SlideShare a Scribd company logo
1 of 24
1
UTSA Market Research Write-up
Orange Team:
Christian Tovar-Vargas
Eric Redeker
Hilary Hoffman
Jamie Banks
Jeremy Wolf
Xavier Vargas-Hall
SPMT 3308-1
12/3/14
2
UTSA Football is a fairly new program. Their first season was in 2011 and they were
classified Division I, but did not join a conference until their second year when they joined the
Western Athletic Conference. They are now in their fourth season and are members of
Conference USA. They hired Coach Larry Coker in 2011 who has been the head coach now
since the beginning and has accumulated a 23-23 record.
Method
Keeping this in mind, we wanted to get an understanding of the fan base surrounding this
newly established Division I football program. In doing this, we were hoping to create marketing
material in order to drive up sales for a future home game. This was achieved in several steps.
We firstly, received a survey that was created for the purposes of this project by the General
Manager of Ticketing of UTSA Athletics. Secondly on October 11, a few of our group members
went to an introductory game. In this game, the UTSA Roadrunners faced the Florida
International University Panthers. This served as an observatory game for our team. We were
given a tour of the facility and met some of the UTSA staff. We were given a visual perspective
of potential survey spots. Additionally, we were introduced to the UTSA football atmosphere
and were able to see fans in their environment.
After that, we had our first game of data collection using the survey that was distributed
for the purposes of the project. Our first game that we surveyed fans was on October 25, where
UTSA faced the UTEP Miners. An unideal experience in the first game for most of our group
members and fellow colleagues led to the recommendation for changes to the survey content.
Discussion of Survey Content Changes
3
The first survey that we were given was not the best because it was two pages long and it
was very confusing. Every answer was on a scale from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”,
so this did not make sense when the questions asked, “Are you a season ticket holder?”. We
knew that changes need to be made to the survey if we wanted them to be useful to us. One of
the big things that we wanted to change with the survey was the length. We needed people to
take this new survey because we could not pull anything from the first one. So we cut the survey
down to one page and made it convenient to take. The first question was simple, “Are you a
season ticket holder?”, Yes or No. If you are a season ticket holder we wanted to know, how
long you have been a season ticket holder, if you are in the military, and if you plan on renewing
your season tickets for 2015. If you were not a season ticket holder we wanted to know, how you
purchased your ticket, and how you would classify yourself. Since we wanted to know very
different things from season ticket holders and non-season ticket holders we decided to split the
this section into two columns so it will be easy to follow and take up less room. Following that
question we wanted to know if UTSA fans thought their ticket cost was what they expected, less
than they expected, or if it was more than they expected. We wanted to know what people
thought about the ticket prices because if a majority said that they were more than they expected
then this could be a potential reason why people do not come to games. The next question we
asked was, what experience do you look forward to on game days. We wanted to know whether
the fans attend UTSA games for the game, for the tailgating/pregaming, the halftime show, or
another reason, so we left a blank for fans to fill in if they come to the games for another reason.
Following that we wanted to know what activities the fans participate in, tailgating, the spirit
walk, VIA park-n-ride, or the roadrunners station. From this question we wanted to see which
activity fans utilized so we could see if there is a specific activity that fans are not utilizing to its
4
full potential. We also wanted to know if a majority of the fans purchase food and/or drinks
while at the game, and we also wanted to know if their experience was positive or negative. If
fans have a negative experience then we need to know because this could be another key reason
people do not come to the games or they do not spend as much at games. Next question we asked
was how far the fan had to travel to attend the game. This would help us understand how far
UTSAs fan base reaches so we can understand how far we need to market. The next questions
focused on our social media outreach, we want to know if fans follow us on social media, and
which outlets they follow. We also wanted to know if they do follow UTSA on social media then
what are their main outlets for receiving information about game day but if they do not we also
want to know where they get their information from. The last question we asked was if they
would be interested in buying group tickets and if they were we wanted to know what
organization they would want to come with. This allows us to see if group tickets are a big
market that we need to cover. Our survey was one page long, it only had 15 questions, and was
structured in a way that was easy to take.
The second game where we collected data, on November 13 where the UTSA
Roadrunners faced off with Southern Miss Golden Eagles. This game offered a fresh new start
for members of our group, since we had just come out of an active learning experience of
collaborating together to work towards the creation of a more effective survey. This game drew a
large crowd despite the cold weather. However because of the weather conditions, many fans
were too cold to stand outside and tailgate and were drawn to their seats early. This made the
data collection process a whole smoother, since fans were brought to their seats early with
5
nothing to do but sit there. This made it very easy to approach people and ask them to fill out our
survey.
Our favorable experience within the second game allowed us to collect a large amount of
data that we could analyze in order to make good marketing collateral. However, we also
realized that the data from the first game using the old survey would not be useful to us and
would not be considered for the marketing collateral that we be creating. The data that we did
have though was imputed by Hilary and Christian into a Google Sheets document.
DISC Profile Descriptions and Impact on Project: Personal Commentary
Christian: (Adapted Style: D: 12, I: 38, S: 83, C: 77; Natural Style: D: 15, I: 27, S: 82, C: 91)
During the game that we went to go observe the Alamodome, my high S and C was
present in that I was kind of quiet in observing my surroundings to get a good understanding of
the environment in which we were going to be surveying at. You did see some glimpses of my I
come out when I cracked a couple of jokes and asked a couple of questions during this
observatory game.
During the first game, my high S and C were in full display as me and Hilary were
thrown into a tough situation with no little to no direction. In accordance to my profile, I’m a
type of person that likes a good sense direction, reassurance and tasks that could be monitored
from beginning to end. As we soon come to learn, the area where we were placed was a pretty
disadvantageous place to be handing out surveys and this coupled with the length of the survey
led to low survey response rate. However, from this experience, I learned that I was to avoid
giving out surveys in this location of the Alamodome, but in addition, my high S and C wanted
6
to ensure that in the next game would bring a different experience. I achieved this, I was part of
the group that made suggestions to change up the old survey. In addition to that, I also made the
suggestion to a fellow colleague and to my group to distribute surveys in a similar method to the
Valero Alamo Bowl, in which we give surveys during pre-game, knowing by prior experience
that they would be more receptive to the survey. In game 2, the changes in the survey content
and survey distribution strategy led to a more favorable experience. Even though the weather
was not in our favor, limiting the scope of our audience reach, I was able to distribute and collect
a lot of surveys. My I was a bit higher than expected in this game, since I was comfortable with
the survey and with myself. Specifically, I caught myself cracking a couple of jokes with the
survey takers and making sure I expressed my appreciation for them taking my survey.
Within our group dynamic, I feel that my S and C were in display due to my high attention to
detail to what the final presentation and paper had to consist of. However, being named a team
leader in the beginning through association, meant I had to be bring out more of my I and D,
especially since I knew I was going to be relied upon to know and direct several tasks related to
the project. It was commented that I did a good job of keeping the group on track of the tasks
that needed to be achieved. This process alone was quite the learning experience for me as a
future sports manager.
Eric: (Adapted Style: D: 2, I: 83, S: 77, C: 48 ; Natural Style: D: 27, I: 41, S: 82, C: 59)
When I first started walking around the stadium to talk to people, I could not do it alone.
My high S made it so that once I was with at least one other person, I felt more comfortable to
come out of my shell. Once I felt more confident, my high I was able to come out and I could
make conversation and would be more open.
7
Hilary: (Adapted Style: D: 45, I: 77, S: 41, C: 77 ; Natural Style: D: 48, I: 55, S: 40, C: 45)
During the observation game my high C stepped in and helped assess the situation for the
next game, when we would start distributing surveys. At game one my high C took over because
Christian and I were thrown into a situation with no direction, so that was very frustrating. Once
we realized that we were on our own and had to kind of wing it my high I stepped in and we
started approaching people. This was hard for my high I who wanted everyone to take our survey
because most of the people that came through the south entrance were the other teams fans and
they did not want to take a survey for UTSA. Game two my high C kicked in and I thought about
how I would approach people to take the surveys. Since it was cold Christian and I decided not
to be on the south entrance but rather in the stand. My high C analyzed each section and tried to
find people that would be willing to take our survey. Once my high C assessed the situation
properly my high I kicked in and I was very successful at distributing the surveys.
Jamie: (Adapted Style: D: 52, I: 84, S: 48, C: 16; Natural Style: D: 41, I: 88, S: 52, C: 30)
Jamie’s friendliness and optimism helped the team form ideas and suggestions. Occasionally
Jamie stepped up when needed with her high D. Her low S and C were counterbalanced nicely
by the others in the group.
Jeremy: (Adapted Style: D: 30, I: 70, S: 55, C: 80 ; Natural Style: D: 34, I: 77, S: 34, C: 52)
I was not the most dominant but I held a significant role: allowing comic relief while
aiding a hard working environment. I was contributed by group suggestions allowing for
teamwork and interpretation. I felt like I could bend what was allowed with what needs to be
done. In a natural setting I feel comfortable with my team in any environment, classroom, study
room, Alamodome, etc. My high I allowed for this to happen. By staying optimistic and
engaging in collaboration, I was able to change the mood of my group no matter our task at hand.
8
On the other hand, in an Adapted setting I was able to help lead my group by my actions more so
than my words. I learned this through all my years of baseball- to get something done right I
must take over using my body, not my mouth. In our adventure at UTSA, I was able to use my
high I when we were given our “wonderful” first survey. I took what I had and tried the best I
could to manage. The real world is a harsh place and getting said “no” to takes a lot of getting
used to. We did not look the part, nor had the materials to boot, but Xavier and I (both high I’s)
did the best we could with the assets we were given (a trait of my high C). My high C aided my
ability to complete the task without huffing and puffing about its problems.
Overall, I feel as though this group was perfectly in sync from the beginning of the
semester. We always respected each other's opinions and work, aiding when help was asked for
but respecting and complementing when it was necessary.
Xavier: (Natural Style: D: 34, I: 88, S: 41, C: 48; Adapted Style: D: 41, I: 70, S: 40, C: 45)
While I did not take a dominant role in the discussion as to what has to be done, I did
bring a creative aspect to the group as to how to look at the analytics. My high I allowed me to
go out with Jeremy to the tailgating area and ask people to fill out our surveys. Since I was more
comfortable with the situation, my I was very prominent. My low/medium C came into play
slightly as well since I had a goal that had to attend to, but I was more thoughtful of how to
attack a group than Jeremy was.
Data Analysis
Given the order of our presentation, the groups before had hit on some key findings
within our data collection. As a result, we decided to take a different approach to our data
analysis and decided to focus on several things. Firstly, we focused on the participation of UTSA
Football pregame festivities and usage of the services provided by UTSA Athletics. Secondly,
9
we focused on quantifying the social media following of UTSA Football. This was achieved by
having survey takers indicate which social media outlets related to UTSA Football they
followed. Thirdly, we focused on quantifying how many season ticket holders were intending to
renew their tickets.
Results
Participation of UTSA Football pregame festivities and usage of the services provided by
UTSA Athletics.
Most of the participants from our sample came from the tailgating area with 49%. The
Roadrunner Station and Spirit Walk areas came in a far second with 18% each. The lowest, and
underutilized, area of participation was the VIA Park-N-Ride with 15%. With the VIA bus
running from UTSA to the game, we saw that not a lot of students are using the bus. This is
where we got an idea to use the VIA bus in our strategies. If more students were to use the bus
then we would not only promote UTSA Football, but also a safe environment for those who are
traveling from camping.
Social media following of UTSA Football
With the surveys that we provided at the second game we concluded that social media is
a huge area that we need to take advantage of. The survey data points out that 56% of the UTSA
fans that we surveyed follow UTSA on Facebook, 27% on Twitter, 14% on Instagram, and 3%
on Snapchat. We can tell that most UTSA football fans have like the Facebook page, which gives
us room to market our other social media sites through our Facebook page. Compared to the
national statistics from Sports Business Research Network it is visible that we do not have the
amount of social media presence as other schools do. Compared to the national percents we
outweigh them by 31% on Facebook, 15% on Twitter, and 2% on Instagram. Even though we do
10
outweigh the national percent we still need to build our social media base by a large margin
because the national statistic has four media that we are not reaching. The social media that is
provide that we did not cover is YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr. I believe after we
grow our social media presence with the four media we have now then we can begin growing
others.
Seasonticket renewal intention
With the data we collect with our second game surveys we have concluded that our
season ticket holders are having positive experiences while at UTSA games. The data portrays
that 96% of the season ticket holders plan to renew their tickets for the 2015 football season.
This does not mean we will neglect them through our marketing. We want them to be involved
with social media as much as we and the students involved. By keeping the season ticket holders
happy with the experiences at the games they will keep renewing and they may even convince
their friends to buy and/or renew their season tickets as well. We eventually want 96% to raise to
100% and I believe that this is possible provided the data we collected.
Main takeaways from the data
Within our data set we noticed several interesting trends but there were several main
findings we highlighted. Firstly, the data collected from the survey we can see that UTSA
football fans are loyal to the team and attending games. This is seen because 96% of season
ticket holders plan on renewing their tickets for the 2015 season. This is great to know because
we know that the season ticket holders are having a great experience at the games. This is what
we want as we try to build the UTSA football fan base. The problem we faced was not that fans
did not want to come back but they were just simply not coming to the games. So they never got
the experience the season ticket holders did, this gives us room to seek out these potential fans.
11
Secondly, since we do have such a loyal fan base we know that we need to market to the
people not coming to the games. We want to drive more people to the games so they can have
the same experiences as season ticket holders, so they will want to become season ticket holders
as well. This is why one of our biggest focuses was on social media; we want to get UTSA
football out there so everyone will see it and become more familiar with it. We want
#UTSAfootball to become second nature to the fans as they post on social media sites. We can
post #UTSAfootball all we want on our social media pages but it does little good if other people
do not do the same. We want people to be interested at why this hashtag is everywhere, why
people are posting it on their pictures. This was people that are interested in why this hashtag is
so popular they can simply click on the hashtag and see all the post that are posted about UTSA
football and they can get more information.
Marketing Collateral
We would like to propose a new and improved marketing strategy, focusing on engaging
fans and promoting hype through social media. Our target audience for these strategies is UTSA
students, who are underrepresented at our games. We realize that alumni and families make up a
large demographic of our fan base, however, we think that by reaching out to students the overall
game atmosphere will be improved. With increased student attendance, the games will be more
fun for everyone, from younger children to older alumni.
In doing a content analysis on the current status of UTSA Football social media outlets,
we concluded that they are great about keeping a constant online presence, but they didn’t
opportunities for their followers to engage with the content that they posted. Providing content
on social media that promotes engagement is something that Thompson and scholars (2014) saw
as an important theme for social media strategy. Our group strived to create content that was
12
shareable, of high quality and provoked commentary, which are seen as factors that can increase
fan engagement (Thompson et al., 2014)
In allocating a lot of our resources to social media, we strive to achieve several things.
Firstly, we want to create a way of two-way communication, with our loyal fan base and
capitalize on the excitement surrounding the newness of our program. The interactions that we
thought our new content would create would hopefully lead to building of a long and engaging
relationship, with fans (Thompson et al., 2014), which is something we want in order to upkeep
the financial livelihood of the program.
We will do this by implementing four key tactics: our Two Dollar Beer Games, “Rowdy
Rewards” program, and our new and improved Park and Ride program. These three tactics come
together through a strong push in the UTSA social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter).
2 Dollar BEERS
With a designated $2 beer night game, students/general public could feel more attracted
to coming to a game. The free Park-n-Ride for students would allow for students to go to the
game and drink, then have a secured ride back to campus. This eliminates the drinking and
driving and parking issue. And who doesn’t like cheap beer? If they’re 21 years old of course.
To put this on a social media platform, we must first design a product that is easy on the
eyes, gets to the point quickly, and relates to the target audience. Our image for the $2 Beer night
games is simple and quick. We highlighted which game this will be at and, not once, but twice,
giving the reader the fact that beer will be $2 at the game. Also, applying eye grabbing tactics,
we simply put the logos of the social media platforms that UTSA Football is on. We plan on
putting this image around campus, but also on all three of the major social media sites,
13
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The image you saw in class and below is a long image, created for
a poster, and mainly for Twitter and Facebook. An Instagram post with this image would be
changed just slightly as we would have to shorten the lengths to make it fit the “Instagram style”
photo shape. (See Figure 1 for the marketing collateral that will be implemented in our social
media outlets).
Figure 1: Marketing Material created for $2 Beer Game
“Rowdy Rewards”
The “Rowdy Rewards” program is an extensive reward program that will motivate UTSA
fans to engage in UTSA social media by offering prizes. We modeled this program after the
“Baylor Bold Rewards”. In integrating this program, we wanted to encourage fans to be more
14
fanatical about UTSA Football, to attend games, and to spread the word about our program. The
article “Baylor Athletics Takes Bold Step to Reward Social Media Engagement” furthermore
comments on why this program can be highly efficient and served as one of the reasons that we
created a similar program. Firstly, the program to use and makes it easy for followers to connect
on all social media outlets. In making it easy for fans to connect, sports organizations are thought
greater share of the voice among their competitors and even more consideration in the purchase
funnel (Baylor Athletics Takes Bold Step to Reward Social Media Engagement, 2011).
According to social media blogger and content strategist Jay Baer, providing fans with rewards
to leads to the creation of “satisfaction-driven content”, which helps in the marketing effort of an
organization (Turning Casual Sports Fans Into Brand Advocates, 2012).
The Rowdy Rewards program will assign point values to certain social media actions.
Prizes will be given away to those with the proper amount of points. To ensure that this is a
longstanding and successful program, and to make sure that someone does not take advantage of
our system, we have created limits on how many posts will be given points per day.
Additionally, a website for Rowdy Rewards would be creating, exhibiting all of this information
as well as a leaderboard. This leader board would be another great way to motivate fans and
would be a way to share some of their photos as well. Our prizes can also be changed throughout
the year to switch things up. Table 1 provides an example of the point acquisition system that
would be implemented within this program while Table 2 provides the amount of points that
followers would need to get to get certain prizes.
15
Table 1: Point acquisition systemfor Rowdy Rewards
Action performed Number of
points acquired
Daily limit on
performing action
Being one of the five
closest participants in
“Predict the Runners Stats”
100 1 / game*
Following @UTSAFTBL
on Twitter
80 1 / day
Following @utsafootball
on Instagram
80 1 / day
Liking UTSA Football
page on Facebook
80 1 / day
Installing official mobile
app
50 1 / day
Posting a photo to
Instagram with the hashtag
#UTSA
20 2 / day
Repinning content from an 20 1 / day
16
official Pintrest board
Commenting on a photo
from UTSA Football
Instagram page
20 2 / day
Tweeting with an official
hashtag
20 3 / day
Retweeting from our
official Twitter account
20 3 / day
Points for liking a photo
from our official Instagram
page
10 2 / day
Invite a friend and earn
points when they sign up
10 1 / day
Liked a pin from an official
Pinterest board
10 1 / day
Use Foursquare to check-in
to an official UTSA event
5 1 / day
* = This program would be implemented on a game-by-game basis. Integrating this program
came as a result of capitalizing on the recent growth of fantasy football (Daily fantasy goes big,
17
2014). The advantage of this program would be that it would not allow for fans to get engaged,
while getting to know the players a bit more. This comes as an effect of paying attention to the
player’s stats and hopefully at the same time, read up on the bios.
Table 2: Points required for prizes
Points acquired Prize
500 points: UTSA roadrunner decal
1000 points: UTSA cup
2000 points: UTSA shirt
2010 points UTSA beanie
2500 points: UTSA towel
10,000 points: Official UTSA jersey
20,000 points: VIP event & tour
Our photo for this section deals with what Rowdy Rewards is and how one can
participate in it. We tell them the objective: the more you engage on social media, the more
rewards. We show them how to earn rewards: posting pictures, sending tweets, writing posts all
using the #UTSAfootball hashtag. All while showing the different usernames for all platforms.
18
The marketing material for this program can be used only on Facebook and Twitter
because of its sharable abilities (See Figure 3 for marketing collateral piece promoting program).
When one finds it interesting they can retweet it, and share it with their friends and we hope this
will have a snowball effect and become a two-way communication between UTSA Football and
their fans. The more people we have participating, the greater our brand grows- which is a major
issue that UTSA is facing right now.
Figure 2: Marketing material designed to promote “Rowdy Rewards program”
Park & Ride:
19
The Park & Ride program at UTSA is a great way to get students and fans to the games.
However the current system needs to be improved. Currently, service is provided to and from the
Alamodome starting two and a half hours before kickoff. The cost is $5 round trip. Although this
is pretty cheap, this combined with the cost of the game can make some lazy students
unmotivated. Additionally, the Park and Ride service needs to be advertised more to the students,
as well as making it more accessible to them.
We are suggesting cheaper, discounted student Park and Ride tickets. These tickets can
be cheaper than $5, or paired in a package with discounted student game tickets. To market this,
we would like to propose a kickoff marketing event that will happen in the UTSA student center.
This event will happen the day before a weekend game. A table will be held advertising the
program, with free ticket giveaways and other UTSA freebies. With students being handed free
tickets for the park and ride, they will be more motivated to go to the game. Additionally at this
table, we can promote our $2 beer games as well as our Rowdy Rewards program. Especially
with the implementation of the $2 beer program, the Park and Ride program will become the
safest and cheapest way to and from the game.
Our Park and Ride photo is one that can be mainly sent out through Facebook and
Twitter. This is because of the amount of information that is on the photo. We have placed a
large photo of the exciting action of Roadrunner football- UT… SA- and have placed a map of
where to meet for the Park and Ride bus pickup and drop off before and after each home game.
Our message is mainly to educate the public and potential users of the service. Now students can
worry about the game experience more than how they will get back to the UTSA campus after
the game. This will potentially boost sales of tickets by both students and non- affiliated fans
20
alike because of the large number of people that are now able to come. (See Figure 3 for the
marketing collateral that will be implemented in our social media outlets).
Figure 3: Marketing material for Park-n-ride strategy
Conclusion
This project gave us a lot of valuable experience that could be used as we go onto pursues
careers within the sports industry. Specifically, working under a tight schedule in order to
collaborate to create a paper and a presentation was an experience that allowed us to put into use
the DISC profile and some of the components that we learned about in class. We also realized
21
several major things. Firstly, we realized that in order to effectively conduct market research
project of this proportion, a lot more of time would have been more useful. Specifically, starting
the project within the first couple of days would have been a bit more beneficial. Another thing
that we realized was that the bad survey we started with was a good learning experience for us
because we were able to critically analyze the survey. We also develop an overall impression that
UTSA Football program needs a lot of improvement, but has a lot of potential to grow in the
next couple of years from a fan base perspective.
One area we might have approached differently would be the separation of our team
members around the stadium. We would have placed more people in the areas of the stadium
where the distribution of the survey was more successful. Another thing we would have
approached differently was the way we presented ourselves. We wanted to have some type of
UTSA gear on so that we would be more appealing to the fans we were trying to approach.
One thing that we could have done differently would be to start with a better survey. We
should have looked at the survey earlier on, and analyzed it before heading out to the first data
collection game. This would have saved us time later on, and we still could have made
improvements later. At the first day of data selection, it was difficult to collect information due
to the circumstances. However, this experience helped us learn more about the process, and
helped us improve our survey for the second round. Another thing that we could have done
differently is place more of us at the most populated spots. It also would have been nice to have
been able to be dressed in professional UTSA gear. If we all had UTSA t-shirts early on, we
would have looked more official and been more approachable. Instead, some of the security just
thought we were random kids walking around. A UTSA staff shirt or official polo would have
been perfect.
22
The team approach was very effective. We each had a different leadership style, and
worked together to create this wonderful project. At first, we just seemed like talkative
Communication majors. The secondary tension associated with the looming deadline that we had
with this project presentation and write-up really brought us together to efficiently collaborate on
this project. Within these final couple of weeks, one could start to realize that high makeup of
communication majors in our group ensued efficient two-way communication. In realizing our
ability to work efficiently under this secondary tension, we grew to become good friends. We
even learned about each other’s work styles, and were able to motivate each other in different
ways.
One of the major conflicts that we had was being able to coordinate all of our schedules.
Through athletics, academics, and extracurricular, we are a very busy group of six college
students. It was difficult for us to make some of the games, as well as all meet as a group.
Jeremy, Xavier, and Eric acted mainly as the creative idea, “big picture” people. Hilary and
Jamie did a lot of the note taking and organizing, and some of the less fun tasks. Christian did a
good job organizing the group and keeping us on track.
If we were the UTSA athletic director, we would have done some things differently. We
would have tried to follow best practices from established college football programs, such as
Alabama. We would have started this program earlier could have its fair share of benefits.
Specifically, we believed that the hype that was surrounding would have resulted in an increased
topic salience of the survey from a respondent standpoint. Topic salience has been found to be a
factor that reduces the negative affect associated with survey taking and also increases the extent
to which people think about their responses to their surveys (Jordan, Brandon-Lai, Sato, Kent,
and Funk, 2014). Jordan and scholars (2014) comment that this enhanced processing of the
23
survey content leads to higher response rates. Similarly, we would argue that this would give us
more reliable survey information, which would hopefully translate into useful marketing
material. We would also try and target younger, college students now. These students will
become future alumni, and season ticket holders later. This fan group is essential to keeping a
large fan base in future years. Although the older alumni are essential to the program, they are
not the future of the program. One idea that we had would be giving students an incentive for
students to be fans throughout their four years, as well as discounts.
24
References
Baylor Athletics takes bold step to reward social media engagement.(2011, November 11).
Fourth and 140. Retrieved from: http://fourthand140.com/2011/11/21/baylor-athletics-
takes-bold-step-to-reward-social-media-engagement/
Jordan, J. S., Brandon-Lai, S., Mikihiro, S., Kent, A., & Funk, D. C. (2014). The Impact of Fan
Identification and Notification on Survey Response and Data Quality. Sport Marketing
Quarterly, 23(1), 27-36.
Sport Business Research Network. (2013). Football (College): Percent of Fans Using Social
Media, by Device. Retrieved from: http://www.sbrnet.com/research.aspx?subrid=773
Thomas, I. & Fisher, E. (2014, November 10). Daily fantasy goes big. SportsBusiness Journal.
Retrieved from:
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2014/11/10/Marketing-and-
Sponsorship/Daily-fantasy-games.aspx
Thompson, A. J., Martin, A. J., Gee, S., & Eagleman, A. N. (2014). Examining the Development
of a Social Media Strategy for a National Sport Organization. Journal of Applied Sport
Management, 6(2).64-69
Turning Casual Sports Fans Into Brand Advocates. (2012, January 24). Fourth and 140.
Retrieved from:
http://fourthand140.com/2012/01/22/turning-casual-sports-fans-into-brand-
advocates/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-3

More Related Content

What's hot

Primary research evaluation
Primary research   evaluationPrimary research   evaluation
Primary research evaluationwhennegan1
 
Project and portfolio 2
Project and portfolio 2Project and portfolio 2
Project and portfolio 2lilkid187
 
Questionnaire results
Questionnaire resultsQuestionnaire results
Questionnaire resultsGussssssy1
 
2. fmp research
2. fmp research2. fmp research
2. fmp researchluke young
 
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan Engagement
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan EngagementHow Baseball Teams Drive Fan Engagement
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan EngagementSimplyCast
 

What's hot (6)

Primary research evaluation
Primary research   evaluationPrimary research   evaluation
Primary research evaluation
 
Project and portfolio 2
Project and portfolio 2Project and portfolio 2
Project and portfolio 2
 
Questionnaire results
Questionnaire resultsQuestionnaire results
Questionnaire results
 
2. fmp research
2. fmp research2. fmp research
2. fmp research
 
Question 4&5
Question 4&5Question 4&5
Question 4&5
 
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan Engagement
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan EngagementHow Baseball Teams Drive Fan Engagement
How Baseball Teams Drive Fan Engagement
 

Similar to UTSAMarketResearchWrite-up

Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports SurveyAshley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Surveyadavis4
 
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports SurveyAshley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Surveyadingley
 
Q5 media h
Q5 media hQ5 media h
Q5 media hKaan98
 
Media evaluation 2
Media evaluation 2Media evaluation 2
Media evaluation 2naathanbrown
 
Questionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire Analysisashleymjoseph
 
Questionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire Analysisashleymjoseph
 
Audience Research
Audience ResearchAudience Research
Audience Researchhblyth
 
Audience Research Task
Audience Research TaskAudience Research Task
Audience Research Tasktdalmay
 
Q3 Media Evaluation
Q3 Media EvaluationQ3 Media Evaluation
Q3 Media Evaluationrhiannc
 
Questionnaire Two Analysis
Questionnaire Two AnalysisQuestionnaire Two Analysis
Questionnaire Two Analysiskirstyharragan2
 
Power Point Super Bowl
Power Point Super BowlPower Point Super Bowl
Power Point Super Bowlsmatrad
 
Evaluation Question 3
Evaluation Question 3Evaluation Question 3
Evaluation Question 3Jade Fogg
 
Evalutation question 3
Evalutation question 3Evalutation question 3
Evalutation question 3Jamieleek
 
Questionnaire
QuestionnaireQuestionnaire
Questionnairelenny001h
 

Similar to UTSAMarketResearchWrite-up (20)

Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports SurveyAshley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
 
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports SurveyAshley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
Ashley And Amanda’S Sassy Sports Survey
 
Deliverable USD MBB
Deliverable USD MBBDeliverable USD MBB
Deliverable USD MBB
 
Q5 media h
Q5 media hQ5 media h
Q5 media h
 
Media evaluation 2
Media evaluation 2Media evaluation 2
Media evaluation 2
 
Questionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire Analysis
 
Questionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire Analysis
 
Questionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionnaire Analysis
Questionnaire Analysis
 
Audience Research
Audience ResearchAudience Research
Audience Research
 
Audience Research Task
Audience Research TaskAudience Research Task
Audience Research Task
 
Internship Project-hp-hp-hp
Internship Project-hp-hp-hpInternship Project-hp-hp-hp
Internship Project-hp-hp-hp
 
Q3 Media Evaluation
Q3 Media EvaluationQ3 Media Evaluation
Q3 Media Evaluation
 
fan loyalty
fan loyaltyfan loyalty
fan loyalty
 
Questionnaire Two Analysis
Questionnaire Two AnalysisQuestionnaire Two Analysis
Questionnaire Two Analysis
 
Question3
Question3Question3
Question3
 
Power Point Super Bowl
Power Point Super BowlPower Point Super Bowl
Power Point Super Bowl
 
Evaluation Question 3
Evaluation Question 3Evaluation Question 3
Evaluation Question 3
 
Evalutation question 3
Evalutation question 3Evalutation question 3
Evalutation question 3
 
Evaluation question 3
Evaluation question 3Evaluation question 3
Evaluation question 3
 
Questionnaire
QuestionnaireQuestionnaire
Questionnaire
 

UTSAMarketResearchWrite-up

  • 1. 1 UTSA Market Research Write-up Orange Team: Christian Tovar-Vargas Eric Redeker Hilary Hoffman Jamie Banks Jeremy Wolf Xavier Vargas-Hall SPMT 3308-1 12/3/14
  • 2. 2 UTSA Football is a fairly new program. Their first season was in 2011 and they were classified Division I, but did not join a conference until their second year when they joined the Western Athletic Conference. They are now in their fourth season and are members of Conference USA. They hired Coach Larry Coker in 2011 who has been the head coach now since the beginning and has accumulated a 23-23 record. Method Keeping this in mind, we wanted to get an understanding of the fan base surrounding this newly established Division I football program. In doing this, we were hoping to create marketing material in order to drive up sales for a future home game. This was achieved in several steps. We firstly, received a survey that was created for the purposes of this project by the General Manager of Ticketing of UTSA Athletics. Secondly on October 11, a few of our group members went to an introductory game. In this game, the UTSA Roadrunners faced the Florida International University Panthers. This served as an observatory game for our team. We were given a tour of the facility and met some of the UTSA staff. We were given a visual perspective of potential survey spots. Additionally, we were introduced to the UTSA football atmosphere and were able to see fans in their environment. After that, we had our first game of data collection using the survey that was distributed for the purposes of the project. Our first game that we surveyed fans was on October 25, where UTSA faced the UTEP Miners. An unideal experience in the first game for most of our group members and fellow colleagues led to the recommendation for changes to the survey content. Discussion of Survey Content Changes
  • 3. 3 The first survey that we were given was not the best because it was two pages long and it was very confusing. Every answer was on a scale from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”, so this did not make sense when the questions asked, “Are you a season ticket holder?”. We knew that changes need to be made to the survey if we wanted them to be useful to us. One of the big things that we wanted to change with the survey was the length. We needed people to take this new survey because we could not pull anything from the first one. So we cut the survey down to one page and made it convenient to take. The first question was simple, “Are you a season ticket holder?”, Yes or No. If you are a season ticket holder we wanted to know, how long you have been a season ticket holder, if you are in the military, and if you plan on renewing your season tickets for 2015. If you were not a season ticket holder we wanted to know, how you purchased your ticket, and how you would classify yourself. Since we wanted to know very different things from season ticket holders and non-season ticket holders we decided to split the this section into two columns so it will be easy to follow and take up less room. Following that question we wanted to know if UTSA fans thought their ticket cost was what they expected, less than they expected, or if it was more than they expected. We wanted to know what people thought about the ticket prices because if a majority said that they were more than they expected then this could be a potential reason why people do not come to games. The next question we asked was, what experience do you look forward to on game days. We wanted to know whether the fans attend UTSA games for the game, for the tailgating/pregaming, the halftime show, or another reason, so we left a blank for fans to fill in if they come to the games for another reason. Following that we wanted to know what activities the fans participate in, tailgating, the spirit walk, VIA park-n-ride, or the roadrunners station. From this question we wanted to see which activity fans utilized so we could see if there is a specific activity that fans are not utilizing to its
  • 4. 4 full potential. We also wanted to know if a majority of the fans purchase food and/or drinks while at the game, and we also wanted to know if their experience was positive or negative. If fans have a negative experience then we need to know because this could be another key reason people do not come to the games or they do not spend as much at games. Next question we asked was how far the fan had to travel to attend the game. This would help us understand how far UTSAs fan base reaches so we can understand how far we need to market. The next questions focused on our social media outreach, we want to know if fans follow us on social media, and which outlets they follow. We also wanted to know if they do follow UTSA on social media then what are their main outlets for receiving information about game day but if they do not we also want to know where they get their information from. The last question we asked was if they would be interested in buying group tickets and if they were we wanted to know what organization they would want to come with. This allows us to see if group tickets are a big market that we need to cover. Our survey was one page long, it only had 15 questions, and was structured in a way that was easy to take. The second game where we collected data, on November 13 where the UTSA Roadrunners faced off with Southern Miss Golden Eagles. This game offered a fresh new start for members of our group, since we had just come out of an active learning experience of collaborating together to work towards the creation of a more effective survey. This game drew a large crowd despite the cold weather. However because of the weather conditions, many fans were too cold to stand outside and tailgate and were drawn to their seats early. This made the data collection process a whole smoother, since fans were brought to their seats early with
  • 5. 5 nothing to do but sit there. This made it very easy to approach people and ask them to fill out our survey. Our favorable experience within the second game allowed us to collect a large amount of data that we could analyze in order to make good marketing collateral. However, we also realized that the data from the first game using the old survey would not be useful to us and would not be considered for the marketing collateral that we be creating. The data that we did have though was imputed by Hilary and Christian into a Google Sheets document. DISC Profile Descriptions and Impact on Project: Personal Commentary Christian: (Adapted Style: D: 12, I: 38, S: 83, C: 77; Natural Style: D: 15, I: 27, S: 82, C: 91) During the game that we went to go observe the Alamodome, my high S and C was present in that I was kind of quiet in observing my surroundings to get a good understanding of the environment in which we were going to be surveying at. You did see some glimpses of my I come out when I cracked a couple of jokes and asked a couple of questions during this observatory game. During the first game, my high S and C were in full display as me and Hilary were thrown into a tough situation with no little to no direction. In accordance to my profile, I’m a type of person that likes a good sense direction, reassurance and tasks that could be monitored from beginning to end. As we soon come to learn, the area where we were placed was a pretty disadvantageous place to be handing out surveys and this coupled with the length of the survey led to low survey response rate. However, from this experience, I learned that I was to avoid giving out surveys in this location of the Alamodome, but in addition, my high S and C wanted
  • 6. 6 to ensure that in the next game would bring a different experience. I achieved this, I was part of the group that made suggestions to change up the old survey. In addition to that, I also made the suggestion to a fellow colleague and to my group to distribute surveys in a similar method to the Valero Alamo Bowl, in which we give surveys during pre-game, knowing by prior experience that they would be more receptive to the survey. In game 2, the changes in the survey content and survey distribution strategy led to a more favorable experience. Even though the weather was not in our favor, limiting the scope of our audience reach, I was able to distribute and collect a lot of surveys. My I was a bit higher than expected in this game, since I was comfortable with the survey and with myself. Specifically, I caught myself cracking a couple of jokes with the survey takers and making sure I expressed my appreciation for them taking my survey. Within our group dynamic, I feel that my S and C were in display due to my high attention to detail to what the final presentation and paper had to consist of. However, being named a team leader in the beginning through association, meant I had to be bring out more of my I and D, especially since I knew I was going to be relied upon to know and direct several tasks related to the project. It was commented that I did a good job of keeping the group on track of the tasks that needed to be achieved. This process alone was quite the learning experience for me as a future sports manager. Eric: (Adapted Style: D: 2, I: 83, S: 77, C: 48 ; Natural Style: D: 27, I: 41, S: 82, C: 59) When I first started walking around the stadium to talk to people, I could not do it alone. My high S made it so that once I was with at least one other person, I felt more comfortable to come out of my shell. Once I felt more confident, my high I was able to come out and I could make conversation and would be more open.
  • 7. 7 Hilary: (Adapted Style: D: 45, I: 77, S: 41, C: 77 ; Natural Style: D: 48, I: 55, S: 40, C: 45) During the observation game my high C stepped in and helped assess the situation for the next game, when we would start distributing surveys. At game one my high C took over because Christian and I were thrown into a situation with no direction, so that was very frustrating. Once we realized that we were on our own and had to kind of wing it my high I stepped in and we started approaching people. This was hard for my high I who wanted everyone to take our survey because most of the people that came through the south entrance were the other teams fans and they did not want to take a survey for UTSA. Game two my high C kicked in and I thought about how I would approach people to take the surveys. Since it was cold Christian and I decided not to be on the south entrance but rather in the stand. My high C analyzed each section and tried to find people that would be willing to take our survey. Once my high C assessed the situation properly my high I kicked in and I was very successful at distributing the surveys. Jamie: (Adapted Style: D: 52, I: 84, S: 48, C: 16; Natural Style: D: 41, I: 88, S: 52, C: 30) Jamie’s friendliness and optimism helped the team form ideas and suggestions. Occasionally Jamie stepped up when needed with her high D. Her low S and C were counterbalanced nicely by the others in the group. Jeremy: (Adapted Style: D: 30, I: 70, S: 55, C: 80 ; Natural Style: D: 34, I: 77, S: 34, C: 52) I was not the most dominant but I held a significant role: allowing comic relief while aiding a hard working environment. I was contributed by group suggestions allowing for teamwork and interpretation. I felt like I could bend what was allowed with what needs to be done. In a natural setting I feel comfortable with my team in any environment, classroom, study room, Alamodome, etc. My high I allowed for this to happen. By staying optimistic and engaging in collaboration, I was able to change the mood of my group no matter our task at hand.
  • 8. 8 On the other hand, in an Adapted setting I was able to help lead my group by my actions more so than my words. I learned this through all my years of baseball- to get something done right I must take over using my body, not my mouth. In our adventure at UTSA, I was able to use my high I when we were given our “wonderful” first survey. I took what I had and tried the best I could to manage. The real world is a harsh place and getting said “no” to takes a lot of getting used to. We did not look the part, nor had the materials to boot, but Xavier and I (both high I’s) did the best we could with the assets we were given (a trait of my high C). My high C aided my ability to complete the task without huffing and puffing about its problems. Overall, I feel as though this group was perfectly in sync from the beginning of the semester. We always respected each other's opinions and work, aiding when help was asked for but respecting and complementing when it was necessary. Xavier: (Natural Style: D: 34, I: 88, S: 41, C: 48; Adapted Style: D: 41, I: 70, S: 40, C: 45) While I did not take a dominant role in the discussion as to what has to be done, I did bring a creative aspect to the group as to how to look at the analytics. My high I allowed me to go out with Jeremy to the tailgating area and ask people to fill out our surveys. Since I was more comfortable with the situation, my I was very prominent. My low/medium C came into play slightly as well since I had a goal that had to attend to, but I was more thoughtful of how to attack a group than Jeremy was. Data Analysis Given the order of our presentation, the groups before had hit on some key findings within our data collection. As a result, we decided to take a different approach to our data analysis and decided to focus on several things. Firstly, we focused on the participation of UTSA Football pregame festivities and usage of the services provided by UTSA Athletics. Secondly,
  • 9. 9 we focused on quantifying the social media following of UTSA Football. This was achieved by having survey takers indicate which social media outlets related to UTSA Football they followed. Thirdly, we focused on quantifying how many season ticket holders were intending to renew their tickets. Results Participation of UTSA Football pregame festivities and usage of the services provided by UTSA Athletics. Most of the participants from our sample came from the tailgating area with 49%. The Roadrunner Station and Spirit Walk areas came in a far second with 18% each. The lowest, and underutilized, area of participation was the VIA Park-N-Ride with 15%. With the VIA bus running from UTSA to the game, we saw that not a lot of students are using the bus. This is where we got an idea to use the VIA bus in our strategies. If more students were to use the bus then we would not only promote UTSA Football, but also a safe environment for those who are traveling from camping. Social media following of UTSA Football With the surveys that we provided at the second game we concluded that social media is a huge area that we need to take advantage of. The survey data points out that 56% of the UTSA fans that we surveyed follow UTSA on Facebook, 27% on Twitter, 14% on Instagram, and 3% on Snapchat. We can tell that most UTSA football fans have like the Facebook page, which gives us room to market our other social media sites through our Facebook page. Compared to the national statistics from Sports Business Research Network it is visible that we do not have the amount of social media presence as other schools do. Compared to the national percents we outweigh them by 31% on Facebook, 15% on Twitter, and 2% on Instagram. Even though we do
  • 10. 10 outweigh the national percent we still need to build our social media base by a large margin because the national statistic has four media that we are not reaching. The social media that is provide that we did not cover is YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr. I believe after we grow our social media presence with the four media we have now then we can begin growing others. Seasonticket renewal intention With the data we collect with our second game surveys we have concluded that our season ticket holders are having positive experiences while at UTSA games. The data portrays that 96% of the season ticket holders plan to renew their tickets for the 2015 football season. This does not mean we will neglect them through our marketing. We want them to be involved with social media as much as we and the students involved. By keeping the season ticket holders happy with the experiences at the games they will keep renewing and they may even convince their friends to buy and/or renew their season tickets as well. We eventually want 96% to raise to 100% and I believe that this is possible provided the data we collected. Main takeaways from the data Within our data set we noticed several interesting trends but there were several main findings we highlighted. Firstly, the data collected from the survey we can see that UTSA football fans are loyal to the team and attending games. This is seen because 96% of season ticket holders plan on renewing their tickets for the 2015 season. This is great to know because we know that the season ticket holders are having a great experience at the games. This is what we want as we try to build the UTSA football fan base. The problem we faced was not that fans did not want to come back but they were just simply not coming to the games. So they never got the experience the season ticket holders did, this gives us room to seek out these potential fans.
  • 11. 11 Secondly, since we do have such a loyal fan base we know that we need to market to the people not coming to the games. We want to drive more people to the games so they can have the same experiences as season ticket holders, so they will want to become season ticket holders as well. This is why one of our biggest focuses was on social media; we want to get UTSA football out there so everyone will see it and become more familiar with it. We want #UTSAfootball to become second nature to the fans as they post on social media sites. We can post #UTSAfootball all we want on our social media pages but it does little good if other people do not do the same. We want people to be interested at why this hashtag is everywhere, why people are posting it on their pictures. This was people that are interested in why this hashtag is so popular they can simply click on the hashtag and see all the post that are posted about UTSA football and they can get more information. Marketing Collateral We would like to propose a new and improved marketing strategy, focusing on engaging fans and promoting hype through social media. Our target audience for these strategies is UTSA students, who are underrepresented at our games. We realize that alumni and families make up a large demographic of our fan base, however, we think that by reaching out to students the overall game atmosphere will be improved. With increased student attendance, the games will be more fun for everyone, from younger children to older alumni. In doing a content analysis on the current status of UTSA Football social media outlets, we concluded that they are great about keeping a constant online presence, but they didn’t opportunities for their followers to engage with the content that they posted. Providing content on social media that promotes engagement is something that Thompson and scholars (2014) saw as an important theme for social media strategy. Our group strived to create content that was
  • 12. 12 shareable, of high quality and provoked commentary, which are seen as factors that can increase fan engagement (Thompson et al., 2014) In allocating a lot of our resources to social media, we strive to achieve several things. Firstly, we want to create a way of two-way communication, with our loyal fan base and capitalize on the excitement surrounding the newness of our program. The interactions that we thought our new content would create would hopefully lead to building of a long and engaging relationship, with fans (Thompson et al., 2014), which is something we want in order to upkeep the financial livelihood of the program. We will do this by implementing four key tactics: our Two Dollar Beer Games, “Rowdy Rewards” program, and our new and improved Park and Ride program. These three tactics come together through a strong push in the UTSA social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). 2 Dollar BEERS With a designated $2 beer night game, students/general public could feel more attracted to coming to a game. The free Park-n-Ride for students would allow for students to go to the game and drink, then have a secured ride back to campus. This eliminates the drinking and driving and parking issue. And who doesn’t like cheap beer? If they’re 21 years old of course. To put this on a social media platform, we must first design a product that is easy on the eyes, gets to the point quickly, and relates to the target audience. Our image for the $2 Beer night games is simple and quick. We highlighted which game this will be at and, not once, but twice, giving the reader the fact that beer will be $2 at the game. Also, applying eye grabbing tactics, we simply put the logos of the social media platforms that UTSA Football is on. We plan on putting this image around campus, but also on all three of the major social media sites,
  • 13. 13 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The image you saw in class and below is a long image, created for a poster, and mainly for Twitter and Facebook. An Instagram post with this image would be changed just slightly as we would have to shorten the lengths to make it fit the “Instagram style” photo shape. (See Figure 1 for the marketing collateral that will be implemented in our social media outlets). Figure 1: Marketing Material created for $2 Beer Game “Rowdy Rewards” The “Rowdy Rewards” program is an extensive reward program that will motivate UTSA fans to engage in UTSA social media by offering prizes. We modeled this program after the “Baylor Bold Rewards”. In integrating this program, we wanted to encourage fans to be more
  • 14. 14 fanatical about UTSA Football, to attend games, and to spread the word about our program. The article “Baylor Athletics Takes Bold Step to Reward Social Media Engagement” furthermore comments on why this program can be highly efficient and served as one of the reasons that we created a similar program. Firstly, the program to use and makes it easy for followers to connect on all social media outlets. In making it easy for fans to connect, sports organizations are thought greater share of the voice among their competitors and even more consideration in the purchase funnel (Baylor Athletics Takes Bold Step to Reward Social Media Engagement, 2011). According to social media blogger and content strategist Jay Baer, providing fans with rewards to leads to the creation of “satisfaction-driven content”, which helps in the marketing effort of an organization (Turning Casual Sports Fans Into Brand Advocates, 2012). The Rowdy Rewards program will assign point values to certain social media actions. Prizes will be given away to those with the proper amount of points. To ensure that this is a longstanding and successful program, and to make sure that someone does not take advantage of our system, we have created limits on how many posts will be given points per day. Additionally, a website for Rowdy Rewards would be creating, exhibiting all of this information as well as a leaderboard. This leader board would be another great way to motivate fans and would be a way to share some of their photos as well. Our prizes can also be changed throughout the year to switch things up. Table 1 provides an example of the point acquisition system that would be implemented within this program while Table 2 provides the amount of points that followers would need to get to get certain prizes.
  • 15. 15 Table 1: Point acquisition systemfor Rowdy Rewards Action performed Number of points acquired Daily limit on performing action Being one of the five closest participants in “Predict the Runners Stats” 100 1 / game* Following @UTSAFTBL on Twitter 80 1 / day Following @utsafootball on Instagram 80 1 / day Liking UTSA Football page on Facebook 80 1 / day Installing official mobile app 50 1 / day Posting a photo to Instagram with the hashtag #UTSA 20 2 / day Repinning content from an 20 1 / day
  • 16. 16 official Pintrest board Commenting on a photo from UTSA Football Instagram page 20 2 / day Tweeting with an official hashtag 20 3 / day Retweeting from our official Twitter account 20 3 / day Points for liking a photo from our official Instagram page 10 2 / day Invite a friend and earn points when they sign up 10 1 / day Liked a pin from an official Pinterest board 10 1 / day Use Foursquare to check-in to an official UTSA event 5 1 / day * = This program would be implemented on a game-by-game basis. Integrating this program came as a result of capitalizing on the recent growth of fantasy football (Daily fantasy goes big,
  • 17. 17 2014). The advantage of this program would be that it would not allow for fans to get engaged, while getting to know the players a bit more. This comes as an effect of paying attention to the player’s stats and hopefully at the same time, read up on the bios. Table 2: Points required for prizes Points acquired Prize 500 points: UTSA roadrunner decal 1000 points: UTSA cup 2000 points: UTSA shirt 2010 points UTSA beanie 2500 points: UTSA towel 10,000 points: Official UTSA jersey 20,000 points: VIP event & tour Our photo for this section deals with what Rowdy Rewards is and how one can participate in it. We tell them the objective: the more you engage on social media, the more rewards. We show them how to earn rewards: posting pictures, sending tweets, writing posts all using the #UTSAfootball hashtag. All while showing the different usernames for all platforms.
  • 18. 18 The marketing material for this program can be used only on Facebook and Twitter because of its sharable abilities (See Figure 3 for marketing collateral piece promoting program). When one finds it interesting they can retweet it, and share it with their friends and we hope this will have a snowball effect and become a two-way communication between UTSA Football and their fans. The more people we have participating, the greater our brand grows- which is a major issue that UTSA is facing right now. Figure 2: Marketing material designed to promote “Rowdy Rewards program” Park & Ride:
  • 19. 19 The Park & Ride program at UTSA is a great way to get students and fans to the games. However the current system needs to be improved. Currently, service is provided to and from the Alamodome starting two and a half hours before kickoff. The cost is $5 round trip. Although this is pretty cheap, this combined with the cost of the game can make some lazy students unmotivated. Additionally, the Park and Ride service needs to be advertised more to the students, as well as making it more accessible to them. We are suggesting cheaper, discounted student Park and Ride tickets. These tickets can be cheaper than $5, or paired in a package with discounted student game tickets. To market this, we would like to propose a kickoff marketing event that will happen in the UTSA student center. This event will happen the day before a weekend game. A table will be held advertising the program, with free ticket giveaways and other UTSA freebies. With students being handed free tickets for the park and ride, they will be more motivated to go to the game. Additionally at this table, we can promote our $2 beer games as well as our Rowdy Rewards program. Especially with the implementation of the $2 beer program, the Park and Ride program will become the safest and cheapest way to and from the game. Our Park and Ride photo is one that can be mainly sent out through Facebook and Twitter. This is because of the amount of information that is on the photo. We have placed a large photo of the exciting action of Roadrunner football- UT… SA- and have placed a map of where to meet for the Park and Ride bus pickup and drop off before and after each home game. Our message is mainly to educate the public and potential users of the service. Now students can worry about the game experience more than how they will get back to the UTSA campus after the game. This will potentially boost sales of tickets by both students and non- affiliated fans
  • 20. 20 alike because of the large number of people that are now able to come. (See Figure 3 for the marketing collateral that will be implemented in our social media outlets). Figure 3: Marketing material for Park-n-ride strategy Conclusion This project gave us a lot of valuable experience that could be used as we go onto pursues careers within the sports industry. Specifically, working under a tight schedule in order to collaborate to create a paper and a presentation was an experience that allowed us to put into use the DISC profile and some of the components that we learned about in class. We also realized
  • 21. 21 several major things. Firstly, we realized that in order to effectively conduct market research project of this proportion, a lot more of time would have been more useful. Specifically, starting the project within the first couple of days would have been a bit more beneficial. Another thing that we realized was that the bad survey we started with was a good learning experience for us because we were able to critically analyze the survey. We also develop an overall impression that UTSA Football program needs a lot of improvement, but has a lot of potential to grow in the next couple of years from a fan base perspective. One area we might have approached differently would be the separation of our team members around the stadium. We would have placed more people in the areas of the stadium where the distribution of the survey was more successful. Another thing we would have approached differently was the way we presented ourselves. We wanted to have some type of UTSA gear on so that we would be more appealing to the fans we were trying to approach. One thing that we could have done differently would be to start with a better survey. We should have looked at the survey earlier on, and analyzed it before heading out to the first data collection game. This would have saved us time later on, and we still could have made improvements later. At the first day of data selection, it was difficult to collect information due to the circumstances. However, this experience helped us learn more about the process, and helped us improve our survey for the second round. Another thing that we could have done differently is place more of us at the most populated spots. It also would have been nice to have been able to be dressed in professional UTSA gear. If we all had UTSA t-shirts early on, we would have looked more official and been more approachable. Instead, some of the security just thought we were random kids walking around. A UTSA staff shirt or official polo would have been perfect.
  • 22. 22 The team approach was very effective. We each had a different leadership style, and worked together to create this wonderful project. At first, we just seemed like talkative Communication majors. The secondary tension associated with the looming deadline that we had with this project presentation and write-up really brought us together to efficiently collaborate on this project. Within these final couple of weeks, one could start to realize that high makeup of communication majors in our group ensued efficient two-way communication. In realizing our ability to work efficiently under this secondary tension, we grew to become good friends. We even learned about each other’s work styles, and were able to motivate each other in different ways. One of the major conflicts that we had was being able to coordinate all of our schedules. Through athletics, academics, and extracurricular, we are a very busy group of six college students. It was difficult for us to make some of the games, as well as all meet as a group. Jeremy, Xavier, and Eric acted mainly as the creative idea, “big picture” people. Hilary and Jamie did a lot of the note taking and organizing, and some of the less fun tasks. Christian did a good job organizing the group and keeping us on track. If we were the UTSA athletic director, we would have done some things differently. We would have tried to follow best practices from established college football programs, such as Alabama. We would have started this program earlier could have its fair share of benefits. Specifically, we believed that the hype that was surrounding would have resulted in an increased topic salience of the survey from a respondent standpoint. Topic salience has been found to be a factor that reduces the negative affect associated with survey taking and also increases the extent to which people think about their responses to their surveys (Jordan, Brandon-Lai, Sato, Kent, and Funk, 2014). Jordan and scholars (2014) comment that this enhanced processing of the
  • 23. 23 survey content leads to higher response rates. Similarly, we would argue that this would give us more reliable survey information, which would hopefully translate into useful marketing material. We would also try and target younger, college students now. These students will become future alumni, and season ticket holders later. This fan group is essential to keeping a large fan base in future years. Although the older alumni are essential to the program, they are not the future of the program. One idea that we had would be giving students an incentive for students to be fans throughout their four years, as well as discounts.
  • 24. 24 References Baylor Athletics takes bold step to reward social media engagement.(2011, November 11). Fourth and 140. Retrieved from: http://fourthand140.com/2011/11/21/baylor-athletics- takes-bold-step-to-reward-social-media-engagement/ Jordan, J. S., Brandon-Lai, S., Mikihiro, S., Kent, A., & Funk, D. C. (2014). The Impact of Fan Identification and Notification on Survey Response and Data Quality. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 23(1), 27-36. Sport Business Research Network. (2013). Football (College): Percent of Fans Using Social Media, by Device. Retrieved from: http://www.sbrnet.com/research.aspx?subrid=773 Thomas, I. & Fisher, E. (2014, November 10). Daily fantasy goes big. SportsBusiness Journal. Retrieved from: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2014/11/10/Marketing-and- Sponsorship/Daily-fantasy-games.aspx Thompson, A. J., Martin, A. J., Gee, S., & Eagleman, A. N. (2014). Examining the Development of a Social Media Strategy for a National Sport Organization. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 6(2).64-69 Turning Casual Sports Fans Into Brand Advocates. (2012, January 24). Fourth and 140. Retrieved from: http://fourthand140.com/2012/01/22/turning-casual-sports-fans-into-brand- advocates/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-3