Survey results

For my survey, I asked 20 people questions about their reading and buying habits in regards to magazines.The results that I had collected were from a range of different ages and genders so that I had varied answers and opinions. 

Something that I was especially curious of when revising the responses of this survey was if people tend to read online magazines. My results show that only 20% of the people who took the survey said that they do read online magazines. This is important to my research because I don't think that creating a magazine suitable for online or app readers would get much of an audience as a printed magazine would get.

Out of all of my options of genre for different types of magazine, there was interest taken in every single option apart from Home and Garden. Lifestyle magazines came out with the highest percentage of readers with 80% of the people I surveyed reading them. Sports and Health and Fitness also had 50%  between them, however these genres could arguably be considered sub-genres and therefore can fall under the category of Lifestyle magazines. 

I asked in my survey how much money a person would expect to pay for a magazine, this ranging from an option of 'under £2' to £10. In my results, the most commonly given answers given were £2-3 and £3-4. Only one person said that they'd be happy to pay over £5 for a magazine and only one person said that they'd pay under £2. This shows me that I should keep the price range of my magazine between £2 and £4.

The responses to the question 'how often would you expect a magazine to release an issue?' showed a range of answers from the people taking the survey. 60% of people said that they'd expect issues to be distributed monthly, however 25% of people said that they'd expect an issue every fortnight and the remaining 15% said that they'd expect weekly issues. Most magazines in the market release one magazine each month, I think that this is the most effective idea because it means that there is time to put together a great product and also means that there would only need to be one set of production team rather than two or three running a team for each issue being released in a month if it were more than once a month. 

I think that concentrating on a specific audience is something that I want to do for my magazine. In my survey I asked what type of content people want to see and a majority said that they like 'specific content' in the magazine that they choose to read. Obviously, the topic of Mens Health is huge. This means that I could concentrate on fitness, food and lifestyle choices. However, I will try and keep to creating content to please one target audience and genre rather than several. 

Men’s magazines from madeleineblair

Market Research survey

Comparison with women's health

Similarities

-There is a lot of emphasis on 'quick' fixes in terms of fitness for women.

-There is a similar house style, however a bit of pink has been used to add a feminine detail.

-Sex is a recurring topic in both Men's Health and Women's Health.

Differences

-'The male gaze' and 'The female gaze' are used because sex sells. Men like sex and women want to feel sexy.

-Beauty - Although appearance is a big topic in Men's Health magazine, it is feminised in Women's Health magazine to be called 'beauty.'

-couples advice - advice is stereotypically a feature of women's magazines.

Men's Health Magazine Research

-First issue was released in 1988. Distributed monthly.

-Circulation statistics show that the magazine has over 20 Million readers worldwide, this includes readers in America, Britain, France, Germany and South Africa.

-The main categories of content fall under the following:

Fitness

Nutrition

Sex

Fashion

-Spin-offs created by the same magazine include the popular magazine for women, Women's Health. And also a magazine aimed at youth called MH-18, which stopped circulation in 2001. And also a book released in 2009 called Belly off Diet book

-The target audience for Men's Health magazine is men aged 18-35.

-The magazine is critiscized for focusing on physical health in a way that is considered 'extreme.' This could be because the rise in male eating disorders has soared in recent years.

-The main house style/colours for the magazine are white, red, blue and black.

-Another success for the magazine was the launch of the Ask Billy the Bartender phone app. The magazine also became one of the first to enter the apple magazine reader market.