Every spring semester, School of Business undergraduates gather customer intelligence for a half-dozen or so local business owners. The owners save the costs of expensive market research and the student projects give them a valuable alternative. And both parties benefit: students add an apprenticeship to their resumes and Humboldt entrepreneurs and organizations gain insights into their customer prospects.
The consensus of the 2012 student teams in Business Professor Nancy Vizenor’s market research class is that social media are not just for personal relationships and online socializing. They are the 21st-century gateway that small businesses should be using to reach new and existing customers.
Research on behalf of Los Bagels showed that more than half of respondents used Facebook and texting more than once daily. YouTube and Pandora radio are also popular social media outlets. More than 60% of respondents used Google on a weekly basis and about a fourth used Yelp! once a week or more. Yelp! is a free San Francisco online service that carries reputable reviews of hip bars, eateries and fun diversions.
One of Vizenor’s student teams assembled 25 questions about Los Bagels on Survey Monkey, an inexpensive, online research tool. Topics included which social media are most effective and how Los Bagels could ratchet up online purchases. Those polled favored food- and merchandise-related discounts, new product information, recipes, contests on the Facebook page and text-message coupons. An overwhelming 97% said coupons would encourage more frequent interactions with Facebook.
One of the top recommendations was that Los Bagels pursue an integrated social media strategy. All of its social media should be linked to one another and to the company’s website, the research team said.
Vizenor’s students also suggested integrating Twitter and Pinterest (a content-sharing online service) “to stay on top of brand presence in emerging outlets.” Likewise, the students added, “Nearly 60% of our respondents indicated they use Pandora radio monthly, and Pandora could be used in local zip codes to increase traffic at brick & mortar locations.”
Another client, Arcata Main Street, received tips on how to take fuller advantage of online resources and increase membership. The downtown business services organization hosts events such as the annual Oyster Festival.
“The students helped us get a more comprehensive idea of what our downtown merchants would like to see from Arcata Main Street and determine the effectiveness of our current promotions,” said Executive Director Jennifer Koopman. “We also got an idea of what future events our residents would like to have.”
The student team—Zack Anciaux, Christine Ciarcia, Erik Federas and Kurt Thorson—recommended that their client start a new annual event, comparable in scale to the big-draw Oyster Fest. They also recommended website improvements, expanded advertising on behalf of member merchants, token giveaways to promote name recognition and getting more stores involved in Arts! Arcata.
“This kind of research has a direct impact on helping sustain the organization,” Koopman said. “It gives us some extra tools and a framework to help the community develop strategies to stimulate long term economic growth.”
Regarding strategy, team member Anciaux observed, “What we provide small businesses is a fresh set of eyes. Many businesses are so enmeshed in their daily round that they don’t have the capacity to examine their operations from a different perspective, to consider different methods for achieving their objectives, say, in trying to expand or attract new customers. We’re giving them a view of the forest from their position in the trees: a strategic overview.”
The owners of Babe’s Pizza in suburban Cutten, Scott and Stephanie Phelps, learned that their dine-in customers would like more booths and that the favorite websites of those surveyed were, in order, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. Nearly half those polled ‘friended’ Babe’s on Facebook. “Twitter is not relevant to Babe’s customers,” student researchers found.
Like Los Bagels customers, Babe’s clientele said it would like “better deals that I can’t resist like a large one-top for $10,” special menu options (soup and hot wings) and a broader wine selection. The students recommended that the restaurant experiment with “considerably larger promotional nights on weekdays and put stress on advertising them.”
Joy Soll, the incoming advisor to another client, Humboldt State’s Graduation Pledge Alliance, said she and her colleagues learned how to improve the group’s links to the student body. The research indicated that continued use of the HSU website is important, as are Facebook, social media outlets in general and higher visibility in the Humboldt Orientation Program, which acquaints new students with the campus. Vizenor’s researchers also proposed local environmental community service through the university to boost the alliance’s profile.
Of the Internet sources consulted weekly, students who answered the alliance survey ranked the HSU website tops, followed closely by Facebook. Twitter was third and far behind.
“We are already using the information gained by the research team and we should be able to raise the percentage of students who take the pledge,” Soll predicted. “It was particularly interesting to note that more than half of our students had not heard of the pledge but, of the ones who had, 65% were planning on taking it. We will be doing all we can to educate the student body about it.”
Over the years, the vow has caught on with hundreds of schools nationwide and overseas. It states, “I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work.”
Vizenor’s student teams formally present their projects at the final classes of the semester, with their respective clients in the audience. In addition to announcing their “official” findings, the students reflect on what they have learned personally from the research experience.
Christine Ciarcia, a graduating senior from Connecticut who was a member of the Arcata Main Street team, said she discerned patterns in some of the mistakes small establishments make. “Sometimes it’s hard for businesses to look at their negatives because they just don’t want to face them,” she said. “We provide them an objective rundown of their advantages and disadvantages. They need to know where they’re failing. They have a kind of myopia because they’re so focused on the inner workings of their business. After we look at the negatives, we move beyond them to provide recommendations for how to improve in deficient areas. They get to see things beyond their immediate circumstances.”
Ciarcia teammate Kurt Thorson noticed that local businesses often don’t examine the external factors that may affect them. “They don’t analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their competitors and they don’t use their bargaining power with their suppliers and middlemen,” Thorson commented. “Everywhere else that is pivotal. It is true, though, that small-timers don’t have to focus as much on their competitors because there aren’t as many of them. You can get away with that kind of thing to an extent.”
Small businesses may lack knowledge about their customers as well as their competitors, Professor Vizenor says. “The free market research our students provide is really important because most local businesses cannot afford to do it on their own. It’s costly because research and surveys take so much time and they’re a specialized skill and service. And I’ll tell you something—if small businesses don’t know who their customers are, neither do a lot of large ones. One of the most common questions businesses ask is, ‘Who are my customers?’ And our business students do the simple but important thing of asking.”