Prof. McCarthyJ610

Case Study #2: The Springfield Nor'easters

I think Buckingham's marketing research plan and execution of the plan, while exhaustive, may nothave entirely accomplished the goal he set out to achieve. While Buckingham did adhere closely to theseven-step process - as outlined in theJVIarket Research Notes - his research efforts probably won'taccrue reassuring data. Also, since the case study seems to end right after step five and before step six,Buckingham's initial analysis of the data from the survey and his revisions are left to the imagination.Therefore it will be impossible for me to comment on Buckingham's execution of steps 6 & 7.

Buckingham seems to have realized the importance of prioritizing information needs andgenerating urgency. He keeps his boss, Bob Cortez, focused on the goal of the research: to only askquestions "whose answers wouldjiffecJLactual decisions." (4) Also, Buckingham conducted thorough / ^Tinterviews with other Minor League Baseball Marketing Directors as he attempted to understand thevarious perspectives of experts from his field.

Prior to the phone interviews with the other MD's Buckingham consulted secondary dataamassed from existing research. Though the data was three years old, this was a necessary step forBuckingham to take so that the conversations with the MD's were both directed and educated.

Buckingham's primary research objectives "were relatively simple: he wanted to predict how / /••*many people would come to see the Nor'easters and how much to charge them." (4) These objectivesare fairly straight forward and the data-gathering plan -Iheinline survey, postcard hook and $500restaurant gift certificate as bait - constructed by Buckingham seemed like it would accomplish theobjectives. In the end, I feel the data didn't create a clear example for a viable pricing model.

In order to extrapolate defmitiveTfata from the survey, Buckingham would need the majority of\j 6 / respondents to be baseball fans. Otherwise you're taking pricing suggestions from individuals who

aren't interested in the plight of the team. That's like asking a vegan for barbeque tips. Unfortunatelyfor Buckingham 60% of respondents weren't baseball fans and 61% of respondents would likely notattend a game at all.

There were 10,000 postcards mailed out to a targeted audience and only 625 respondents. Thisis a 6.25% response rate. That's hardly a reassuring response rate from which to build a pricing model.In my opinion, this can be looked at in two ways: 1) 60% of all Springfieldians don't like baseball andwon't be interested in a local team regardless of the pricing model, or, 2) the other 93.75% of peoplewho didn't respond - minus the returned postcards - is made up of a portion of baseball fans whoweren't enticed enough by the $500 gift card to complete the online survey. If this is the case, youcould argue a sizable percent of non-respondents may in fact be baseball fans and attend a Nor'eastersgame.

More promising is thejact that 80% of respondents would pay over $10 for one game ticket.This could be taken as reassuring because $10 is towards the higher end of the pricing scale and amajority of non-baseball fans are willing to pay that amount. If non-baseball fans would be willing to

£— pay $10 for a single game ticket, it could be argued that actual baseball fans would be willing to pay alittle more, perhaps as much as $14 for a ticket.

Lastly the secondary research showed that middle-income families, those making $22,500-$74,999, make up the largest majority of baseball fans. The primary survey data showed that 76% ofrespondents fall in that income bracket, making them more likely to attend a game.

Finally, since the season budget is set at 1.9 million dollars, minus salaries, bats, and balls -which is covered by the Major League team - Buckingham's goal to break even is considerably less at$1,054,879. The majority of this money will come from concession sales and not ticket sales.

cing matrix worksheet on rear

Ticket Type

Single ticket -day of game

Single ticket -advance purchase

5-game ticket20-game ticket3 8 -game season

Lessthan $4 $4 $6

X

$8

X

$10

X

$12

X

$14

X.

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