I completed a survey by a New York theater about planning for eventual re-opening of arts events. It was a nicely designed survey. There are several things to learn from this consumer research effort.
The survey was delivered via email, and they managed to capture my attention with a good subject line. It was "When will you feel comfortable returning to..." I am not sure if this is effective for the majority of people but it worked for me. The theater has definitely sent me emails over the last few months; this might be the first one I actually clicked on.
It was a breezy experience. Within seconds, I was on the survey site and within minutes, I finished the survey.
One obvious goal of the study is to estimate how many of us would be willing to attend live performances. An analyst would have to artificially lower the numbers observed in the survey. This is because the subject line - which I liked so much - is a source of bias. When will you feel comfortable returning to. People who are missing their theater are more likely to take the time to fill out the survey.
There were a number of questions revealing the theater community's concern that the pandemic will change our behavior forever. I'm not one of those people. Pandemics do pass, and I don't understand why I should change the frequency or spending at theaters when Covid-19 is no longer with us.
Surveys continue to play an important role of analytics. For this type of questions, surveillance data are lagging indicators. If we are looking at ticket sales, we're not going to know when people will return to theaters until they have returned to theaters.
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