magnolia cottage

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Magnolia Cottage Survey

May 3, 2011

Dr. Susan Waters

PRCM 4510

By: Izzy Hortman Paige Robinson Camille Mallery Kelley Andrews

Jamie Nolen

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary: pages 3-4

Literature Review: pages 5-9

Method: page 10-11

Purpose: page 12

Design: page 13

Participants: pages 14-15

Procedure: pages 16-17

Discussion: page 18

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Executive Summary:

Magnolia Cottage and the seven acres of land surrounding it have been purchased and

are in the process of being renovated by Donna Forbus. After being renovated, the

interior of the cottage will include and provide a large room with folding chairs and

round tables, a sofa, a fireplace, a small flat screen television with basic cable, and a

microphone with a loudspeaker; a kitchen with a refrigerator, stove, oven, two sinks, a

microwave, limited cooking supplies, and a pantry; and a half-bathroom; two smaller

sized rooms, which could be used as dressing rooms, one of which includes a closet with

a security camera system. The exterior of the cottage will include a screened-in front

porch with ceiling fans, a cement back patio with outdoor electrical units, a small gazebo

behind the cottage, a creek, a landscaped garden, and an area leveled to supply parking

space to guests.

Originally, Donna wished to advertise the property as a venue for wedding

receptions, but upon discussing with our group, she decided that it also would serve as a

suitable location to host birthday parties, football weekend tailgates, baby/bridal

showers, holiday parties, sisterhood/brotherhood retreats, family reunions, business

luncheons, church retreats, and boy/girl scout functions, so long as the persons in

charge of the functions agree to take responsibility for all guests and their actions.

Donna hopes that large groups of people, 50 to 300, will pay an hourly wage to use her

venue and will choose to pay according to packages, which she will provide to

accommodate certain hosts for each event.

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As concluded from our survey results, prospective clients would like for Donna to

include a website for advertising, information, and booking. We recommend for Donna

to provide a telephone number and an email address specific to Magnolia Cottage events

for client communication purposes. Most prospective clients appreciate the idea of

Donna offering packages to her hosts. Hosts are interested in paying Donna to supply

extra amenities for the venue, such as a caterer, a bartender, and a cleaning crew.

According to the multiple choice questions on our survey, some prospective clients are

interested in paying Donna to provide a security officer and a photographer. According

to our open-ended questions, some customers would additionally like for Donna to

include waiters, tableware, music, transportation to and from the venue, extra

restrooms, an alternative plan should weather affect the event, and information on

customer liability. With knowledge of our survey results and analysis, Donna can now

modify her plans for Magnolia Cottage to better support her customer’s needs.

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Literature review: Client and Venue Overview

Our client contact is Donna Forbus, owner of Magnolia Cottage. This event venue is

available to host small gatherings of 125 guests inside and a total 300 inside and

outside. A screen encloses the front porch and French double doors add instant

character to the exterior. A concrete patio slab outside is suited to hosting an enclosed

tent for dancing, outdoor celebrations, and so on. The inside walls of Magnolia Cottage

are remodeled cedar that will add a touch of class to any event.

This unique venue is placed on an open seven-acre field, with a colorful garden and

quiet stream on the premises. The concrete patio has space to seat 125 guests outside

with round tables of eight chairs each. Table clothes are provided, as well as decorative

chair covers and ties. Magnolia Cottage has a full-scale kitchen, complete with an oven,

refrigerator, and three restaurant style sinks.

With the installation of a drive-away option at the kitchen, guests can hire a catering

service to unload ingredients and begin production immediately. To ensure guest safety,

Magnolia Cottage runs a security camera surveying the venue and entire outdoor

expanse. In addition, Magnolia Cottage offers the option to rent security personnel for

the allotted time of a special event.

With the hopes of attracting customers, Magnolia Cottage offers reasonable prices to

rent the attractive venue. Guests can expect to pay $200 for four hours, $400 for eight

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hours, $800 for twelve hours, etc. Ms. Forbus stated, “We hope to facilitate those

getting married on a budget.”

Magnolia Cottage represents the perfect opportunity to host wedding receptions, bridal

showers, family reunions, church retreats, football weekend celebrations, or Boy Scout

Foundation Camp Days, to name a few. Already with no complaints, Magnolia Cottage

has hosted a successful wedding reception of 120 guests and a baby shower of 15

attendees. “Magnolia Cottage is a very laid back place,” affirmed Ms. Forbus. The

Qualtrics survey our team developed asked our audience to divulge their preferences to

assist Magnolia Cottage in maximizing their options. We hope to recommend Magnolia

Cottage to the Auburn area as the next go-to getaway for an enjoyable experience.

Purpose of Project

The purpose of this project was to gather event planning information and strategies for

Magnolia Cottage. As an up-and-coming event venue, Magnolia Cottage sought to

identify what customers were looking for in a small party venue. To measure what

customers expected from the ideal event venue, our team developed a survey to give our

clients options to choose from and available spaces to specify their needs. A cross-

sectional design was selected for the layout of our survey.

Our survey consisted of various types of questions, ranging from Likert scale-type

questions, multiple choice questions, demographic questions and three open-ended

questions. The survey was established to give a good overview to the owners of

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Magnolia Cottage to understand what the target audience sought in an event venue of

this nature. Through careful construction, our campaign group created questions that

touched on sex, race, relationship status, the types of events to host, what is important

to the customer in choosing a venue, if there is interest in using a 7-acre piece of land,

options for cleaning, preferences for booking the venue, and supplying a list of caterers,

bartenders, and photographers which served as a measuring instrument. We created the

survey through Qualtrics and distributed it via Facebook, for peers to complete and

fulfill the purpose of this campaign effort on behalf of Magnolia Cottage.

Specific Questions for Client

In order to gauge the existing amenities and services Magnolia Cottage has to offer, we

asked the owners the following questions.

1. What can Magnolia Cottage offer as a venue?

“We think the venue can offer various events from wedding/baby showers,

weddings and wedding receptions, church retreats, business retreats, any special

type of party (birthday, Christmas, New Year's), host family reunions, class

reunions, and other special events that an individual or group would like to host.”

2. Why did you decide to create Magnolia Cottage as a venue?

“We purchased the land because we fell in love with the property! It is a beautiful

place to relax and just enjoy nature. Magnolia Cottage came from one of my best

friend's daughter wanting to have her wedding reception at the property. The

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cottage was in very bad condition, so we made an agreement that if my friend's

family would help remodel and upgrade the cottage, we would provide the funds.

After finishing the cottage for the wedding reception, we felt that we should

utilize the cottage for more than just our friends and family. We have never

managed a business, so it should be very interesting!”

3. How can you Magnolia Cottage flourish in the future?

“We are not sure what the future holds for Magnolia Cottage. We are waiting to

see how the rentals go and get some feedback from the customers. We have

thought of building log cabins and making the area available for overnight

rentals. We have also played with the idea of building a retirement community

that is more in tune with the active retirees. It would be more along the lines of

walking/fitness trails, having an on-site spa, offer classes taught through the

university, travel groups, fitness trainers and the list can go on and on. We are

open for suggestions!”

4. What benefit is Magnolia Cottage for the Auburn community?

“We would like to see Magnolia Cottage develop as a positive part of the Auburn

community. We want to add something that is needed for the public, but you can

afford if you are on a budget. Our goal is to be positive influence within the

community by providing a rustic, clean, comfortable and affordable venue to host

your event within the peaceful setting of our confines. Magnolia Cottage is a

perfect place for a lot of different things. It can be used for anything and

everything you want to do. Hopefully Magnolia Cottage will evolve into

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something that will last. We want to leave a legacy. It would make me so happy to

know we made an impact on the community of Auburn and in others lives.”

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Method:

Our team created an internet survey for Magnolia Cottage using Qualtrics through

Auburn University. In order to create questions for the survey, we used information to

us by our clients as well as information gathered from visiting and evaluating the venue.

After carefully considering and listening to the objectives that our clients wished to

accomplish through Magnolia Cottage, we formed a number of various questions to ask

our publics. The questions were designed to obtain responses from a range of target

audiences in order to gain knowledge on the expectations for an event venue.

The survey consisted of a series of demographic questions followed by a number

of multiple-choice style questions with a Likert-scale answer format. There were also

three open-ended questions included. The survey was released online on April 19, 2011

through Facebook and E-mail.

Our survey generated 125 attempts and 121 total responses.

Using Qualtrics, we combined the survey results in order to evaluate the

responses. We used cross-tabulation to view how people who fell in particular

demographic categories answered certain questions. We also used Chi-square tests to

evaluate the data. For each question, we also considered the minimum and maximum

value, the mean, variance and standard deviation.

To evaluate the open ended questions, our team combined results and typed a

report of each answer to the three individual questions. We then tallied similar answers

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to gain a better understanding of common interests and opinions pertaining to the

questions asked.

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Purpose:

The purpose of this survey is to find the things that people are looking for in a small

party venue such as Magnolia Cottage. We created this survey to ensure the customers

that the feedback we received would help them create the ideal venue that people are

looking for. According to the book, “a survey is a carefully constructed measuring

instrument,” (Stacks, 224). Our goal was to measure what people expect out of an event

location, and to give our clients and idea of what features need to be added or ideas

about what may need to be removed.

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Design:

We used a cross-sectional design when we created our survey. The way we decided to

gather our data was via the internet. We posted the survey on our Facebook pages and

received a good amount of feedback. We created a survey for Donna and Lib who own

Magnolia Cottage. The survey we created consists of a variety of types of questions. We

have questions concerning demographics, such as age and sex. We have many multiple

choice questions; for example, we have a question about how many people you would

expect at your function and some YES or NO questions. We also have many likert scale

questions like, I feel comfortable using a webpage for booking my event. The last portion

of our survey contains open ended questions. A few examples of some of these questions

are What is your biggest concern in renting a venue and what would you expect to be

included in a venue’s packages. See Appendix A for the complete survey.

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Participants:

We surveyed 121 people using an online survey. The results are below. The

demographics portion of our survey can be found in Appendix B in graph format.

Sex

• 75 percent of respondents are female

• 25 percent of respondents are male

Race

• 87 percent of respondents are Caucasian

• 9 percent of respondents are African American

• 3 percent of respondents are Asian

• 2 percent of respondents are Hispanic

Age

• 36 percent of respondents are Under 21

• 60 percent of respondents are ages 21-25





• 5 percent of respondents are Over 50

Relationship Status

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• 44 percent of respondents are Single

• 40 percent of respondents are In a Relationship

• 1 percent of respondents are Engaged

• 14 percent of respondents are Married

• 1 percent of respondents are Divorced

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Procedure:

We posted the link to our survey on our Facebook statuses, ergo every respondent found

the survey via social media. All quantitative results of the attitudinal questions can be

found in Appendix C. Below are some the most informative results.

The majority of respondents (58 percent) would most likely host a birthday

party in the next 12 months.

72 percent of respondents would expect less than 50 people at their function.

We found that 66 percent of respondents do not want to be charged by the hour.

55 percent of respondents would rather pay extra for a cleaning service instead

of cleaning the venue themselves.

93 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they feel comfortable

using face-to-face contact for booking their venue.

Only 7 percent of people disagree or strongly disagree that they feel comfortable

confirming plans via telephone.

66 percent of respondents say it is important for a venue to supply a list of

caterers.

55 percent of respondents say it is important for a venue to supply a list of

bartenders.

Only 6 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that they would

like for a venue to offer packages.

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38 percent of respondents were neutral about security cameras being at their

venue.

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Discussion:

As concluded from our survey results, prospective clients would like for Donna to

include a website for advertising, information, and booking. We recommend for Donna

to provide a telephone number and an email address specific to Magnolia Cottage events

for client communication purposes. Most prospective clients appreciate the idea of

Donna offering packages to her hosts. Hosts are interested in paying Donna to supply

extra amenities for the venue, such as a caterer, a bartender, and a cleaning crew.

According to the multiple choice questions on our survey, some prospective clients are

interested in paying Donna to provide a security officer and a photographer. According

to our open-ended questions, some customers would additionally like for Donna to

include waiters, tableware, music, transportation to and from the venue, extra

restrooms, an alternative plan should weather affect the event, and information on

customer liability. With knowledge of our survey results and analysis, Donna can now

modify her plans for Magnolia Cottage to better support her customer’s needs.

Originally, Donna wished to advertise the property as a venue for wedding

receptions, but upon discussing with our group, she decided that it also would serve as a

suitable location to host birthday parties, football weekend tailgates, baby/bridal

showers, holiday parties, sisterhood/brotherhood retreats, family reunions, business

luncheons, church retreats, and boy/girl scout functions, so long as the persons in

charge of the functions agree to take responsibility for all guests and their actions.

Donna hopes that large groups of people, 50 to 300, will pay an hourly wage to use her

venue and will choose to pay according to packages, which she will provide to

accommodate certain hosts for each event.

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