Deciding on my target audience

After looking at various different types of box packaging I decided that I would like to delve deeper into the cereal industry. There are many different areas of this industry, all are catered to different audiences, I now need to decide which audience will be my target audience, so I am able to begin the design process.

Within a target group there are lots of different sub categories, there is the Demographic variables; for example age group, gender, family, education, income, occupation, nationality etc, these all contribute to the selling of the product and this customer research into the our target audience is very important, because with out knowing our target group we are not able to create a product that will sell as it will most likely to be too general and not for the specific ideal target customer. Secondly there are psychographic variables, these consist of more personal attributes, such as personality, lifestyle and attitude.

I had many questions that I needed to ask myself:-

Who is my Target audience? then within this question come others

What age range will my Target audience be within?

What Gender will they be?

Also what will be their family income? will I aim for lower end market, middle or high? This will then determine my pricing. As well as the consumer I also need to take into account other competition from other booming cereal companies, and see which ones are most popular and why? How much they charge? What marketing techniques they use? for example free toys inside the packaging, images, advertising either on TV, billboards or magazines e tc. All these questions and more I needed to take into account to create my ideal consumer.

After much deliberation I chose my target audience, I decided that I would like to create a cereal product aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 10 and female. I decided to do this age range as I feel this age in particular is when children can be influenced and influential on their parents in buying what they want 'pester power'. I thought that doing my cereal aimed at the female market would be best as I knew what I liked when I was that age and being female is an advantage. Now I am going to look at cereals aimed at female children that are already on the market. To research this I am going to go into the supermarket to see visually and physically what the packaging is like and look on line.

After looking at a selection of different children's cereals, I came to a conclusion that children's cereal is very unisex, there does not appear to be many cereals that are just aimed at one gender, they all seemed to be aimed at both. This however is unlike adults cereals, that can sometimes have a gender split and are aimed with a particular gender in mind. In order for the manufacturers to make the children's cereal boxes unisex, they use colours that would appeal to both sexes, for example yellow, red and blue. I have now changed my mind from doing a cereal aimed at a female audience to designing one aimed at both female and male. After thinking about why manufacturers aim at both, it made sense, it would be too complex having to design for both and also their sales may not be as much as parents would not want to keep buying different cereals for each child.

Also whist reaching I noticed that almost every single child's cereal has a character, for example Frosties have Toni the Tiger, Rice Krispies have Snap, Crackle and Pop and Sugar Puffs have the Honey Monster. All these characters are there for a reason, they are what attracts the children to the cereal box, a child will most probably not read what the cereal contains, it will be just their character choice that makes the decision to which particular cereal will be theirs. Below are a selection of all the famous, lovable characters.

I thought it would be worth while doing some market research, I asked several children from my target audience and of mixed genders about their cereals and what they would have if they could make their own. My first question was "What cereal do you eat at home?" and "Why?" " What character would you have on you own cereal" and "What colour would your cereal box be?".The results were very interesting however not really that surprising. The results for my first question, "What cereal do you eat at home?", it was not to my surprise the sugary, chocolaty ones, like Coco Pops and Frosties were most popular. My second question "Why?" well it is obvious, they taste the best, the sweetness is what is most desired compared to the healthy options not that I have found one yet. My third question "What character would you have on you own cereal" There were various different choices differing from gender, the boys wanted to see animals such as Rhino's, Lions and Snakes, and the girls wanted Kittens and horses, both genders liked the idea of monkey's, tiger's, giffafe's and elephant's, however some of theses animals are already used by big brand companies. My forth question "What colour would your cereal box be?" Obvious choices boys wanted blue and red and girls pink and purple also yellow. Yellow came up with both boys and girls, when looking at the cereals on the market this seems to be the colour of choice that the companies pick as it is a very unisex colour.

I am sure I could have visited this area in much more detail and perhaps asked their parents as well, however I feel that I asked the most important questions and these gave me great insight into the child's thinking methods when picking a cereal.