Helping a community market listen to its customers
by John Caddell at caddellinsightgroup.com
Framing the project
What was the impetus for your project? What led to it taking place? Why were you doing it?
The Broad Street Market of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1860, and is the oldest continuously operated market house in the United States. More than forty Market vendors sell fresh produce, meats, prepared foods and gifts to residents, workers from the nearby State Capitol complex, and visitors. The Market is the anchor of the culturally- and economically-diverse Midtown neighborhood, which is undergoing a renaissance with new facilities like the Harrisburg Area Community College intown campus and the Midtown Arts Center.
I am a member of the board of directors of the market. The idea to do the project came during a phone conversation I had with our new board chairman. I mentioned that, given the evolution of the market's surrounding neighborhood, I wasn't sure what the role of the market should play in the neighborhood, the city and with its customers. The chairman replied that he knew what the role was, and he spelled it out very clearly and succinctly. "Interesting," I said. "The person in the mayor's office who oversees the market said this was the market's role, and that's very different from what you just said." At that moment I felt like we needed to go to the various stakeholders and find out what role they wanted the market to play in their lives.
What were the project's goals?
The goal of the project was to gain a shared understanding among the various market constituencies -- including customers -- about their view of the market -- what was its mission and purpose, and what they envisioned as the future role of the market. In my original project proposal, I anticipated interviewing all different types of constituencies -- customers, representatives of the City, the board, non-customers, community leaders.
The story of the project
How did the project get started? What happened first?
The first step was getting the approval of the board. I wrote up a proposal and presented it at a board meeting. I don't think I explained it very well at all, and I doubt the proposal was carefully reviewed -- but it was cheap and addressed a question we all were curious about, so the board said "go ahead."
Once I got started, I realized the scope was going to be too broad to present results within the expected timeframe (2 months). With some constituencies (community leaders, noncustomers), it would take a lot of legwork even to figure out how to reach them. So I scoped down and focused on the customers. I got a voice recorder and headed to the market.
What sorts of stories did you collect? How were they collected? Who collected them?
I made six trips to the market to record stories. My goal was to get 60 stories, and I ended up with about 65.
What sorts of annotations or question-asking were done? Who answered the questions or added the annotations?
I didn't really understand "questions about stories" then, so I ended up asking fairly demographic questions -- how long have you come here? How close do you live? Etc. [As I started reviewing the transcripts, I realized that some themes emerged. Some people mentioned that they found being at the market entertaining. Others that they came there to see friends. Etc. But because I didn't ask specific questions about these, I didn't get enough information on those themes. If I had the project to do over again, I would do a few interviews to see patterns, then create some questions around the themes that were emerging, and ask those of everyone after.]
How were the stories looked at or considered? Who was involved in this?
Once the interviews were done, I had the stories transcribed (the most expensive part of the exercise: about $200). In addition to the answers to questions about the stories, I took some of the patterns I saw (did they mention community? Friends? Entertainment?) and put the results into a spreadsheet.
In preparation for looking at the stories, a nice person was able to take my spreadsheet and do a huge number of pairwise comparisons, which she put into graphs. For example, of the people who mentioned community, what age group did they fall into? And a hundred other comparisons. Out of these, I pulled out the ten or so most interesting graphs. I also took the transcripts and extracted about 30 of the most vibrant or interesting stories in them.
The board took a few hours one night to review the excerpts and the graphs. I stuck hardcopies of the graphs on the wall, and laid the excerpts around the meeting room. I had the group look at these and put their ideas on stickies (pretty much following the process described in the section called Think: Making sense).
We came up with 9 clusters, named:
- Events
- Parking/Facilities/Accessibility
- Safety
- Community
- Marketing/Signage
- Convenience
- Social Interaction
- Sanitary/Cleanliness
- Business incubator
We didn't do much with the graphs, though a few people who reviewed it saw some patterns, specifically that with a younger demographic we can tap into strong yearnings for community and local sourcing.
Then we talked about what we had just done. There was 90 minutes of discussion about the 9 items, which everyone agreed represented the customers' perceptions about what the market was and what it needed to be. We established a bunch of near-term actions, including a very frank discussion of the need to assure the financial viability of the market (which had really existed month-to-month for years).
How did the project end? Were conclusions drawn, and by whom?
We are using the information in the project in various ways. On one level, when we have board discussions, we refer to the findings and to the customer stories to help us understand the customer's viewpoint. This has been helpful, for example, in being assertive with vendors about their need to keep their stands utterly clean. Another example: the local police department approached us to see if we would allow them to set up a temporary recruiting station in the Market. It took about three seconds of discussion to say yes -- it supports our "safety" and "community" pillars.
Also, we are using these findings as input to our strategic planning process and visioning for the market. We can create stories that describe how we see the market evolving, using these 9 fundamentals, and those stories can underpin our planning and fundraising activities.
High and low points
Do you remember any pleasant surprises during the project?
There were a lot of pleasant surprises. It was really nice to hear from the customers. In particular, learning what an important part the Market plays in the life of the community -- not only as a provider of food, but of connection and diversion.
How about unpleasant surprises?
There weren't any unpleasant surprises. People were very open and receptive to talking. The board took their responsibilities seriously.
Do you recall any "aha" moments when you realized or learned something critical?
In one interview, a woman began to discuss growing up in the neighborhood 60 years earlier, where the trolley ran and the various merchants with shops near the market. Then she said that one of the Market stands they went to then is still in operation, run by the daughter of the former owner. It struck me then that the Market was more than just a collection of stands with vendors, more than just a building. It was the continuation of a legacy, a connection to the past, and needed to be preserved and cherished.
Were there any times during the project when things seemed too difficult or challenging to go on? What was the challenge and what did you do about it?
I did begin to run out of steam collecting stories near the end. I wasn't looking forward to the last couple of trips. I just told myself that on that trip I needed 10 stories, that I wasn't leaving before I got ten stories. And I stuck it out.
Evaluation
What turned out the same as you expected? What was worse than expected? What was better?
I expected to learn a lot from the customers and that didn't surprise me. It was harder than expected to do the interviews. I couldn't imagine doing it all day -- even though people were very gracious and very few declined to talk.
Did the project meet its goals? Were there other benefits you hadn't expected?
The project met its goals; we got a list of important, customer-validated findings to use as a basis for strategic planning. These included the importance of community, safety, pricing, local content, cleanliness. Since we did the project these terms have become a standard part of our dialogues about the market.
Can you share one conclusion of your project that you don't think you could have arrived at in any other way than by asking for and looking at stories?
One of the most gratifying and surprising outcomes of the project occurred after we had finished the sensemaking exercise. Six of us sat around a table, eating pizza and drinking beer, and spent an hour and a half (!) discussing the stories, the implications, and things we should do. I was very surprised that the session lasted that long. It was also surprising that the dialogue was very rich, very open and unbounded. Some novel ideas came up and were discussed at length, including the frankest discussion of the market's financial situation and how to fix it than we had ever had. People came up with lots of new suggestions to do things with little/no investment.
One unexpected finding from the project was the realization that many customers drive to the market. There is a deep-seated assumption on behalf of the board and City that most market customers walk from their homes or workplaces to shop there. But fully half of the people I talked to drove there. And, as a result, the question of parking, which was not a topic of serious discussion before, became one after the study was complete. We had never heard of this as an issue, and, since it was such a widely-held assumption, I don't know how we would have learned this other than through a story project.
Advice
What do you think you'll do the same and differently when you do your next project?
The biggest change I'll make going forward is to do more advance research before plunging into story-gathering. As I mentioned earlier, I found that interesting items emerged from the initial interviews, but I didn't ask any questions about those items. In the future I'll note those and create "questions about the stories" for those items. For example, the idea of friendship & entertainment were not items I thought about in advance of talking to customers. If I had asked questions about these items, we probably would have gotten more data about them.
What advice would you give to a person who wants to do a similar project?
I would tell anyone considering a story project to go ahead and do it. Even as a beginner, even though you'll make lots of mistakes, as long as you gather enough stories, the patterns will make themselves known. You'll get useful, surprising, powerful results even if you're not a skilled practitioner yet.