Target Market and Consumer Needs

We (illustration and graphics) have been set the task for hosting a Halloween party for ourselves and other students. I need to carry out research into our target marker and consumer needs in order for this event to run as well as we possibly can.

A target market is a group of people or 'consumers' which a particular product is aimed at. In this case our target market is uni students, aged 18+ (due to sales of alcohol). I looked into whether uni students would be able to afford to buy a ticket etc. by researching the amount of money the average student spends. I found that the average student (in a month) spends most of their money on rent, followed by food. The amount of money on average spent on social activities is £64 a month [1]. Therefore I think students would be able to afford  couple of pounds for a Halloween party presuming that we met their consumer needs which I will now go into further. 

Consumer needs are basically preferences in which your target market will have when thinking about spending their money on the product you are selling. In our case the consumer needs will be cheap entry, cheap drinks and food, exciting atmosphere, awesome decorations as it's a Halloween party and a range of music and the venue being close to the campus / student accommodation.

http://www.savethestudent.org/money/student-money-survey-results.html#2

The venue we have for the Halloween party is the Art Cafe on the campus which is free for us to use. We had the option to host the party at the Theatrical Town Hall but it was a bit too expensive for us to hire. I think if the word gets around and the advertising posters work well we will get a large amount of people wanting to attend. Also, with the venue being free the ticket price won't be expensive therefore more people will think about coming. The students will be happy that the venue is close to home / uni as well, so there is more of a chance they will buy tickets.

We have all be assigned roles for the event. The roles are as follows; Ticket designer, poster designer, security organisation, music organisation, decoration, authentication of tickets and event organiser. 

My role, along with another student is the authentication of the tickets. We need to come up with something that can make the ticket authentic so that people cannot photocopy the ticket and get in for free. We had some idea such as gold leaf (because it's shiny), shiny paper to print on, embossing and UV ink / paint. We will need to sort something before the tickets are sold so preferably the final idea shouldn't cost money. We are going to look further into this and discuss with fellow students.