Title: Disney SBA National Entrepreneur Center
1Disney SBA National Entrepreneur Center
- Part I
- Research Results
- Online Survey
- In-depth Interviews
2Objectives
- Online Survey
- To find out the following information about
current customer of the NEC
- Who the customer is, in terms of demographics,
psychographics, and the benefits they seek from a
small business resource provider
- Their experience with the National Entrepreneur
Center, such as from which service providers they
sought information and how they learned about the
organization - How individuals start a business, the resources
required and information sought, and sources for
finding these requirements
- In-depth Interviews
- To gain a more thorough understanding of
- Who the customer is, in terms of demographics,
psychographics, and the benefits they seek from a
small business resource provider
- Customary media habits of small business owners
- How individuals start a business, the resources
required and information sought, and sources for
finding these requirements
3Online survey Methodology
- To provide more conclusive data, a sample of
current users of the services at the Disney/SBA
National Entrepreneur Center completed an online
survey on Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com). This
part of the research study for the Disney/SBA
National Entrepreneur Center was constructed to
provide quantitative data as to the nature of
their current customer, how to reach this
audience through communications efforts, what
services may interest them the most, and what
their experience has been like thus far with the
organization. - 221 visits were made to the survey site and 134
participants completed the questionnaire out of
2,000 emails sent out. This represents a 2
response rate, which is within a normal expected
response range. The email list was provided by
the SBDC and contained SBDC clients, many of whom
are also clients of other service providers at
the National Entrepreneur Center. This list of
clients was emailed a link to the online survey
by the SBDC. The survey consisted of 24
questions, including both closed-ended and
open-ended questions. A copy of the online
questionnaire is provided in Appendix A.
4Online SurveySummary
- Your customer or client is a college
graduate
- Caucasian male and female (evenly split)
- Between the ages of 35 and 54
- With incomes above the national average
- Who likes to exercise and/or read during
non-business hours
- Listens primarily to the Public radio stations
during drive time hours
- Watching television is not high on their list of
activities, although when the watch television it
is during the evening hours.
- Our customers have access to the Web at home, and
have the usual array of electronic convenience
items such as cell phones, high-speed Internet
connections. - This client has sought out information about
the Center
- Most likely because friends or professional
acquaintances referred them
- The most effective way to reach this customer
base is through referrals, second best way is
through the Internet (but there is no clear cut
favorite Web site) - Or through newspaper advertisements (CoC, OBJ,
Sentinel were mentioned).
- Once they have found the Center, the most popular
search was for financial, marketing, and
management information and
- Our clients did not find that searching for this
information was too difficult.
5Online SurveyResults
- Following is a synopsis of the survey question
results
- Point 1 Half of the respondents did seek
information from the Center (51), while 49 did
not seek out information.
- Point 2 25 of the respondents were referred
to the Center from either friends, co-workers, or
other professionals. The second most common way
that the respondents heard about the center was
through either the Internet or newspapers both
with 7. - Point 3 44 of the respondents sought out the
SBA segment of the Center, and 40 sought out the
UCF Small Business Development Center. Other
centers ranked as such SCORE at 24 and
Enterprise Alliance with 14. - Point 4 Most of the respondents (23) saw
advertisements for the Center in the Orlando
Sentinel while 22 were referred to the Center
and / or found the center on the Internet through
a Search Engine. - Point 5 67 of the respondents searched for
and were concerned about finding financial
information and advise followed closely by the
need for marketing (58), legal (52) and
management (47). - Point 6 The majority of the respondents (60)
said that finding marketing, financial, or legal
information was not at all difficult once they
contacted the Center. However, 47 did say that
finding production/manufacturing information was
moderately difficult. - Point 7 Other resources used by the
respondents included professional business
publications (71), business Web sites (66), and
books (64). - Point 8 95 of the respondents have Internet
access at home 93 own cellular phones 83 of
the respondents shop on-line, and have high-speed
Internet access at home and donate to charities.
- Point 9 52 of the respondents read the
Orlando Business Journal on either a weekly or
monthly basis 35 of the respondents read their
Chamber of Commerce publications (depending upon
when these are released) and 29 of the
respondents read the Orlando Sentinel on a daily
basis. - Point 10 31 of the respondents do not read
any other newspapers not listed in the survey.
- Point 11 There was no clear-cut favorite
television station listed, although the local NBC
affiliate receive the most mentions at 0.09.
- Point 12 27 of the respondents tuned into
National Public Radio by far the most common
station. Z 88.3 received the second highest
percentage at 1 of total. - Point 13 There was no consensus on a favorite
Web site, although Google receive the most
mentions at 14.
6Online SurveyResults
- Point 14 Of the 75 responses for their three
favorite hobbies or leisure activities, fully 53
favored some sort of exercise (walking, golf,
running, etc.) followed by 1/3 or 33 who favor
reading. - Point 15 80 listen to the radio during drive
time periods while 41 listen to the radio during
the daytime hours.
- Point 16 45 spend only ½ to 2 hours on
average watching television 30 spend 2- 4
hours.
- Point 17 82 watch television between 7 p.m.
and 11 p.m.
- Point 18 64 of the respondents spend over 5
hours per week online for business / pleasure.
- Demographics
- 66 were between the ages of 35 54 20 between
25 and 34 years of age
- 27 had annual incomes 50,000 - 74,000
followed by 17 with annual incomes above
75,000.
- 50 of the respondents were male 50 were female
- 39 had undergraduate degrees 25 had
postgraduate degrees
- 64 were Caucasian 13 Hispanic 12
African-American
- Following are the graphical representations of
the data for all closed-ended questions.
7Question 1
When you were starting your own business, did you
seek out information from the Disney/SBA National
Entrepreneur Center?
99 total responses to this question
8Question 3
What service providers did you seek assistance
from at the Disney/SBA NEC (check all that apply)?
9Question 4
Have you seen Disney/SBA National Entrepreneur
Center advertising for this center in any of the
following media?
10Question 5
What types or areas of information did you search
for (or are you searching for) when starting your
business (please check all that apply)?
11In-depth Interview Methodology
- Essential to the research process is exploratory
research, in which a topic can be explored in
great detail for preliminary information or to
fill in the gaps that quantitative research
studies do not answer. This particular part of
the research study for the Disney SBA National
Entrepreneur Center was constructed to provide
qualitative data as to the nature of their target
audience, how to reach this audience through
communications efforts, and what services may
interest them the most. - The study consisted of 10 in-depth interviews
conducted with prospective and current small
business owners in the Greater Orlando
metropolitan area. This convenience sample of
participants were personally known by the
interviewer and therefore accessible for this
research project. The interviews lasted between
10-45 minutes, and all were audio taped. The
research was conducted from February 27 March
19, 2005, primarily during the evening hours, in
the comfort of the participants home. Each
participant completed a short form prior to the
interview to capture data about their business,
as well as personal information regarding their
gender, age, ethnicity, and education (sample in
Appendix B). The results from that short
questionnaire are listed below - Although a list of questions helped to guide the
discussion, the interviewer followed the
participants lead on the topic and was able to
uncover a greater amount of information as a
result. Approximately 11 open-ended questions
were asked to these individuals, plus a variety
of probing questions to delve deeper into their
feelings and opinions (sample list provided in
Appendix B).
12In-depth InterviewSummary
- Although exploratory data is not quantifiable,
following is a list of trends noticed in the
participants responses.
- Small business owners tend to have diverse
recreational and entertainment habits and
interests, although going to movies was
frequently mentioned as a favorite pastime.
Sporting activities, both organized and
recreational, was also mentioned several times,
as well as shopping, dining out, reading,
spending time with family, photography, and
collecting exotic items of interest. Most
respondents felt that their was definitely a lack
of spare time when owning a small business
which prevented them from fuller participation in
leisure activities. - Media habits varied greatly. Although most
participants watched ample television, the actual
stations and program watched were very diverse.
Reality shows, such as The Apprentice and Amazing
Race were popular, as well as evening and daytime
dramas. Sepcific programs mentioned were
Desperate Housewives, CSI, Law Order, Las
Vegas, ER, and Lost. Other programming that
respondents listed includes sporting events and
talk shows. Many participants listen to the
radio in the car on the way to and from work, yet
again the format varied significantly. The most
popular stations were 106.7 (Top 40) and 105.5
(light rock), however other specific stations in
the local market mentioned O-rock 105.9, talk
radio (Howard Stern and sports radio), Jazz
(103.1), Party 95.3 and WMMO 98.9. - Sources of information for their business was
overwhelmingly the Internet, followed by books
and trade and general business magazines/newspaper
s (such as the Orlando Business Journal and
Newsweek). Participants primarily searched for
information relating to their specific
industries, utilizing search engines such as
Yahoo and Google. Books and magazines were
utilized for business-related resources on the
actual processes involved in owning a business.
Other sources include the Yellow Pages
(competitive information) and trade shows. - Small business owners most often start a business
for independence purposes to have a job where
they are the boss. Other common reasons were to
have flexibility with their schedule (stay at
home with children more often) and to gain
supplementary income for their household. A
trend was noticed in that almost every
participant remarked on thinking about beginning
the business years prior to actually starting it,
which means that entrepreneurs almost always have
the idea in mind, let the idea incubate and
slowly develop the ideas for the company. Also,
many of these individuals did not stop with one
great business idea, but rather expanded into
other unrelated businesses thereafter.
13In-depth InterviewSummary
- Basic information was initially sought out,
like
- Tax I.D. numbers and occupational licenses
- How to become incorporated
- Competitive intelligence
- Legal information (patents and trademarks)
- Retail or virtual (WWW) storefront
- Finding suppliers
- Insurance (liability, medical)
- Industry related information on what products and
services customers would want, pricing, and
communications techniques, such as how to build a
web site. - Again, most people went online for this
information, consulted with friends already in
the industry or who owned a business, or read
books purchased on the topic. - The greatest challenge most frequently mentioned
was marketing communications or how to get
customers in a cost effective manner. The
participants seemed to know a great deal about
their industry and had great ideas, but did not
know how to promote their products in order to
obtain clients/customers. Human resources issues
finding and keeping the right personnel was
also a concern. Another big challenge was making
the leap from a job with a steady paycheck to a
risky venture into entrepreneurship, so financial
considerations were important to them. Other
challenges mentioned were understanding the tax
system for a business, learning the sales skills
necessary to seel their ideas and products and
dedicating time to the business. - Participants noted that marketing and human
resources information would be useful, as well as
the opportunity to learn from and network with
other professionals in their industry would be
useful for them. Some felt that a bootcamp
where they learn about the basic issues involved
with starting a company would be ideal. - One of the ten participants had heard of the
Disney SBA National Entrepreneur Center because
she had briefly seen an ad for them in the
Orlando Business Journal recently. She commented
that the Center did not seem like something for
her, meaning that it was not relevant to her
company. The other nine participants had never
heard of the Center but were interested in
learning more about them. Rather than visiting
the Center in person, participants said that the
Internet was the ideal way for them to get more
information because convenience was important to
them.
14Recommendations
- Online Survey
- Have an open house to showcase services
- Establish regional business sites
- Lectures / seminars at different locations around
the city
- Maybe add a supplemental insert in the CFB
section
- Have more publicity of what you offer to the
public
- Follow-up with former clients maybe on-line
- Monthly newsletter, weekly short emails
- Offer more functional classes i.e. Quickbooks
- Target the older learner more adult learning
- Use direct mail i.e. send out postcards to
small business owners
- In-depth Interview
- Since online activities were prevalent among
these participants and since they expressed an
affinity towards accessing the Centers
information online, directly reaching them via
this medium is important. Through relevant
keyword search results or keyword-based
advertising on favored search engines, the Center
would be able to target entrepreneurs in a
cost-effective manner. - Due to the high costs associated with traditional
advertising methods (such as television) and the
fact that program and station interest vary
greatly, more targeted forms of marketing
communications are recommended to this group.
Again, since they spend time online, perhaps a
targeted email campaign would produce measurable
results. At the very least, some form of
targeted direct marketing campaign would be more
measurable and cost-effective. - The results for the question of why participants
started their own company could aid in producing
a meaningful marketing message to this group.
Participants of the study wanted to be
independent of a 9 to 5 job and pursue their
own creative ideas. However, since many
prospective small business owners are unsure of
how to go about starting the company, they often
feel a conflicting sense of insecurity. This
customer insight can help in developing an
advertising and promotional message that has both
an emotional appeal of excitement and
independence, yet responds to the rational need
for business information that will alleviate the
fear of failure. - The results from this study imply that
prospective small business owners do not
typically have the business expertise to
understand what needs to be done to set up and
market a small business appropriately. The
information supplied in the interviews, which can
be heard verbatim on tape, can be used to help
develop relevant workshops, seminars and web
tools in which these customers would be
interested.