runningsports: Research
To truly understand our markets, users, customers and prospective customers and the challenges we can help them resolve, or the aspirations that they want to achieve we must have impartial and informed data. Only then can we hope to provide the services and solutions that deal with their issues. So we need research. It is the DNA of marketing.
Research is about gathering information and providing conclusions as to the implications of that information that help us decide what to do in response. Without the conclusions, the information on its own is not worth that much. In fact, in the 21st century, one thing most managers would like to escape from is more information. What we all need, in fact, are the conclusions, inferences, understanding, and recommendations contained within the information Without such information most organisations would see a decline in their effectiveness or would cease to function altogether.
However, although it is a vital part of the marketing process, research should be treated with a little caution because any research project poorly executed will result in a waste of precious financial resources and no insights.
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Research Can: |
Research Cannot: |
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· Enhance and add value to your management information · Support your thinking · Guide your way forward · Tell you what your partners/ end users/non users think at a given time · Help you to understand your audiences at the present time · Lead to the successful development and launch of programmes, services and solutions that meet your customers’, users’, and stakeholders’ needs and requirements.
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· Be a substitute for effective management information · Be allowed to override your management judgement and ability · Make decisions · Predict the future · Last forever without being updated |
In fact good research depends on a focused approach and asking the right questions that lead to the key insights. It is very much prone to the problem of GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out.
One of the best ways to avoid this is to draw up a comprehensive research brief, one that includes the following elements:
The Rationale
Define precisely what you want to know about It will help you (and your colleagues/suppliers) to understand the context for the project. It will therefore be useful to set out a background in brief, outlining who you are as an organisation and what you do. More importantly yet will be the reason why you are conducting this research. What is the background that has brought you to this point? What are the drivers and the imperatives?
The Problem Statement
This sets out the what and why of the research project. An example of a problem statement might be:
“We want to understand participants’ views of our project in terms of the value added services that we provide so as to find out if our project has been more successful than previous projects; to understand what they like about the service, as well as what they do not like so as to improve and come up with opportunities in the future that will appeal to them.”
Research Objectives
The objectives should be set out to provide the focus of the research. They are specific statements of the information that is required.
Terms of Reference
This refers to the framework within which the research will be conducted; specifically in relation to whom will be researched, how many of them to speak to and in what proportion, what degree of error rate is acceptable (which also is about sample size, of course), and how long the study might take.
Research Methods
Is there any secondary/desk data available and how should this be used? Then, there are different kinds of field study – e.g. phone, interview, self-completion, qualitative or quantitative. Think also about the composition of sample and who is to be surveyed as well as size of the sample. How is the information to be collected, analysed and reported? Who will draw up the recommendations? To whom will it be shown? Research must have an aim and an outcome; it might be the germ of a strategy.
Follow these rules of structuring, ordering and considering what you want back before you embark on any research project, to ensure that what you get back from it is useful, worthwhile and value for money.
runningsports – Sport England’s portfolio of resources and support for sports volunteers – uses research with sports volunteers to measure awareness of and satisfaction with the portfolio, as well as to gauge respondents’ views of proposed plans and products.
Coussins Associates carries out the research on behalf of runningsports, the results of which drive the marketing of the portfolio for the following year.
Using our specialist software package, respondents can complete the survey conveniently online, and, by making sure that we ask a number of questions to categorise the respondents we can then compare responses between different customer or user segments– for example, are volunteers that have been volunteering for more than 20 years less likely to find runningsports’ resources useful than those who are new to volunteering?
We make sure our recommendations will contribute to at least one of the runningsports KPIs and demonstrate how we have arrived at each recommendation. For example the usage data showed that very few people had used two of the runningsports resources; the Health and Safety and Volunteer Co-ordinator e-learning tasters and the online club problem solving tool. However the satisfaction data showed that these two resources were rated highly and seen as very valuable by the people that had used them. As a result it was logical to recommend ‘relaunching’ the two resources and also raising their profile on the website so that more volunteers might become aware of them. Successful implementation of these recommendations will contribute to increasing the use of the runningsports programme, one of five KPIs, as well as hopefully raising satisfaction levels.
And Phil Collier, Director of runningsports, was pleased with the 12 recommendations we made, “This research is a very important part of our marketing planning, and Coussins don’t just present us with the data, they undertake a detailed analysis of it and more importantly make practical recommendations for us based on that analysis. And then to make sure we get real value for money from the research, they use the findings for future communications campaigns”
If you have a research project you need help with, or are planning one and just want some early input, for some free advice contact us on 020 8392 1118 or angela@coussins.co.uk
