Report on Online and Consumer Survey for Main Street Highland Park
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DRAFT Report on Online and Consumer Survey For Main Street Highland Park By Heritage Consulting Inc. 422 South Camac Street Philadelphia, PA 19147 215 546 1988 www.heritageconsultinginc.com August 2014 Draft 1, Main Street Highland Park Survey Report, page 1, Heritage Consulting Inc. 8/15/2014 Table of Contents Introduction 1 How this report is organized 1 How to use this report 2 Recommendations 2 Who is the Downtown Highland Park Shopper 9 Analysis of Survey Questions 16 Appendix A—Survey Reponses from Survey Monkey, Charts 42 Appendix B—Question 4 all responses 90 Appendix C— Questions 13, 14, 15 all responses 107 Appendix D— Question 27 all responses 111 Credits 123 Draft 1, Main Street Highland Park Survey Report, page 2, Heritage Consulting Inc. 8/15/2014 Introduction As part of its Strategic Planning process, Main Street Highland Park (MSHP) wished to gain consumer feedback about its operation and the downtown. Main Street New Jersey provided consulting services to the organization to undertake an online survey. The purpose of the survey was to learn about downtown consumer preferences and what stores, restaurants, and businesses would make downtown Highland Park more appealing for shoppers. Donna Ann Harris of Heritage Consulting Inc. worked with Rebecca Hersch, Executive Director of MSHP to create a survey that would be short and yet provide enough detailed consumer insights to make suggestions about future activities for downtown Somerville. Jef Buehler, State Coordinator for Main Street New Jersey also provided advice and suggestions on survey questions. The Main Street Highland Park Consumer and Stakeholder Survey was open online via Survey Monkey for three and a half weeks, from July 15, 2014 to August 8, 2014. The survey link was sent to Main Street Highland Park’s e‐mail list twice and the link was posted on the organization’s Facebook page several times. All of this timely publicity generated an impressive 503 responses, with 432 people completing all questions. The survey had 27 questions with several text boxes for write‐in comments. A $50 gift certificate was offered to encourage survey participation. A random winner was chosen at the end of the survey period. How this report is organized This report is organized in two sections; survey responses and an appendix with four (4) sections. The survey sought the same information from all participants. This report is organized by survey question, and includes the most important information from the survey for each question and a brief analysis. We also offer several paragraphs describing the Most Common Downtown Shopper based on the demographic materials from the survey at the end of this findings report. We provide four appendices at the end of the report. Appendix A contains graphs of the survey responses for each of the multiple‐choice questions as a record of the responses. Appendix B contains answers to open ended question number 4. Appendix C contain all the responses for questions 13, 14 and 15 about preferences for new dining, shops and entertainment in downtown. Appendix D are all the answers to the open ended question number 27. All appendices have been organized by topic. Every response is included. These are actual comments made by survey participants and they have not been altered in any way, except to correct obvious spelling errors. Both Ms. Harris and Ms. Hirsch made changes to the survey in its development stage before launch. The survey was opened on July 15. There were immediate concerns about completion rate within the first few hours of the survey being live. We noticed DRAFT Highland Park Survey Report, page 3, Heritage Consulting Inc. 8/28/2014 that respondents were not completing the survey, and that they were stopping at the page break at the end of question four. Ms. Harris reformatted the survey so there were no page breaks at all. This change, which was fixed that same evening, caused about a score or more potential respondents to get error messages. Complaints were lodged with the Main Street office that day and the following day. Once the fix was completed, the completion rate of the survey increased dramatically. We were able to obtain 432 completed surveys, an 85% completion rate. More than 385 people answered the survey, so the survey results are considered a “statistically representative sample size.” This means that the survey results are accurate as if 95% of the general population of the Borough of Highland Park’s entire population had taken the survey. Therefore, the findings should be considered seriously as high quality intelligence about the current downtown Highland Park shopper. For the purposes of this report, we have used the 432 complete responses as our baseline for tabulating the statistics and presenting our recommendations. How to use this report The survey findings provides fresh information from and about current shoppers and is useful to both Main Street Highland Park and to business owners in the downtown district. This survey and the resulting findings report are only helpful if they are actually employed by the MSHP and local merchants to make changes in current marketing, business recruitment and retention, and advertising practices. We encourage Main Street Highland Park to actively circulate this report and explain its significance to retailers in the district. Recommendations Filling vacancies is job one When asked about the most important tasks for the Main Street Highland Park organization, survey respondents said that filling vacancies and business recruitment, rather than event planning, should be the key activities of the organization. The five top “very important” categories are all typical activities of a downtown organization, rather than local government. Reduce downtown vacancies (94.27%) Wider variety of cafes and restaurants (89.33%), More diversified business mix (83.82%) Add more nightlife (81.83%) More outdoor dining (76.02%) DRAFT Highland Park Survey Report, page 4, Heritage Consulting Inc. 8/28/2014 Downtown shoppers clearly want the MSHP to be the “curator” of their downtown shopping district by taking an active role in retaining existing businesses and recruiting new retail shops. Current shoppers are aware of the work of MSHP and they want the organization to be the manager of downtown, to fill vacancies and keep the business mix fresh, in the same manner as a mall manager. Given the extreme polarity of these results, Main Street Highland Park should fundamentally consider recasting its work plan and activities towards Economic Restructuring rather than Promotion or Design. These activities, business recruitment and retention, however, do not generate revenue for the organization as an event like a street fair might from vendor booth rentals. This direction towards business recruitment and retention may have an impact on the earned revenue of the organization if lagging events are cut based on the shopper preferences about events listed below We understand from the SWOT analysis that reducing vacancies downtown will not be easy, because some property owners with prominent vacant retail spaces seem uninterested or unwilling to lease their spaces even to highly qualified retailers. Now that this consumer and stakeholder survey is complete, it might be worth approaching the owners of the vacant properties again to share these survey results. MSHP Business Recruitment Committee members should explain that the vacant storefronts were pointed out by more than three quarters of the downtown shoppers surveyed. Committee members should ask the reasons behind the reluctance to rent the space, and make a real effort to try to overcome these objections. There were several other activities that rated in the middle of the importance scale that are fundamentally municipal functions. Creating a bike lane and adding more pedestrian lighting would generally be considered municipal functions and not activities that a traditional downtown organization or BID would undertake. MSHP should work with the Borough to understand if these activities are planned for in the next few years. Adding pedestrian lighting and beautifying “the wall” as you enter town from the bridge are activities that the Borough may wish to now implement sooner based on these survey results. Creating a town square for events, and adding more beautification activities, such as flowers, banners, and benches are projects where MSHP is a likely partner in project development along with the Borough, but not be the major funder. Finally, bike users were a distinct voice in this survey. They spoke up in all the write‐in questions and made suggestions for a host of improvements that would make their downtown experience exceptional. Please review the write‐in Questions 4 and 27 in Appendix A and D for further information. Events in downtown DRAFT Highland Park Survey Report, page 5, Heritage Consulting Inc. 8/28/2014 The three downtown events rated “really like” were: the Farmers’ Market, Independence Day Fireworks, and Town‐wide Garage sale. Only one of these, the Farmers’ Market, is managed by MSHP. Arts in the Park and the Spring Street Fair, both organized by MSHP, were also highly rated. The Road Race, Planting Days, and Restaurant Week had as many people saying they did not participate as those who said they liked the events. The rest of the events that were rated, had higher numbers of did not participate than offered opinions on their quality. These following events were rated lowest (in descending order) by current downtown shoppers: Kwanza, Win the Window, Menorah Lighting, Earth Day, Winter Art Bazaar, National Night Out, Small Business Saturday/Tree lighting, downtown Halloween Party, and Autumn in the Park. We understand that not all of these events are managed by Main Street Highland Park, but for those that are, MSHP should seriously consider ending them this year. If some of these events were eliminated, it would free up staff time for business recruitment and retention activities, the most critical activity of the MSHP based on survey comments.