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Strategic Communication Studies

Understanding your Customers and Audiences

"Consumer research is done with the intention of understanding the needs or behaviors of a particular group in order to define who to best market a product or service to, also known as identifying a target market" (Burclaff, 2024).

You can group customers by: age/generation, geography, values, lifestyle, and other factors. Attitudes, habits and preferences are generally collected via interviews, surveys, polling, focus groups, and by other means. Ideas for finding information about a specific consumer group:

  • Brainstorm which organizations or businesses might collect the information you are looking for. (Think: government agencies, trade organizations, academic researchers, etc.).
  • Consider: broader terms, rather than sticking to only specifics. (Ex. "Gender" instead of "women").
  • There is plenty of information and data out there that is FREE to access, including via the CSB+SJU databases!
  • Try searching books and journal articles, which often include statistics in the introduction or background information sections.

Consumer demographics can be categorized by:

Burclaff, Natalie. (2024, February 23). Doing Consumer Research: A Resource Guide. Library of Congress. https://guides.loc.gov/consumer-research/.

The additional databases and resources below will help you to better understand a customer base:

Public Relations vs. Advertising vs. Marketing from Public Relations 101

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