Primary Research

For my primary research on my documentary I went out and asked questions to the general public to see what they thought about terrapins/reptiles. I only had three questions as i thought people would not do my survey if they thought they would be waiting around for a long amount of time. these are the questions I asked:

Q1: 'Have you ever owned a reptile as a pet?'

Q2: 'What do you think appeals to someone about having a reptile?'

Q3: 'Would you ever consider buying a (or another) reptile?'

I got varying answers from the ten people I asked here are three examples from each question:

A1:

'Yes'

'Yes, several'

'Never'

A2:

Its different, people usually like something different and dogs and cats are a bit too normal

I don't know why really, you cant interact with them like you can with a cat or a dog

well i suppose because they look and behave differently to normal pets,maybe

'No, it just doesn't appeal to me, they just seem a bit pointless'

'I quite like the idea of them, yeah i think i would like to own one someday'

'yeah I had a couple before and enjoyed owning them, so yeah i would like to get another reptile'

I also went to a pet shop in Great Yarmouth that specializes in selling exotic pets, I asked him how many people usually come in to buy exotic pets and he said that more people go into his part of the shop than the rest of it and that exotic pets seem to appeal to today's generation rather 'than the average, conventional pet'. In relation to this he said that he seems to get a lot more younger people come in to get exotic pets rather than the older generation.

Primary Audience research

For my primary market research i mad a survey on the website smartsurvey.com, here is a link to my survey: http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/107129BUKUJ. I distributed my survey through Facebook and email and got 17 replies. I tried my best to get a good balance between qualitative and quantitative research. I used this survey to see if people liked the documentary idea and how much they could relate to the subject of having reptiles as pets

I also looked at the BARB figures for channel 4 at ten o'clock to see how many viewers my three minute wonder would get. According to the BARB the average viewing figures for channel 4 is 9703000 viewers which is a rather large viewership and would be good for my three minute wonder as i am trying to make it as universal as possible so it would appeal to large audience.

Primary Market Research

We also went on to the TV guide website and counted the amount of time documentaries where aired on the channels BBC 1 UK and channel 4. channel 4's percentage of documentaries is 12.6% and the percentage of documentaries on BBC 1 is 6.7%.

Secondary Research

The following paragraphs are from an article on the daily telegraph.com
'Reptiles now more popular pets than dogs '
'Reptiles like snakes, geckos and bearded dragons have become such popular pets that they now outnumber dogs, new research has found.'

'Calculations by the British Federation of Herpetologists (BFH) indicate that there are now as many as eight million reptiles and amphibians being kept as pets in the UK. This compares to an estimated dog population of 6.5 million.'

There has been coverage in the media recently of domesticated reptiles being problematic, the following quotes are from august 7th.

'Terry Bowes, director of Wetheriggs Zoo and Animal Sanctuary Centre in Cumbria, said the reptiles are being dumped by owners after they grow to a large size and become costly to keep.

He said: ‘The problem is both the number being dumped, as well as the way they devastate the wildlife. They are carnivores. They will eat anything that moves.'

I found the details of an exotic pet shop on yell.com

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