Each study covers a broad product category.  Within each broad category, you can find reports on more specific kinds of products.  

• Scroll through the list to select a study. 
• Once you have selected the study you would like to access, click on Pick this Study - selecting a study means having it highlighted.
• You are brought to the Mediamark Reporter Table of Contents screen for the study you have selected.

In the above example, you see the contents of the Beverages category from the Spring 1998 study.

SEARCHING

The following example illustrates a Mediamark Reporter search for information on consumers of a specific product group.

Suppose that you are developing a print marketing campaign for an energy drink, and you want to know who your target market is (in terms of age, income, education, family structure, etc.), and what magazines they read.

• Scroll down in the Beverages menu and highlight Beverages: Energy Drinks
• Click the DemoMedia Report button, or press Enter.  You can limit the list of product usage reports to those dealing with a particular demographic base (e.g. "Women").  By default, the database shows you reports on all demographic bases.

• Suppose that you want to target your campaign toward people who are likely to buy a lot of energy drinks.  You can select Heavy: More Than 5 Drinks Last 30 Days (Adults) to see demographic and media consumption information specifically about adults who are heavy users of energy drinks.

The resulting report should tell you who your target market is in demographic terms, what kinds of media they use (e.g. radio, television) and at what time of day, and even what channels they watch and what magazines they read.

Limiting Your Results

The report that we generated in the above example is several pages long.  For practical reasons, you may want to limit your results to show only certain variables.  To do so:

• Click on the Table format button.
• You are brought to the Table format screen where you can limit your column and row criteria.  All columns and rows are selected by default.  If you want to limit your output to certain rows, click on Clear to deselect all rows.

• To select the rows you want to see, double click double click on the individual items so that a bullet appears in the left margin.
• The Options button provides an easier method of selecting criteria by which to limit.  Click on Options to see the following screen:

• Select Demos and Mags-Sports to see only demographic information and sports magazine readership. Click OK.
  
• This will return you to the Table format screen.  Notice that only the variables that you selected (demographic variables and magazine titles in the sports category) are now highlighted.
  
• To sort your results by a certain column, use the Sort by menu to select Index, Proj(000), Pct. Down, or Pct. Across (see the section below on Interpreting the Data for more information on the Mediamark Reporter column headers).
• You can create customized report headings and footers by clicking on the Report headings button.
  
• Click OK to see the resulting table.

Keyword Searching

Mediamark Reporter's Search option allows you to search for a specific product across a number of study categories.  To perform a keyword search:

• Log on to the database, or, if it is already open, click on Change Study to return to the Available Studies screen.
  
• Click the Search button.
  
• Type the term you would like to search for in the space provided.  In the Search only box the default is set to All for Report, Year and Type.  You can change these settings if you want to limit to a particular report, year or study type.
  
• Click Search.

INTERPRETING THE DATA

The data that Mediamark provides is presented in five columns: Total '000, Proj '000, Percent Down, Percent Across, and Index.  See the example and definitions below.

Total '000

Mediamark Reporter Total Population - estimated number of adults age 18+ in the United States at the time the study was published. Remember to add the three 000s to the end of whatever number is given.

Proj '000 = Projected

This number represents the projected total number of adults who fall into the category described by the table, and who meet the row criterion in question.  In the example above, a projected 9,801,000 adults (6,586,000 of whom are men) in the United States consumed 5 or more energy drinks in the last 30 days.

Percent Down

The percentage of people who have a certain characteristic defined by a column heading.  Notice that 100% corresponds to the people meeting the table's criterion and not to the population as a whole.  In the example above, 19.2% of the projected total of 9,801,000 heavy users of energy drinks graduated from college (projected graduated college divided by  projected total, 1881÷9801).

Percent Across

The percentage of people who have a certain characteristic as defined by a row heading.  In this example, 8.8% of adults age 18-24 had more than 5 energy drinks in the last 30 days.  This is based on the projected population of that age group divided by the total population of that age group (2191÷24842).

Index

This number indicates selectivity; that is, which group, compared to the total population, meet the criteria of the row and the column.  It's calculated by dividing the Percent Across of a group (e.g. Adults, Men, Women, Graduated College, 18-24, Employed Full Time ...) by the Percent Across of the universe concerned (e.g. total number of heavy users of energy drinks).  In the above example, adults employed full time are about 10% more likely than the rest of the population to have had more than 5 energy drinks in the last 30 days, (5.5÷5).  The base is 100; 110-100 = 10.  Adults age 45-54 are 21% less likely to have more than 5 drinks last 30 days of Energy Drinks (79-100 = -21).

HINT: You may find it useful to sort your results by the index field.  This will allow you to easily identify demographic categories and/or media audiences who are more likely to use your product.  To sort by index, click on Table Format, then use the Sort by menu to select Index.

SUMMARY REPORTS

The Summary Report option allows you to access general information about your product.  You can find out the total amount consumed by the relevant study group (e.g. adults), the proportion of that group who use certain brands, and the proportion of that group who are light, medium and heavy users of the product in question.  To generate a summary report:

• Once you have selected a study, highlight the category that you want to see (in this example,  Beverages: Energy Drinks).
• Click the Summary button in the upper right corner of the screen.  The resulting report should look like the image below:

TARGET REPORTS

PRINTING/SAVING

• To print, click on the printer button labeled Print.  Your table will be sent to the Birnbaum Library printer.  Printouts cost 15 cents per page and can be retrieved using a copy card.  Ask the librarian at the reference desk for more information.
  
• To export the report as an Excel, Lotus, MRI+, dBase, or some other file format, click on the Work sheet button.

  

• Select the appropriate format, choose the A:\ drive to save your worksheet to a diskette, then click the Save button.
• You can now use the appropriate software to manipulate your data in whatever way you like.

ASSISTANCE

For a detailed explanation of various table reports, click on the Help button.

DEFINITIONS

* (Asterisk): A means of identifying statistical estimates based on respondent counts of under 50, both in the reports and in MEMRI or BrandTab output. Since small samples have larger sampling tolerances, the asterisk is a warning to the user that the projection should be used with care, in that it may not be reliable.

4-issue cume: the net reach of 4 issues of a particular magazine. This data gives an indication of reader loyalty.

Audience, Primary (Magazine): That portion of the magazine audience where someone in the household obtained the copy either by subscription or newsstand purchase.

Audience, Secondary (Magazine): Those readers of magazines who do not live in households where the magazine was purchased or received by subscription. Also called “pass-along audience.”

Average Page Exposure (Magazine): Total page exposure divided by total audience, representing the average number of times a reader looked at an average page.

Census Region: Four geographic regions defined by the Census Bureau as follows:
     North East: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

     North Central: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska

     South: Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisia na, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas.

     West: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California

Columns:

     Total ‘000: the total population as defined by the base (e.g. all users, adults, men, women, female homemakers).

     Projected ‘000: projected users of the category, i.e. product or medium.

     Percent down: the number of users of a product category who have a given characteristic is restated here as a percentage of all users.

     Percent across: the number of users of a product category who have a given characteristic, restated here as a percentage of the entire base population who share that characteristic.

     Index: see separate entry under ‘Index, propensity to use’.

     Composition (media): The percentage of a medium’s audience or of a product’s users that is described by some characteristic (usually demographic), e.g. women 18-24 are 39% of magazine X’s total audience or of product X’s total users. In Mediamark report tables, with media as rows, composition is the % Across (C).

Cost per point: a measure of relative cost efficiency of media or vehicles expressed in dollars spent to buy a rating point (1% of the defined population). This figure is obtained by dividing total cost by the
number of rating points.

Cost per thousand: a measure of relative cost efficiency of media vehicles expressed in dollars spent to reach a thousand persons. The figure is obtained by dividing the cost of an ad by the size of the audience in thousands.

County size: a classification scheme involving county and area size (as defined by the AC Nielsen Co.):

     County size A: All counties in the 25 largest metropolitan areas.

      County size B: Counties with over 150,000 population that are not in Class A, plus counties that are part of the metropolitan areas of cities in such B counties.

     County size C: Counties not included under A or B having over 35,000 population plus counties that are a part of the metropolitan area of cities in such C counties.

     County size D: All remaining counties.

Coverage (media): Coverage is the proportion of a specified medium’s population (generally demographic) that is reached. E.g., magazine Y reaches 25 % of women 25-54.

Cross-tab: short for cross-tabulation which is a tabular representation of clumn and row definitions of data variables with each intersection providing an estimate of persons who have both characteristics.

Cume: short for ‘cumulative’. The number of different people who read or are exposed to any medium, vehicle or group (schedule) within a defined population. Also known as Net Unduplicated Audience.

Daypart Cume: The number of people who viewed or watched at any time during the time slot.

Demo: Short form for the demographic definition of a target or media audience. Used to describe the defined group as in “women 18-34”, “total adults”, or “men with household income of $25,000 or more”.

Doublebase: Mediamark’s two year database consisting of four waves of respondent data. It contains only those items that were carried in the questionnaires for all four waves of fieldwork. Its purpose is to report adequate samples for smaller market segments, both demographic groups and low incidence
media (items marked with an asterisk *).

Duplicated audience, duplication: that part of an audience of two or more vehicles who are reached by more than one of these vehicles.

Frequency (media): the number of different issues (or showings) that a person is exposed to of a vehicle or vehicles in a media schedule.

Frequency distribution (media): a table showing the number of people reached for each frequency level (i.e. number of issues read of a schedule). The sum of these audiences would equal the net reach of a schedule.

Index, or propensity to use: a propensity to use index is the probability (expressed in terms of an index) of finding a user in a specific group relative to the probability of finding a user in the general population. Indices of user demographics and media preferences are used to indicate the direction and amount of difference from the average. The index of the average is, by definition, 100. Thus, an index of 112 reflects a 12 % above-average incidence. An index of 89 indicates an 11% below-average incidence. An index is calculated by dividing the Percent Across of a group by the Percent Across of the universe concerned.

Magazine page exposures (MPX): is a measure of the average number of times the average reader sees an average page in a magazine. It is an excellent overall indicator of reader involvement.

Marketing regions: see page A-23 in the Appendix of the Mediamark Reports User Guide (REF ... ).

Page Exposure Total: the total number of different times an average page in a specified magazine is looked at by the readers of that magazine.

Quintile: A division of a specified population into five equal groups, based on an ordered array of a specified quantity such as number of magazines read, income, number of ½ hours of TV viewed. The order is from high (Quintile 1) to low (Quintile 5).

Reach: Unduplicated audience of a single vehicle or schedule of vehicles. May be expressed as a percentage or in thousands of persons or household. Also called “cume”.

**Adapted from an original created by Marquette University, Pace University Library and the University of Arizona.**