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Fan Relationship Index

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need to spend money for research?

There is an alternative to using research to make your business/marketing decisions. You can use your past experience and judgment about your fans' demographic and attitudinal profile and what your fans/target customers are thinking and how they will respond to often subtlety different offerings. But in the highly dynamic and constantly changing environment of professional sports consumer attitudes are not static and using past behavior to determine future behavior could be misleading, and even small errors in judgment can result in costly mistakes.

If you can't accurately predict who your target audiences are and how they will react to your marketing, new product or service offerings, you may very well end up with reduced benefits for your efforts, or worse face unnecessary failures. Even small errors can generate a considerable reduction in revenue.

Conducting effective market research will give your organization an information source on which you can base your decisions and use to generate more effective communications with your customers, prospects and other key stakeholder groups.

Won't the cost of research mean I will have less to spend in deploying my strategies or tactics? After all, the money has to come from somewhere.

This is a common misconception when considering whether or not to employ research. Of course, conducting any research project requires an out-of-pocket expenditure. But, this needs to be assessed against the cost of making a less than optimal decision. How often do fans watch and/or come to games? What can you do that would get them to increase the number of games they attend, watch or listen to? What can you do that would increase the total they spend on each visit to your stadium? What is the value of having them come with a larger group of friends, family, or business associates? What if you offer a promotion or program that is not fully embraced by your fans? How can you most effectively price your tickets, your products and services to achieve optimal sales? What can you do to enhance the in-stadium experience?

Having the information to answer these and many other questions, from a well-planned and effective research program, can save your organization a huge amount of unnecessary angst...and lost revenue, and by assisting you in making more effective decisions, actually increase team revenue often to a great extent.

That's why using the Fan Relationship Index service is money well-spent. You will discover that it will make a positive impact on your bottom line and, in the end, be revenue enhancing rather than represent a drain on profitability.

Why is the Fan Relationship Index program the right choice for my research dollars?

Fan Relationship Index is a comprehensive research service that will provide you with specific business and marketing decision-support data that is there when you need it, both short term and over time-- in real-time. It is comprehensive in scope; provides a team-by-team overview of your sport; identifies "Best Practice" activities; and provides a baseline for assessing the effect of issues that appear without warning. Moreover, it will provide you with a platform from which you can conduct other research (such as concept tests for new ideas) at greatly reduced prices.

Why should I buy it from you?

Baxter Strategies is a highly innovative client-oriented consulting firm that has extensive expertise in conducting marketing research with the largest high profile business-facing and consumer-facing American companies across a wide number of business sectors. This broad-based experience gives us the ability to provide market research solutions for any marketing situation, regardless of how challenging.

We offer a full range of sophisticated research and statistical tools and have a strong base of proprietary methodologies to help explore, explain, and predict market behavior. Perhaps our greatest skill is our ability to address marketing and business issues creatively with fresh thinking, finding the best and most cost effective solutions, and clear and actionable analyses for each issue. Fan Relationship Index is only one example of this ability.

Perhaps most importantly, the Fan Relationship Index service is unique and not available from anyone else.

What are the unique features that represent significant differentiators between the Fan Relationship Index service and the sports research products and services of our competitors?

The size and scope of the Fan Relationship Index service makes it unique to the marketplace in its ability to meet the needs of professional sports leagues and their teams.

The Fan Relationship Index sample size of 2,400 sports fans per market provides a significant base from which to assess the behavior and attitudes of all team fans and target consumers, including both your core and peripheral segments.

Further, Fan Relationship Index interviews are conducted continuously throughout the year, providing the unique ability to assess performance throughout the year and to assess the performance of any action or team program that takes place, both short term and over time, no matter when it occurs.

The Fan Relationship Index service is highly flexible, permitting each team to assess any research need through the service.

Fan Relationship Index data is presented online (in a highly secure environment) in real-time, in a user-friendly manner that allows executives to get a bird's eye view, as well as giving them the ability to drill down to get more detail if they wish. In addition to the online data, full sets of survey tabulations are provided on a quarterly basis. The reporting function is a proprietary method that gives you the ability to get the information you need on one screen with just a few mouse-clicks. This is well beyond what is available from other sources.

The Fan Relationship Index program covers so much information, and with daily interviewing I’m afraid we will be bogged down and overwhelmed with too much data. Wouldn’t I be better off just staying with my current once or twice a year research?

What Fan Relationship Index provides is the ultimate in data availability and flexibility. The system obtains information that is broad enough to make sure that you can monitor any issues that you must currently address, as well as those that are not apparent now but that might occur in the future. But while the data is collected daily, you will have control over how often, and how deeply you want to review the results.

The first data access point is via a simple “dashboard” that summarizes the findings of the program on one easy-to-monitor screen. If any of the dimensions indicate a problem, you have the option to explore it further on the main findings page (also on one simple, easy-to-understand, page). If you need additional, deeper level information, you will also have the ability to drill down to understand the matter further – all without leaving that single page. The ease of use and simplicity of data presentation in Fan Relationship Index is unique and makes the integration of the data into your decision-making a stress-free process.

Cross-Tabs are also available on a quarterly (or semi-annual if you prefer) basis; but you are in control, and only have to review the data that you find critical to your organization’s performance.

The real value of the daily data is to permit you to compare the performance of your organization before and after any team or player-related event that occurs, to fully understand the event’s effect on your sales and marketing performance. This is impossible with a once or twice a year survey.

In all, the Fan Relationship Index system provides you with the data and the flexibility you need to address all your marketing issues and help you maximize your team’s bottom line performance.

Why should we believe that you can deliver the promised research products and services?

Our extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of online survey management systems and market research, and in providing highly complex research data in a client-focused manner makes Baxter Strategies uniquely qualified to conduct this research. We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate these capabilities to you. We have direct experience developing similar products/services for large high-profile clients in other categories that provides us with the knowledge and ability that is needed to be successful in this endeavor.

How long does the data from research remain valuable?

In general, market research data is based on a single point in time and any attitudes and opinions collected will change over time. In sports, with constantly shifting performance and other issues, these changes can take place much more frequently making the data from a study stale even after a relatively brief period of time. To respond to this issue, Fan Relationship Index data is collected daily and viewed from a variety of perspectives, including: monthly, quarterly, and as a 12 month moving average.

With competitors’ sports marketing research surveys, conducted in a single point of time, findings can become stale in as little as just a few months - in response to market activities such as a team greatly dropping or improving in the standings, bad press for a significant player on the team, etc. If this occurs, what is the value of the data you have collected? Can you count on it, in making your decisions? Since Fan Relationship Index data is collected continuously - you will always know exactly where you are and how things are changing.

Why should online surveys be used?

In the past, limited online usage and higher completion rates made telephone research the preferred method for surveys. Now high numbers of consumers are "cell phone-only" households, have unlisted telephone numbers, join opt-out phone lists, use answering machines to screen their calls, and refuse to participate in surveys when contacted.

As a result, telephone research costs have increased as participation rates have declined. The use of online surveys offers three key benefits: faster response times, higher response rates and lower implementation costs. While there are still some situations in which telephone research is preferable, we find that the online survey modality is more often the preferred choice for surveys and is the best choice for this program.

On-site research, conducted at games, can be very useful but is not able to evaluate individuals who are not currently attending your games and these are the very people you are trying to attract to increase attendance. You are also not able to identify people who have stopped going to games and determine the reasons they stopped attending. A broad sample online survey is able to meet all of these needs.

Have any other questions?

We'd be happy to talk with you about them. Just click on this link and let us know.

Site last updated 11/30/2011

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