iView Author:
Amanda Sodhi
(Washington, D.C. USA)

Email:
amandasodhi[at]gmail[dot]com

Bollywood Research Study-The Details!

In mid-February, I did my first PFC post about a Bollywood Research Study I was trying to administer for a Marketing class I was enrolled in. And, now it is July and I’ve finally disclosed the results, which have already been posted on PFC, courtesy of Utpal Borpujari.

First of all, I would like to thank those of you from PFC who took the rather long, 40-question-survey and offered your feedback.

Now, let me go back a few months and take you through my research process, and share some of the important lessons I learned, not just about Bollywood target audiences, but the whole process of conducting a research study without sufficient resources.

Researching the Lack of Research…

For about a year, as I started getting into PR and Marketing, I became curious to find out about PR and Marketing related research studies conducted on Bollywood and Bollywood target audiences. I really wanted to learn more about various aspects of the business side of Bollywood—for example, I wanted to find out how many people actually download mp3s for free, how many times maximum would one like to go to a theater to watch the same film, and so on and so forth. For some reason, I also got the impression that the industry thinks NRIs and PIOs are a more profitable market segment… I wanted to see if this actually holds true. So, I did what I’ve been trained to do as a college student who loves being on the Internet—I Googled away and went onto all scholarly databases available to me at Marymount. And, amazingly enough, there was not a single research study which showed up that addressed even a small facet of the issues I wanted to explore.

So, in the Spring Semester, one of my marketing professors allowed me to enroll in an Independent Research Study course so I could do my own research study on Bollywood.

The Questions…

Obviously, I then created the questions I wanted to ask as part of the research study. I created two versions of the research study—one for people in India and one for NRIs/PIOs. The main difference between the two versions of the survey is that one used Rupees and one used Dollars as units, and the NRI/PIO version of the survey also included a few questions regarding Bollywood concerts which are frequently held abroad.

Those of you who took the survey, may find this part a little boring (or, perhaps very boring), however, for those who are curious about what the 40 questions entailed, here is a brief overview.

There were four main categories to the questions—one related to films, one related to music, one related to audience favorites and one which consisted of open-ended questions. Yes, there were a few more questions which didn’t exactly fit into these four categories, but you now have a basic idea of how the survey was structured.

For the film portion of the survey, I asked questions such as “How often do you view Bollywood films,” “How [as in Theater, Cable, DVD, VCD, VHS, Online, etc.) do you usually watch Bollywood films," "Do you enjoy watching Bollywood or Hollywood films more," "How often do you see Bollywood movies at a theater," "What is the maximum amount of times you will see the same Bollywood movie at a theater" and "What is your favorite genre of Bollywood films." I also asked questions about how one decides to watch a film at a theater, how one likes to learn about Bollywood films (i.e., through tv ads, music videos, magazines, recommendations, radio promotions, etc.), which media outlets/publications one regularly consults, how one gets most of their information about Bollywood films. I also wanted to take a look at how much money people spend and are willing to spend on Bollywood films, so I also included questions about how much money one spends on average per month on Bollywood films and how much one is willing to spend up to. In addition, I also asked which part of it the entertainment industry one wants to get involved in, and if one would like to see fewer song-and-dance numbers in Bollywood films.

For the music portion of the survey, I asked if one downloads mp3s for free online and if one purchases original CDs and cassettes. Like the film portion of the survey, the music portion of the survey also included questions about how one obtains most of their information about music, how much money one spends on music per month and how much one is willing to spend on music per month.

The "favorites" section of the survey simply asked one to write-in their favorite actor, actress, male singer, female singer and music director.

As far as the open-ended portion of the survey goes, the questions included asked survey takers which form of promotion they think are most effective for Bollywood films and music, which changes they would like to see taking place in the industry and what they think is the key to a successful film.

And, of course, I also had a few demographic questions about the survey respondent's age, gender and subject studied in college.

Being Over-Optimistic…

Okay, so once I was done with getting the questions together, it was time to start administering the survey. Initially, when I was planning to do this research study, I naively expected to have a terrific sample size. I figured that if 5 colleges in Delhi and 5 colleges in Mumbai administered the survey to 30-40 students each, I'd have 300-400 survey responses from India. I also thought that since the USA has 50 states and each state has many colleges and universities with Indian Student Associations, if 25 of these Indian Student Associations administered the survey to about 8 students each, the USA-based sample size would also be impressive.

Well, clearly I was living on another planet when I dreamed of such a fantastic sample size…

Administering the Survey...

I first requested that PFC post the links to the surveys, which the PFC editors kindly did. While many PFC visitors did take the survey, the numbers weren't that terrific. No, I do not know exactly how many people who are already loyal PFC fans took the survey. But, based on the dates that the survey was taken, I am guesstimating that under 15-20 people took the India version of the survey and under 15-20 people took the NRI/PIO version of the survey.

I also sent out a bit too many emails to every single email ID I could find on the Delhi University and University of Mumbai and other Indian colleges Web sites. But, I learned my first lesson very quickly…

Lesson #1: People will list email IDs that are no longer working on their Web site.

Now, although many of my emails to the Indian colleges and universities bounced back with error messages, a lot of the emails did also go through, only no one ever bothered to respond.

So, I ended up calling the Chancellor of University of Mumbai one day, but he just told me to send him an email or to send information via snail mail. Later on, I realized that he is also the Governor of Maharashtra, which explains why I probably never heard back from him again. Oops.

But, no, I wasn't going to lose hope. I asked my professors to get me in touch with professors they knew in India. And, while the professors in India they connected me to were not so thrilled about helping out, they did end up administering my survey to some of their students.

Now, as I was not having much progress with getting enough survey-takers, I also realized I needed to do something fast if I wanted to meet the deadline for completing my research study. While I had initially expected to only administer the survey for three weeks, I had to keep on asking my professor for extensions, and had the survey online until April.

Lesson #2: Administering a survey takes a lot longer than one may expect and want.

All right, so back to the details about how I administered the survey. Well, I also sent about 80-90 emails to people from Indian Student Associations all over the U.S.A. asking them if they would administer the survey, even if it meant having just a few students take it. And, yes, the majority of the survey respondents for the NRI/PIO portion of the survey took the survey as a result of these emails I sent out. However, I also learned Lesson #3 in the process…

Lesson #2 and #3: People don't like to respond to emails from a random person about a research study. And, it's hard to get people interested in your research study.

While the number of NRI/PIO respondents continued to increase, the India portion of the survey was not as high as I wanted it to be. So, I sent out many follow-up emails to colleges and universities and various professors begging them to help me get more survey-takers. I also contacted a few Indian film institutes and got a few survey takers from Whistling Woods. I also emailed all of my friends and cousins and asked them to pass along the link to the survey to everyone they knew who would be willing to take the survey. And, the survey responses for the India version of the survey also increased.

Overall, though, trying to get enough people to take the survey was a painful process. While my initial goal was to have 300-400 survey respondents from India and about 200 survey respondents from the USA, I ended up only getting 86 survey respondents from India and 93 survey respondents from NRIs/PIOs. However, my professors assured me that this was still okay, especially since there weren't any Bollywood research studies out there in the first place, so this was a good first attempt. So, finally in April, I took down the survey, and that, too only a few days before I was to present the results at Marymount University's research conference and only 2 weeks before I was to graduate…

So, then began the "examining of results" chapter of my research study.

The Results…

Most of you have probably read Utpal's post about the results. However, I'm including a more detailed version of the results for some of the major questions.

Note: If one conducts a t-test, it turns out that Indians watch an average 3-4 films a month and NRIs/PIOs watch an average of 2-3 Bollywood films a month.

The Open-Ended Questions…

When asked "what form of promotion do you think is most effective for selling Bollywood music," Indians had some interesting feedback. One person suggested, "selling of audio CD right outside of the auditoriums. The point of sale should be accessible immediately after the audience comes out of the auditorium," while others commented, "Cassettes still rule. Who has internet access they are no more buying" and "making it [music] less expensive.” When asked, “What changes would you like to see in Bollywood movies and music,” some interesting thoughts from some of the Indian respondents include, “less songs,” “less lipsinging to music” “more experimental cinema,” “cut down on superfluous song and dance,” “songs are good in background when they help in the flow of the movie. I hate songs that are forced into the narrative,” “offbeat movies” and “they started to become more realistic like Hollywood ones.” A few NRI/sPIOs indicated that when it comes to music, they would like more classical/semi-classical sangeet and less English in the lyrics. One NRI/PIO mentioned that “Would like the music to use more Indian instruments. If I want to hear beats, I’d rather hear U.S. chartbusters than Himesh et. al.” Another interesting observation pertaining to the NRI/PIO responses is that many respondents indicated that they would like more realistic dialogues, better scripts, “less formula-oriented films,” “more original work” “less corny and predictable scripts,” “better content,” “more independent films,” “more original stories,” “not copies from the old times,” etc.

Possible Errors and Some Additional Thoughts…

Some of you probably feel that the sample size is not significant enough. Yes, I agree that the research study would hold much more value and would be better if I had a much larger sample size. However, for some reason, despite sincere attempts to get enough people to take the survey, I was not able to do so. Yet, at the same time, it is better to have an initial research study conducted than to not have anything at all. Actually, I’m not sure what would be the ideal sample size, because when I took a look at some of the recent research studies conducted by the entertainment industry, none of them disclose the sample size. Another thing I would like to point out, is that even though the sample size is not terrific, there is a big difference in how NRIs/PIOs responded to certain questions compared to how Indians responded—for example, the question regarding “how do you usually watch a Bollywood film,” there is a significant difference in the percentages for each answer option for both audiences, which does strongly suggest that one market segment views films more at a theater while the other views films online more.

Some of you may also feel that the results could have been skewed due to PFC members taking the survey—especially the 32.3% consult PFC from India statistic—although Alexa.com is not an entirely reliable Web site, it does indicate that the PFC audience is almost 70% from India, which explains why more Indians may have selected it as one of the sources they consult. Although there were PFC members who probably did select PFC as a source consulted, which may have caused a certain amount of error in the answer to that question, there were most likely also people who selected PFC who did not take the survey based simply off the posting on the Web site.

However, it would be nice to have another research study conducted with a more random sample and a larger sample of around 1,000 to 2,000 people in North America and Europe and India to compare the differences with the results.

Another possible factor which may have skewed the results is the ratio of men to women—more men took the survey as opposed to women. It would be interesting to have an equal number of men and women taking the survey, to verify if there are any differences in how men and women respond to the questions.

I really hope that in the future, many more research studies related to Bollywood are conducted and are made available to the general public. However, until that happens, at least I have tried my best to provide an initial research study.