Consumer-Based Strategic Planning in the Nonprofit Sector: The Empirical Assessment of an Arts Festival Audience

ABSTRACT

Long accepted marketing principles stress the need for a deep understanding of the consumer and his or her needs as the basis of a well-conceived strategic plan. Called “consumer orientation,” it is standard practice in the private economic sector, and parts of the nonprofit sector. However, its application in other parts of the nonprofit sector, particularly among smaller nonprofits with limited resources, is not so widespread, to the detriment of those organizations as well as their constituencies. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the wider adoption of a true “consumer orientation” by managers in nonprofit organizations who have been slow or reluctant to do so.

The authors relate the case of an annual summer arts festival located in the southern highlands of the United States, a small nonprofit with limited means in terms of money, manpower and in-house marketing and consumer research expertise. They increased attendance approximately fifteen percent with the application of strategies based on some simple marketing research. It illustrates both the efficacy of the adoption of consumer-based marketing strategies for small nonprofits, and the ability of small organizations with limited resources to conduct some simple but effective consumer research to support those strategies. With the aid of the most abbreviated of consumer surveys, the festival organizers were able to better understand and promote more effectively to key existing markets, identify and target likely new markets, and select future events that yielded greater audience appreciation. Further, the authors discuss how the organizers could have designed their study to produce even better information, with little or no additional expenditure of time or money.