Springfield Nor Easters Case Study

After reading the case study on The Springfield Nor’easters, there are some key issues that really stuck out. The main issue was that Larry Buckingham, who was the marketing director for the Nor’easters, had to figure out how to sell season tickets, regular tickets, and merchandise at their games. The Nor’easters were set to take their home field in Springfield Massachusetts, which is about 90 miles west of Boston. This in itself makes it difficult to sell tickets to minor league baseball games as the Red Sox play a little over an hour away. The next hurdle to overcome was the demographics of Springfield. Nearly 25% of families lived below the poverty line, which is not an ideal situation when trying to sell tickets. In my personal opinion, the next issue at hand was the secondary research. Buckingham used 3-year-old survey data and some anecdotal evidence from a journalist. This is not thorough use of secondary research. After completing the survey, the next issue at hand was determining how to price the tickets to get maximum attendance and revenue.
It is also apparent to me that there are some alternative approaches that could have been taken in order to solve these issues.
I would first start by completing more thorough secondary research followed by some hands-on primary research. It would not have been hard for Buckingham to spend a weekend or two going to some minor league games and getting a real feel and understanding on what it’s like to be in attendance of these games. Put yourself in the fan’s shoes: “Are the tickets priced right?” “Is the beer priced right? - Is it cold enough?” “How is the food priced?” “Do I like the atmosphere?” “Would I come back?” are all examples of questions he could ask himself while attending a minor league game. This is one of the first steps I would take if I were managing this company. I think it’s very important to start from the ground up to grasp a true feel of what the baseball experience needs to
entail.

Once I had a true understanding of what the fan base was expecting, I would then be able to design my survey with a little more creativity than what Mr. Buckingham had initially come up with. Looking at the survey results, it is easy to see that the best response rates came from parents of little league and softball teams. So with that information, I would take the survey a step further. I would get some people to go out and basically scout at these little league and softball games. Offer sponsorships to the teams, or host a family fun day to not only gain some awareness to the team, but also to get some insight and information into the chances of them attending Nor’easters games. It is this kind oh hands-on, primary research that separates the winners from the losers.

I believe that by taking these steps, I could gain a much more accurate understanding of what the Springfield fan base was interested in and how much they would be willing to pay for tickets. I do not think the initial marketing research plan was planned or executed in the proper manner. I also do not believe that there is enough information to make a flawless decision as to what to set the ticket prices at for the upcoming season.