Lerner+J.+Focus+Group+Report

Lerner J. Personal Page

This is my report on a focus group I ran with five Towson University sophomore students on how they feel toward Television shows and movies. I was able to cover all five questions my team and I developed. All my participants have illegally downloaded videos and they do not consider it as stealing. They do not feel bad about it nor believe they are doing something wrong.


 * Focus Group Rationale**

Premium video content is increasingly being delivered through the Internet, giving Gen-Y many different was to access TV shows and movies. As a result broadcast TV audiences are being fragmented and the movie industry can no longer assume that box office revenues alone will pay for the production of new movies. The rationale for our focus group sessions is to determine how Gen-Y currently watches premium video and which broadband technologies they prefer. This information will allow us to advise Proximity clients on how best to target Gen-Y using ads associated with premium content.


 * Setting and Participants**

The 45 minute session was held in my dorm room in Tower A on Saturday, March 20, 2010. The Towson University students that participated were:


 * Andrew, 20, a TU mass communications major;
 * Keith, 19, a TU electronic media and film major;
 * Zach, 20, a TU mass communications major;
 * Justin, 20, a TU business major;
 * Hannah, 19, a TU elementary/special ed. major.

We covered the following five topics during the session:
 * Session Topics**

__Where do you primarily watch TV shows?__ All but one of the participants, Hannah, normally watch shows on television via cable. Hannah expressed that she watches her shows on the internet because she is always busy and running around, so it is easier for her to watch the shows online when she has the time for it. The others said they have so much time on their hands that they can usually watch it on TV at the normal time the show is on.

__Movies at home compared to movies at the theaters__ Only one of my participants, Keith, stated that he watches the same amount of movies at home as at the movies. The rest of them agreed with each other that they definitely watch more movies at home than out at the movie theaters. Since they are college students, they are a little lazy and they would rather wait until the movies comes out on DVD to watch.

__Buy or rent?__ For this topic every one of my participants agreed with each other. They decided that they would rather rent movies on DVD than buy them. They like going to pick out a movie or two to watch for a week and then returning it, and doing the same thing over again whenever they want. "You can only watch a movie a certain amount of times before you get sick of it" says Andrew.

__Importance of size and quality of the screen__ This question had mixed answers for it. Andrew and Zach think the bigger the better. Hannah needs the size of the TV to be big and the quality needs to be good as well. And Justin and Keith believe quality is very important, more important than size. They believe the better the quality, the more enjoyable it is.

__Have you downloaded videos illegally?__ Every participant answered yes to illegally downloading videos. They all also said they don't believe they're doing anything wrong when they do it. A few of them had some good points to this. Zach says "I wasn't the one who put it on there, so I can take what I want". Keith got really into it and let his emotions show. He snapped at me and said "Actors make enough money. Why should I feel bad? So famous people can have $8 million houses instead of $4 million?!" And last but not least, Andrew casually said to me "There's nothing wrong with living life".


 * Findings**

The session revealed that the Towson University students


 * would rather watch movies at home
 * like renting movies better than buying them
 * illegally download video from the computer and don't feel bad about it at all

These findings should be compared with the results from our other sessions. The students in this session obviously use both television and computers to watch movies and shows, but they have different preferences of when they choose to use the TV or computer. Depending on how much time they have on their hands or how lazy they are at the moment is how they choose between what they use. They also take advantage of the renting process and put it to use so they can watch different movies whenever they want.

In addition, I think that with everything being on computers in this modern society, including all movies and shows, people are going to eventually end up only using computer technology. Everyone downloads video and other files from there anyway already, it is just a matter of time. We should consider having a follow up focus group interview session to see how the participants would feel about this.