Research of Institutions

Condé Nast is a New York City based publishing company founded in 1909. It was founded by Condé Montrose Nast. The company owns a variety of magazines - from fashion magazines such as Vogue to food such as Epicurious to culture magazines such as The New Yorker. They are often known to be the founders of "class publication" which meant that they targeted different niche markets with different magazines as opposed to targeting the largest readership/audience possible (with the exception of women's fashion magazines). The circulation figure for The New Yorker, for example, is 1,071,980.

These are the magazines that they own:

This company tend to cater more for fashion, as there are 6 magazines dedicated to fashion, such as Allure. This could be because it maximizes profit as fashion tends to be of women's main interest. There are magazines meant for men too, however. Therefore, Condé Nast catogorises and defines the target audiences for their magazines by age groups. and social groups more. All of the magazines here are meant for young adults, around 18-24, and due to the high-quality image from these magazines, the social group must be ABC1.

Another institution I researched is the Young Authors Foundation, Inc., which is an independent not-for-profit organisation that supports Teen Ink, a creative arts magazine curated towards teens. It was founded in 1989. They claimed to have reached "millions of teens" for their circulation figure. The reason this magazine is successful is because the content are submissions from teens themselves, and because there is a variety in the magazine (ranging to poetry, to short stories to reviews, to point-of-view articles), so it's aimed at a mass audience. Therefore, this institution used age group to define the target audience for Teen Ink. 

In a way the two institutions are similar because they both use age groups to define their target audience. The difference between Condé Nast and Young Authors Foundation other than the profit or not-for-profit factor is that because Condé Nast is a large organisation with a bigger audience and more recognition, they are able to reach more by having a large variety of magazines, all specialised and catered to different niche markets. For Young Authors however, targeting a creative  and "reformer" teen audience is the only specialised thing they are willing to do - as they are an indie publication they try to maximise profit by having a variety whilst still staying true to their niche audience (aspiring teen writers, artists) who wouldn't want the company branching out like Condé Nast. Also Teen Ink does not particularly use social economic groupings to define their target audience - as it is teens it would be irrelevant to group them on how much they earn as most teens don't get to the amount of money that full-time working adults do.