Gathering information
Compiling the information shopping list
The answers to these questions will affect what, exactly, you collect and how you go about it. If you want information about where your audiences live so you can present it to a local authority that might fund a project, you will need to make sure that you can separate out their council taxpayers because they are rarely interested in anyone else.
Different types of organisation will have different shopping lists because their objectives, activities, customers and environment are different.
You need to collect information about both your existing audiences and participants to understand how they see their relationship with you. One of the most important skills you need at this point is the ability to see your organisation from each of your different audience's viewpoint - they might think very differently to you and your colleagues.
Your audiences, visitors and participants do not just have a relationship with your organisation, so you need to find out about all the others that provide them with entertainment, stimulation and opportunities to enjoy themselves with their friends, partners and family. They have so many choices about what to do with their spare time and spare money so your strongest competition could be simply be the urge to stay at home.
There are less concrete factors that influence your existing and potential audiences in powerful ways. These are the political, legal, economic, social and technological changes that are going on all around us. Here are some examples:
| political | the emphasis the current government places on tackling social inclusion which means that many arts organisations are focusing on sections of the community they have previously had no contact with |
| legal | the Disability Discrimination Act |
| economic | in the last recession, small local arts providers with low ticket prices and large-scale spectacular events seemed to be affected less than medium-sized organisations that rely on a core audience making frequent visits. What will happen in a future recession? |
| social | one orchestra discovered that the biggest barrier to attending a concert among their most likely potential audience was lack of free time |
| technological | over 20% of tickets for the 2001 Edinburgh Festival Fringe were booked online. How will this trend grow? How will e-money impact arts organisations? |
Gathering information
There are three types of information:
desk research
information about your own audiences that already exists and just needs locating and sorting
secondary research
information that someone else has collected eg about a particular community
information about someone else's organisation or audience that has similarities to your own so you can draw parallels
primary research
information about your own audience that you have to go out and collect
Primary research takes an enormous amount of time and energy and can cost significant amounts of money. If you can find the items on your shopping list through desk and secondary research, then you can save your resources for something else.
Sources of desk research
- past season brochures or tour leaflets
- past box office report printouts, end of day forms or seating plans
- annual reports
- past management accounts and performance reports supplied to th the board of directors
- accounts files
- past budgets
- reports to funding bodies
- staffing structures
- analysis of customer data held on the box office computer system
- past research reports
Information from box office systems
You can learn a great deal from the huge amount of information already available from the data venues or companies collect regularly, for example:
- compile reports from weekly box office figures to build up a picture of 'normal' booking patterns for different types of event or times of year etc to see how bookings for the current show are different
- test pricing structures by seeing which price bands sell out first
- the difference between income and attendance to get a sense of how effective your discounts policy is
- the take up of relevant discounts to see whether campaigns targeted at particular market segments worked
Effective box office computer systems hold almost limitless information about audience behaviour. Likely target audiences can be identified according to factors like previous attendance, frequency of attendance, average or total spend or average number of tickets per transaction.
Companies must be aware, however, that analysis of this data involves the venue in a great deal of time and effort. A middle-scale venue can rapidly accumulate a database of over 40,000 bookers and a large-scale venue over 100,000. To analyse frequency of attendance on a database of 80,000 bookers means that reports take a long time to run. Different computer systems have different capabilities so the accessible information will vary widely from venue to venue. Companies must discuss their priorities with the venue and agree a reasonable research plan. Companies will need to enthuse and motivate the venues by explaining how the information will be used, how the venue can benefit from it and share tour-wide results.
Only 2 out of the 49 venues involved in the research for this guide said that they had a policy which prevented them sharing information with visiting companies. Two thirds said that they had shared the results of box office analysis and a quarter the results of audience surveys.
Venues and companies should ask themselves repeatedly why they need the information and how they will use it.
Secondary research
Why spend time and effort on audience questionnaires if the answers are already available elsewhere?
Information on audiences for the arts is readily available from the following organisations:
Arts 4 all people: www.arts4allpeople.org
Arts Council England: www.newaudiences.org.uk
Arts Marketing Association: www.a-m-a.co.uk
Australia Council for the Arts: www.fuel4arts.com
Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives: www.mla.gov.uk
Scottish Arts Council: www.sac.org.uk
You can access free statistics about the UK's economy, population and demographics at national and local level at www.statistics.gov.uk
Arts Research Digest is a synopsis of arts research from English speaking countries around the world. It is published three times a year and you may find it in arts council or marketing agency libraries.
Primary research
Again, a realistic approach is essential with both company and venue clear about their audience research priorities, why they need the information and how they will use it. Companies and venues should develop their research plan together, with the company feeding into and being sensitive to the venue's ongoing research programme.
The most effective approach to research is to establish an information base using secondary research, desk research and original audience research and then to monitor changes rather than attempting to collect the whole body of information again.
If resources are limited, companies should concentrate their resources on:
- researching audiences at the venues the company plans to go back to
- monitoring trends by undertaking research every two to three years
- establishing a research cycle in which research is undertaken at a small number of venues each year, aiming to cover all core venues over the two to three year period
- identifying the level of accuracy needed by considering the reasons the information is required and what it will be used for. Choose your research method and sample size accordingly - you may need a single customer circle or a questionnaire with a sample of 1,500 or you may need simply to collect attenders' postcodes at the box office. Use the cheapest method that will give you the accuracy you require
- not asking questions just in case the responses might be useful
- deciding before you start how the responses are going to be analysed and use this to construct a manageable, affordable sample size
- ensuring the collaboration of venue front of house and/or box office staff by briefing and enthusing them
Many organisations carry out questionnaire research as this involves fewer resources of time and money than other types of research. Venues and companies need to decide:
- what you want to know, why you want to know it and what you will do with the information?
- who is going to compile the questionnaire?
- who will pay for it to be photocopied or printed?
- who will distribute and collect it?
- who will analyse the responses?
- who needs to see the results?
The following information about carrying out primary research is available from Arts Council England downloadable from www.artscouncil.org.uk
Sample Audience Survey Questions: tested survey questions covering most eventualities which are unambiguous and use the correct breakdowns of age etc
Guidance Notes on Carrying Out Audience/Visitor Surveys: how to carry out a fairly sophisticated but achievable audience survey
Effective Use of Market Research and Interpretation of Results: case studies and practical advice on using research data
Papers are also available giving guidance on:
Find out more about carrying out primary research from:
Liz Hill, Commissioning Market Research: a guide for arts marketers, Arts Marketing Association, 2000
Heather Maitland, The Marketing Manual, Arts Marketing Association, 2000, 'Chapter 24, Market Research'