The theme is fun
Mark Kupferman has an unfair advantage over a lot of his fellow researchers. While others have to subject their respondents to attribute batteries on laundry detergents or foot powders, he gets to ask people about roller coasters and water parks.
Kupferman is corporate director of research for Paramount Parks, the theme-park division of entertainment giant Viacom. With annual revenues of $500 million, Paramount Parks owns and operates theme parks around the globe, including Paramount’s Kings Island (Cincinnati), Paramount’s Great America (San Francisco), Paramount’s Carowinds (Charlotte, N.C.), Paramount Canada’s Wonderland (Toronto), Star Trek: The Experience (Las Vegas), and Terra Mitica (Benedorm, Spain). Together the various properties attract over 12 million visitors annually.
Basically a one-person marketing research staff, Kupferman is very busy. Paramount Parks has an online consumer panel and also conducts a host of other online and offline projects throughout the year to measure guest satisfaction with the parks’ rides, dining, shopping, games and shows. The main vehicle for much of the company’s online surveying is Inquisite, a software package from the Austin, Texas-based firm of the same name.
Now boasting about 14,000 participants, the online panel (which debuted in 2003) is always welcoming new members. “When guests take one of our other surveys, at the end we invite them to sign up to be on the panel, which mostly means we will send them an invitation to take surveys whenever it makes sense. We don’t require someone to take a minimum number of surveys. Depending on the survey, 30 to 40 percent will complete whatever we send them within one or two days,” Kupferman says.
Paramount Parks is able to draw prospective respondents from a database of about 500,000 e-mail addresses of park visitors obtained from various sources, including those who have signed up to receive the company’s online newsletter. “We were spending a lot of money trying to recruit people to take our surveys and we finally realized that our greatest source of potential respondents was really our Web site. One of the reasons we created the newsletter - which people sign up for at the Web site - is to generate leads for our guest feedback initiatives. In light of all the issues surrounding spam and CAN-SPAM we need to give people a reason to receive e-mail from us,” Kupferman says.
Some research participants have come from the ranks of visitors who responded to cards randomly handed out at the parks inviting them to complete an online survey about their experience when they get home for the chance to win a prize. About 18,000 people responded in 2003, Kupferman says. “We found out that the only people we could really count on to take our online surveys, regardless of the prize, are those people who have at least some interest in visiting theme parks. So, while we can’t use online surveying as a way to find out what percentage of the overall population is going to visit our park, we can use it to answer questions about how people experience and want to experience our parks from the perspective of those who have at least some interest in visiting us. And there are plenty of them!”
As proof of just how far the zeal of Paramount Parks’ guests extends, Kupferman even got a nice response to a survey on coupons. “I can’t think of anything more tedious than the survey on coupons we sent out this spring. Plus it was a lengthy survey - there were nine pages with many questions and rankings - and we had something like 2,000 responses.”
Conduct more surveys
Kupferman says Inquisite allows him to conduct a lot more surveys than he has in the past. “We have changed things about our business that we never would have thought to change because we never could have afforded to ask the questions before. For example, some of the rides we have put in are based almost entirely on what people told us, from the general theme of the ride all the way down to the details and what they told us they wanted from the experience.”
In one survey, respondents were given a list of Paramount movies and were asked what kind of rides the movies might make. “When you ask a question like that, you get a lot of very interesting ideas from people. We can then go back a few days later and ask that same group or a different group, ‘All right, we are looking at doing a ride based on a brand like Star Trek, and we are going to make it a roller coaster. What do you see as being part of that experience?’ And you can really delve into it. We get to ask questions that we ordinarily could never have asked because it would have cost us so much money.”
Kupferman periodically does side-by-side projects using both Inquisite and other surveying methods to compare the findings. “In many cases, when we’ve hired a research company to do a project for us, we’ve duplicated the survey online. Our learning so far is that we pretty much get the same result.
“We rarely take the percentages that come out of what we get from the online surveys as being the actual percentage of people who are going to do what they say they are going to do. It’s difficult to draw a direct correlation. However, ratios between responses tend to make sense - if 20 percent of the people say they are going to do something versus 10 percent of another group who say they are going to do it, there is a relationship there that usually makes sense.”
The software comes with its own report-generating system and Kupferman also uses other systems to package and distribute findings. Some information is widely disseminated and some is limited to those in a need-to-know position. “Results from the guest satisfaction surveys are distributed to each area of each of our parks on a weekly basis and are used to make almost immediate adjustments to the way we satisfy our guests,” Kupferman says.
He also uses the Inquisite-based research to help company management gauge advertising awareness and assess guest visitation plans. “In terms of advertising, we’ve used Inquisite to survey guests about what they thought about our TV commercials before we air them. During the season, we use it to understand our guests’ awareness of our advertising and to find out their intent to visit our parks. At the end of the season, we use it yet again to understand why some consumers visited our parks, while others didn’t.
“There is always somebody who is interested in the answers, and some of the nuggets we get are proving to be very valuable. Ultimately it’s all directional.The research doesn’t tell us what to do, but it does give us a better indication of what our guests think about our parks and the services we offer. Because it is relatively easy to do the surveys - and this is one of the most useful things that Inquisite has done for us - it’s now possible to delve further into what guests really think about issues that are important to their experience at our parks.”
Automating processes
Lately, Kupferman has been spending his time automating some processes, such as those for the conducting, analysis and reporting of tracking surveys. “That should help us out because we are doing so much research and collecting a lot of data, and we aren’t getting to it as quickly as we’d like. We’re working on ways to deal with that but it is hard, for example, to turn down any of our departments when they have a really good idea for a survey. Ultimately we prioritize and do the best we can to fit it all in over time.”
Win-win
Along with having some fun taking surveys, the respondents seem to realize that their opinions and their effort will, in the long run, result in a better experience for their families. “We do try to treat all the people with respect and we thank them a hundred times over for helping us. We like to think they are taking the survey because they have an interest in making the park better. In the Charlotte market, for example, the closest theme park is 300 miles away. So if people want a better theme park experience, then they are going to have to tell us what they want. People want to help improve this place to make it a great place for their family.
“It’s a win-win. At our park in Cincinnati, we put in a new water park, almost 100 percent as a result of feedback people gave us. We asked what did they like and not like about the existing water park. And they said, ‘There is too much concrete.’ ‘The rides are great but there is no place to sit down, no shade.’ Well, for our new product we redeveloped the entire water park, we put in trees, we put things closer together, we created what we called Water Park Resort. We upgraded the services and the amenities to create something unlike anything in the region - all based on what people said they want.
“All of this comes out of being able to do a lot of research in relatively short amount of time. The water park thing we would not have done. We probably would not have spent $30,000-$40,000 to do a major survey on our water park, certainly not three or four surveys, if we had to pay for all of the responses.”
Even the site-specific research ends up being helpful to parks in other regions, because learning from the surveys can often have applications elsewhere. “We have five theme parks in North America, and we try to send out surveys to all the markets, because even if we might not be putting a water park in our Charlotte park, for example, we might someday and understanding the differences between people in different markets helps us a lot.
“This year we are doing a lot more of the ‘why,’ trying to understand people in different demographic and income groups - who likes what, why they like it, etc. We ask them about what other activities they are going to do to understand the basis on which they are making decisions, not just for marketing purposes but also for planning the attractions in the park.”
In-park research
The firm also conducts a lot of in-park research that can’t be duplicated online, ranging from point-of-origin surveys to find out who is visiting the properties to overall quality surveys administered to a random sample of visitors as they exit the parks. “Surveys that can be done quickly and quantitatively, such as our weekly survey in our dining venues to find out guest satisfaction, it wouldn’t make sense doing that online. Or when people leave our parks, they don’t want to spend 20 minutes doing a survey. They are tired and hot and ready to head home. But if we can have them do a quick in-person survey and then let them take a survey when they get home about their more in-depth experience, that seems to be working.”
The in-person surveys are done with a mix of handheld and paper-and-pencil methods. While online and other electronic methods have been a boon, sometimes the old-fashioned methods work well too. “At our Canadian parks, the in-person surveys are often done with handheld electronic devices but in the U.S. parks we’ve found that that can take a lot more time than just handing people a clipboard and saying, ‘Please fill this out.’ Especially when you are dealing with rating questions like, ‘On a scale of 1-10, how would your rate the following things?’ it’s simpler for you to just look at the list and check the right boxes as opposed to me reading them to you. It seems that we get a lot more completes that way.”
If you can’t make the surveys fun, at least make them easy, right?