8. Conducting Consumer Surveys

A market analysis must include local survey research to fully understand the uniqueness of your particular market and its consumers. This section provides details on what kinds of surveys and questions could help your analysis and provides a recommended instrument for conducting a consumer mail survey.

This section is also available as a PDF.

Consumer surveys can provide information on when, where, why, how and for what people shop. They can reveal attitudes toward your downtown and how those attitudes affect shopping habits. Readily available demographic or lifestyle data from secondary sources described earlier in this guidebook cannot completely describe where local people shop or what they would like to see in their downtown.

Types of Consumer Surveys

There are four basic techniques to survey consumers in your trade area; mail surveys, telephone surveys, intercept surveys, and focus groups. Other techniques including consumer diaries and point-of-purchase customer tracking systems can also yield useful information.

Mail surveys are a technique where you print and distribute questions to a representative sample of trade area residents via the postal service. Use a mail survey if you want to collect comprehensive consumer information. Mail surveys should include a brief cover letter that states how the survey will help the community, provides instructions and asks for participation. You may include a lot of questions but you must keep the survey short enough or enjoyable enough that most people are willing to complete it. Both survey takers and survey analysts prefer multiple-choice questions to fill-in-the-blank questions. The best mail surveys have been pretested before mailing. Some communities improve their response rate by offering incentives for return of completed surveys such as gifts, coupons, or eligibility for drawings.

Telephone surveys are a technique where you have interviewers call a representative sample of trade area residents from an office or home to ask questions. Use a telephone survey if you want to collect general consumer information. When using volunteer interviewers, calling is often easier as a group effort from a location with multiple phone lines. For consumer surveys, have them call at different times of the day and week. Each interviewer should briefly state how the survey will help the community, estimate how long the survey will take, and ask for participation. The best telephone surveys have quality interviewers who use similar techniques, speak clearly, ask a few simple questions and take care not to influence or sway the opinion of the respondent.

Intercept surveys are a technique where you stop a representative sample of downtown patrons on the street or at their point of purchase and ask questions. Use an intercept survey if you want to collect specific consumer information from users of the downtown. The interviewer should briefly state how the survey will help the community, estimate how long the survey will take, and ask for participation. Provide respondents with a writing surface, a place to sit down, a place for packages, refreshments, and a shady spot in the summer. Allow them to share impressions of their entire shopping trip. The best intercept surveys have quality interviewers, often working in teams of two, using similar techniques.

Focus groups are a technique where you bring together select groups of potential customers for organized discussions to gain information about their views and experiences of the downtown. Use focus groups if you want to collect rich and deep consumer information. You should personally invite seven to eleven people for a 90-minute meeting by telling them how it will help the community. Hold the meeting in a comfortable room and provide refreshments. An experienced interviewer or moderator should facilitate the dialogue and new idea development. At the end, thank participants through gifts, coupons or other tokens of appreciation.

Selecting a Consumer Survey

Every survey technique has a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. Any of the four, if administered properly, will provide valuable information. Most communities would be best served by using a combination of survey techniques. A mail or telephone survey provides you with general consumer information from a representative sample of residents in the downtown trade area. Adding an intercept survey allows you to compare and contrast users of the downtown with that general population. Adding focus groups allows you to delve deeper into the consumer behavior of a specific segment of the population such as teenagers, farm families, senior citizens, or college students. The comparative advantages and disadvantages of each technique are included below.

Mail Surveys

Advantages:

• Will yield information on consumers who use and do not use the downtown
• Few workers required
• Local and regional at no extra charge
• May ask complex questions
• Straight forward to analyze (numbers)

Disadvantages:

• Lowest response rates
• Respondent self-selection
• Costly
• Time consuming-data entry and analysis
• Inability to clear up unclear responses

Phone Surveys

Advantages:

• Will yield information on consumers who use and do not use the downtown
• Potentially most random sample
• Cheap (if local call with local volunteers)
• Straight forward to analyze (numbers)
• Broad sample

Disadvantages:

• Negative attitudes associated with phone surveys (hassle/bother)
• More workers required but difficult to get
• Non-local calls will cost more
• Shallow (must ask simple questions)

Intercept Surveys

Advantages:

• Ability to target actual downtown users
• Immediate (downtown experience is fresh in their mind)
• Can target users by location, date and time of day
• Expressive (can observe/record body language)
• Cheapest (with volunteer interviewers)

Disadvantages:

• More workers required
• Time consuming
• Misses nonusers
• Difficult to get a large sample

Focus Groups

Advantages:

• Fastest
• Cheap
• Targeted
• Interactive (group synergy)
• Expressive (can observe/record body language)
• Deep (may uncover complex reasons that lie behind shopper behavior)

Disadvantages:

• Interactive (peer pressure)
• Narrow (opinions of a select few)
• Hard to find quality interviewer/moderator
• Harder to analyze results (no numbers, qualitative)
• Hard to determine valid consensus

Designing the Consumer Survey Content

Once you have selected a survey technique or techniques, you must determine what questions you want to ask. Because respondents will only be willing to spend a limited amount of time, any survey must be designed to ask only the most important questions. Typically, mail surveys have the largest set of questions since respondents will be able to spend more time and will be able to work through more complex questions. The following list is not intended to include all consumer questions but to hopefully help in your search for what questions are most important to your market analysis efforts.

When, Where and Why They Shop

• When they typically shop for non-grocery items
• During which extended hours they are currently most likely to shop for non-grocery items
• How often they eat breakfast, lunch, or supper out
• How often they eat out during business travel
• How often they eat supper out given certain meal costs
• What restaurants or types of cuisine they would most like to see come to downtown
• How often they watch movies at a theater or rent movies from a store to watch at home
• Which events they attended in the last 12 months
• How often they come downtown
• What are the biggest non-work reasons for them to stop downtown
• Where they typically park when they drive to downtown
• How far they typically have to park from their non-work downtown destinations
• How far they live from downtown
• How far they live from where they work
• Where they are more likely to shop for non-grocery items, near where they work of where they live
• How often they shop at competing locations/stores
• When they shop at competing locations/stores instead of downtown, what are the main reasons why

What They Want

• Which businesses would they most likely patronize if opened in downtown within the next year
• What businesses they would most like to see come to downtown
• Which community assets would they most like to see developed
• Have they ever lived downtown in any community
• What is their opinion about someday living downtown
• What type of downtown housing would they prefer
• What housing arrangement would they choose
• If they moved (or stayed) downtown, what size housing unit would they require
• Which amenities are worth paying a higher mortgage or rent

Market and Marketing Data

• Their gender
• Their age
• By age, how many people live in their household
• Their home zip code
• Their marital status
• The highest level of formal education they have completed
• Their current monthly rent or mortgage payment
• Their household’s annual income
• Which leisure activities their household participates in
• What types of books and magazines their household regularly reads
• What radio stations they listen to most
• What local or network television stations they watch most
• What publications they read most
• Their level of interest in starting their own business
• Their attitudes about the downtown and the community

Administering a Consumer Mail Survey

The best way to ensure successful administration of any project, including a consumer mail survey, is to develop and follow a work plan. Work plans are a fundamental strategy employed by Main Street organizations across the United States. Below are tasks identified for a hypothetical consumer mail survey work plan. Many of the steps assume that you are using the Standardized Consumer Mail Survey developed by the Wisconsin Main Street Program.

Step 1. Review Examples from Other Communities

Many communities have administered a consumer mail survey and most are more than happy to share their methods and results. There is little advantage in trying to design your consumer mail survey from scratch. If your community is like most, you will lack volunteers with significant survey experience. It is easy to make costly mistakes. If a question is worded incorrectly it will make the answers collected less useful.

In order for answers to be useful, questions must be unambiguous and should not lead the respondent to a particular response. For easier analysis and interpretation, to the extent possible ask multiple choice rather than open-ended questions. Also, ask about existing behavior since existing behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Match questions on demographics with census categories so that they can be compared. Even subtle differences in the wording of similar questions found on surveys from two different communities will prevent comparisons between those two communities. This is not meant to discourage you from administering your own consumer mail survey but to encourage you to be cautious when writing questions.

Step 2. Accept/Reject Standardized Questions

The Standardized Consumer Mail Survey provided includes questions that the Wisconsin Main Street Program staff believe to be important in a comprehensive downtown market analysis and useful for each point of the Main Street Four Point Approach; design, organization, promotion and economic restructuring. You are free to eliminate entire questions that are less important to your immediate efforts in order to shorten the survey. Before rejecting any of the standardized questions, it might be useful for you to review the Resident Survey Supplement. It is called a resident survey supplement rather than a consumer mail survey supplement because its title is more public and it is more polite to call survey takers “residents” rather than “consumers”. While it was designed as an introduction piece, it provides the rationale behind each question. Keep in mind that each question you use as designed will allow you to compare answers from your community with other communities that used the same question and shared their results. This cross community comparison will enhance the power of your survey. You should not modify the wording of a question without good reason. If you have good reason please share it with the Wisconsin Main Street Program so we can consider revising the standardized survey.

When accepting or rejecting standardized questions, keep in mind that some of the questions in the Standardized Consumer Mail Survey are designed to be used together with questions from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey (see Section 3). The paired questions allow for comparisons between the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of potential customers and business owners. The table in exhibit 8.1 at the end of this section shows the corresponding questions.

Shorter or simpler surveys such as intercept and phone surveys can use a smaller set of questions often selected from the mail survey set. If an intercept survey is conducted, ask additional questions that capture thoughts fresh in the minds of shoppers. Base added questions on their current shopping trip, such as what they intended to purchase vs. what was actually purchased.

Step 3. Draft Customized Questions

Always customize any borrowed survey to fit your unique local needs. The sample provided has questions designed for you to personalize and instructions for personalization are supplied at the end of this section.

Step 4. Draft Introduction

An introduction is an important part of all survey techniques. For mail surveys the introduction will be presented through a cover letter. For intercept surveys, phone surveys and focus groups the introduction will be presented verbally. The introduction should briefly explain the purpose of the survey and for whom it is being done. It should then explain to the resident that they were selected randomly or, in the case of focus groups, because they are a member of a specific group. It should also give them an estimate of the amount of time required and ask if they are willing to help. The Standardized Consumer Mail Survey developed by the Wisconsin Main Street Program divides the introduction between a cover letter and the Resident Survey Supplement that includes instructions, answers to frequently asked questions, and a question by question explanation of why each question was asked. The explanations focus on how the survey results will be beneficial to community residents. Please note that the Resident Survey Supplement may be more valuable as a tool for volunteers customizing the survey than as an introduction piece because of the potential for the supplement to impact a respondent’s answers.

Step 5. Proofread and Pretest Your Survey

It is always good practice to proofread and pretest your survey, including your cover letter, before full distribution. Sometimes volunteers drafting the customized questions get too close to their work and fail to see the obvious. Have a few volunteers who are active in your organization, but who have not been involved in survey design, take your consumer mail survey and give you feedback. Instructions and questions that are unclear and misinterpreted will show up in a pretest and can be corrected.

Step 6. Approve Final Survey

Eventually editing must come to an end. Because distribution and collection requires a significant commitment of volunteer and financial resource it is important to have the organization or committee overseeing the project formally approve the final version of your consumer mail survey.

Step 7. Answer Sampling Questions

Once you have completed your survey instrument, you must decide who you want to answer your questions. For mail and telephone surveys, a random sample is best to ensure the sample reflects the demographic makeup of the trade area. In order to develop a sampling plan for your survey, you must first answer the following questions:

• What is the minimum number of completed surveys that you require?
• What is your expected response rate?
• What is your available budget?
• What is your available work force?

For mail, telephone or intercept surveys collect at least 400 completed surveys to reach a 95% degree of certainty that your sample represents the trade area population, or in the case of intercept surveys, the downtown user population. You can calculate the number of surveys you will need to print and distribute based on the following equation:

# of surveys distributed = required minimum number returned / expected response rate

For example, if you target the minimum of 400 completed surveys and expect a response rate of 30% your calculation would be as follows:

400 / .30 = 1333 surveys distributed

Step 8: Develop and Promote your Survey Plan

Your financial and human resources will determine the best way to distribute the surveys. For mail surveys, consider sending the survey directly to a random sample of addresses. For phone surveys, consider randomly calling names from the phone book. For intercept surveys, randomly select downtown users at strategic locations, dates and times of day. For example, select every tenth person that walks by your selected location. Be sure to explore opportunities for corporate sponsorship to defray postage and printing costs.

To stay on task, you must set dates for distributing and returning your consumer mail survey and assign specific responsibilities. It is recommended that all survey plans be thoroughly promoted in area newspapers and radio and TV stations prior to carrying out the survey. Potential respondents will be much more likely to participate if they understand the project and why it will help the community. A sample press release to promote a mail survey is included in appendix A of this section. Be sure to publicly thank your financial sponsors.

Step 9. Print Survey

The number of respondents you plan to survey will affect your printing decisions. Photocopying surveys is more cost effective for low volumes while professional printing is more cost effective for high volumes. If photocopying, make sure the quality of the copy is good. Stray marks that sometimes show up on poor copies could affect the accuracy of computerized optical mark recognition software.

Step 10. Distribute Surveys

The printed surveys from Step 9 need to be delivered according to the plan from Step 8.

Step 11. Collect Surveys

Collecting mail surveys involves providing a means to return the completed survey. This can include using a self-addressed form or envelope with prepaid postage so they can mail it back or having drop-boxes available throughout the community. For intercept surveys, phone surveys and focus groups collecting involves recording their answers. While collecting, be careful not to sway the opinion of the respondents. Be clear at all times and consistent with all respondents. When possible, consider offering incentives for participation to improve response rates. Finally, thank the respondents at the end.

Step 12. Scan Surveys

Once survey responses are collected, enter the data into a spreadsheet or database program. The Standardized Consumer Mail Survey used by the Wisconsin Main Street Program is scanable for automatic data entry of multiple choice questions.

Step 13. Verify Data and Enter Open Ended

While most computerized optical mark recognition software is surprisingly accurate, there are always answers that will be unrecognized or incorrectly recorded. In addition, most programs are still unable to automatically recognize handwriting and open-ended responses. For these reasons it is necessary for someone, preferably a volunteer, to verify and correct the accuracy of scanned answers and to type open-ended answers.

Step 14. Review Raw Data

Once the data is entered it is relatively straightforward to report the frequency of each response to each question.

Step 15: Summarize/Interpret Data

Later, sort and create demographic or lifestyle groups of the respondents. For each group, use “cross tabulations” of the data to reveal their shopping habits and views of the downtown. For telephone and mail surveys, it is important to check the randomness of the sample selected by comparing their demographic characteristics with data for the entire trade area (see Analyzing Customer Demographics and Lifestyle section). The overall household income, age, gender, and other characteristics of those surveyed should parallel the percentages for the entire trade area.

The questions in the surveys will cover a variety of uses downtown including retail, dining, housing, and others. In analyzing the results by consumer group, keep in mind some of the fundamental questions your survey is attempting to answer:

• Which consumer groups go or use downtown the most?
• What are their preferences, likes and dislikes?
• Are their consumer needs and wants being met?
• Are there opportunities for downtown to serve these consumers more effectively?
• How can downtown business and building owners improve their capture of the market?
• What promotional methods are most effective?
• What physical aspects of the downtown should be improved?

The survey results should provide existing businesses and building owners with detailed answers to these and other questions. The information can be put to work immediately to improve business operations and marketing efforts. Survey responses will also be used in later sections of this market analysis guidebook to examine specific business and real estate opportunities. In these sections, your consumer mail survey findings will be combined with various secondary data sources to more accurately assess business expansion and recruitment possibilities.

Step 16. Print Summary

Human and financial resources should be directed toward quality editing not expensive printing.

Step 17. Distribute Summary

Remember to share the results of your survey with the community and your existing business owners. Develop a press release summarizing the results to generate interest and coverage by your local media. Mail or hand deliver the summary report to existing business owners. Sharing this information is an important business retention activity. The report will demonstrate ways they might personally benefit from the results in the future.

Types of Questions in the Wisconsin Main Street Program's Standardized Consumer Mail Survey

The Standardized Consumer Mail Survey in this appendix addresses various market questions as follows:

• When, Where and Why They Shop - Questions 1-17
• What They Want - Questions 18-26
• Market and Marketing Data - Questions 27-39

Instructions for Customizing the Wisconsin Main Street Program's Standardized Consumer Mail Survey

When accepting or rejecting standardized questions, keep in mind that some of the questions in the Standardized Consumer Mail Survey are designed to be used together with questions from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey (see Section 3). The paired questions allow for comparisons between the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of potential customers and business owners. The table below shows the corresponding questions. In most cases the meaning is the same even though the wording varies to reflect the perspective of the respondent. Only questions that have required further clarification in the past are discussed in these special instructions.

* Some of the statements share the same wording while others the wording varies to reflect the perspective of the respondent.

The following steps should be followed to customize the survey instrument for your community:

Overall - Insert the name of your community wherever you see “City X”.

Cover Letter - Print the cover letter on your organization’s letterhead and insert the correct dates, addresses, phone numbers, names, and signatures. The Cover Letter was designed for Wisconsin Main Street communities so you may need to reword the opening paragraph. The survey instructions reflect the fact that the survey was designed for scanning and automated optical mark recognition. If you are planning to manually enter data you may adjust the instructions accordingly.

Question 8 - List the events run by your organization and any other community events that you believe contribute to the downtown economy. If the number of events exceeds 12, you may want to consider only listing the most important. Choices should match question 23 from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey.

Question 16 - List the primary commercial competition to your downtown. This competition may include big box retail outside the downtown, other commercial districts within your community, other nearby communities, or specific commercial districts or big box retail in those nearby communities. Be sure to also include your downtown as a shopping option.

Question 17 - Make sure your list in Question 17 matches your list in Question 16, minus downtown.

Question 18 - List the businesses for which you are most interested in evaluating consumer demand and market potential. This is your wish list of businesses. Choices should match question 34 from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey.

Question 20 - Customize the list of choices for question 20 to include community development projects planned or proposed through comprehensive planning, town meetings, or strategic/work planning. Choices should match question 35 from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey.

Question 37 - For this question it is important to list specific radio, television stations and the primary news and advertising publications available locally. Just identifying station programming categories (i.e. country, rock) or station origins (i.e. primary city) is not enough. It is important for your organization to know the specifics in order for you to better coordinate cooperative advertising opportunities. It will also allow you to target your downtown image advertising to those radio stations and publications preferred by potential customers. List the primary local radio or television stations by using both the call letters and dial number to ensure business owners recognize their options. Be careful to make your lists complete. If you do a good job there should be a low percentage of business owners who reply with “other”. Choices should match question 27 from the Standardized Business Owner Written Survey. Similar questions are asked in the Standardized Business Owner Survey in order to facilitate a comparison of where downtown businesses are advertising and where customers are getting their information.

Question 39 - The statements in question 39 are intended to gage attitudes that influence consumer behavior and to gage perceptions about the quality of life in the community. A range of possible statements is included in the standardized survey. You may want to eliminate statements that are not important to you or add statements to address issues unique to your situation.

Appendix A - Sample Press Release

For Immediate Release
(Enter Date)

Contact: (Enter name and phone number of primary contact)
(Enter name and phone number of secondary contact)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MAIN STREET PROGRAM TO SURVEY RESIDENTS

(Enter City) -- (Enter main street organization) is going right to the source to find out when, where, why, how and what (Enter City) area residents buy. They plan to learn more about local consumer behavior and attitudes toward the downtown through a survey that will be mailed to a random sample of (Enter City) area residents on (Enter Date). Results of the survey will be used by (Enter main street organization) to help downtown businesses be more successful and to improve the quality of retail and service opportunities available to area residents.

The resident survey is an important piece of the downtown market analysis being completed by (Enter main street organization) with free technical assistance provided by Wisconsin Main Street Program staff and the University of Wisconsin Extension Center for Community Economic Development. (Enter main street organization)’s survey will help bridge the gap between businesses and their customers. In order to be successful, businesses need to supply the products and services residents demand at the times and in the manner they demand them. In order to be satisfied, residents need those successful businesses nearby

Most everyone has participated knowingly or unknowingly in consumer research. When you fill out and return product warranties you are providing valuable consumer information to the company that makes the product. Many of those companies sell the information you provide to national research firms who try and predict for businesses the types of products and services that might be purchased by people with similar traits such as age, gender and income level. (Enter main street organization) will be using that national research to help downtown businesses. However, to fully portray the uniqueness of the local market they need local answers to some important questions.

Many questions deal with when, where, and why residents shop. The survey asks residents how often they eat breakfast, lunch, or supper out and what restaurants or types of cuisine they would most like to see come to downtown. Residents are also asked during which extended hours they are currently most likely to shop for non-grocery items. ( Insert a quote from Main Street Manager or from member of study group such as:) “Downtown businesses thinking about expanding their hours want to know what times are best.” Related questions deal with how often residents come downtown and for what, including which events they attended in the last twelve months. The survey asks residents how often they shop at locations or stores that compete with downtown and when they shop at those competing locations or stores instead of downtown, what are the main reasons why. ( Insert a quote from Main Street Manager or from member of study group such as:) “Downtown businesses want to know their competition so they can work to keep local business.” To provide useful information for parking management the survey asks residents where they typically park when they drive to downtown.

Some questions deal with what residents want to buy downtown. Residents are asked which businesses they would most likely patronize if opened downtown within the next year, and which specific chains or franchises they would most like to see come to downtown. ( Insert a quote from Main Street Manager or from member of study group such as:) “We want to know what businesses might be good to recruit.” The survey also asks residents which community assets they would most like to see developed. To provide useful information for downtown housing development the survey asks residents about their housing preferences.

A new trend in market research is to categorize residents based upon their values and lifestyles. The assumption is that values and lifestyles affect consumer behavior as much as other traits. To gage values and lifestyles the survey asks residents which leisure activities their household participates in and what types of books and magazines their household regularly reads. The survey also asks residents what radio stations they listen to most, what local or network television stations they watch most, and what news publications they read most.

Key findings will be reported to the public as soon as they are available. Participants are being asked to return their completed surveys to one of the following places: (Enter Place 1, Enter Place 2, Enter Place 3) or it may be mailed to the Main Street Office at (Enter Address). The deadline for returning surveys is (Enter Date).

Interested parties may volunteer for the downtown market analysis team by calling (Enter name of committee chair) (Enter phone number). For more information on the downtown market analysis or on (Enter Main Street Organization), contact (Enter Main Street Manager Name), at (Enter phone number).