct. All 12 respondants clarified that yes, they do talk about the band with their friends, with 11 people often having group conversations about One Direction and 1 person only having the influenced conversation sometimes.
This therefore shows that the boyband are highly influencital in the lives of fans.

Finally, my last question was; 'Do you own One Direction merchandise?' This was the only question with a variety of different answers of which I was not expecting. I predicted that fans would own a range of different mechandise products designed by the band however, only two thirds of my respondants owned the bands merchandise with 1 of those only owning items of clothing.  The other 33% owned nothing relatable to the band which surprised me, due to all candidates being fans of the boyband. This could possibily suggest that One Direction are not the favourited band of all 12 respondants.

 

Overall to sum up, I feel that One Direction fans fit to the 4Cs Segmentation result of having the main priority of 'Status' with characteristics to aspirer. Stereotypically speaking I believe that they have 'Big ideas and plans for the future', 'Care a lot about others' opinions' and have 'appreciation of beautiful things' through the evidence in my results however, the point of 'You make a special effort to be noticed' I consider not to be true, due to the fans not outgoingly showing themselves are One Direction fans by wearing the band's clothing and owning merchandise associated with the band. Although, to obtain a clearer view of this, I would need to collect a larger sample of answers to analysis, rather than stereotyping an entire fan-based audience on only a few individuals responses.