A Capstone Project With Good Sense
For my public relations capstone project, we were separated into teams and instructed to pitch solutions to a business owner. Ian Boyle, of Good Sense Coffee in Howell, Michigan, sat down with us and spoke about the issues he faced in his day-to-day operations. From this, we did secondary and primary research, created solid goals, strategies, and specific tactics, and produced a set of deliverables as well as an execution and evaluation plan.
Research
In order to create suggestions that would not only make sense, but also be truly worthwhile, we began with relevant, recent research.
Secondary
We knew we wanted to talk to the customers themselves. We didn’t know what we wanted to talk to them about- what was important to the company, to the mission, etc. After listening to Ian’s concerns and hopes regarding out work, we took to some trustworthy sources for more information:
- The city of Howell itself
- Demographic information
- The Journal of Marketing
- How to build brand love
- Agility PR Solutions
- Rewards tactics- best practices
- Harvard Business Review
- Rewards tactics- loyalty-centric
- Stellenbosch Coffee Society
- Customer’s location preferences
- Journal of Foodservice Business Research
- Brand awareness
- Institute for Local Self-Reliance
- Brand loyalty
Primary
After looking into relevant information for Good Sense, we turned to creating relevant information about Good Sense. The problem period Ian identified for his walk-in traffic was Monday/Tuesday, in the afternoon. Our group created a set of questions based on our secondary research and Ian’s concerns, a consent form, and executed a series of small focus groups with the customers during a Monday afternoon. Our main takeaways were as follows:
- Why did you come in?
- 50% to meet people, 20% about the ‘feel’ of the business, 30% to work
- Have you been here before?
- 70% have not, 30% have.
- Does the pricing of the coffee match the quality & experience?
- 80% say that the coffee is good, but believe the prices are high.
- How far did they travel?
- 18 minutes on average.
- Do you participate in loyalty programs?
- 50% did.
(Please note, questions in list do not reflect questions asked in interview. Summarized/paraphrased for efficiency.)
Deliverables
In addition to pitching several solutions, based on the above research, we also included several deliverables. These could be used as examples to increase understanding of our tactics, but also could be actually implemented in Ian’s future endeavors.