Archive for » November, 2009 «
Do you think your next 2010 meeting and conference attendance will return to similar numbers before the Recession?
Are you waiting for the economy to rebound back, like a rubber band to where it was in the early part of 2008?
If you are, you might be waiting for a mirage, an illusion or even a ghost of the past.
According to research from Decitica, the recession has caused a profound, deep-rooted change in consumers’ spending habits in favor a more restraint. Many have accepted the change as a new normal and not part of a usual economic cycle. The Great Recession’s effects on consumer behavior are so profound that many of the assumptions underpinning consumer segmentation are no longer valid.
The Great Recesson's Effect On Consumer Spending Attitudes
Decitica has identified four distinct consumer segments emerging from the recession:
- Steadfast Frugalists
- Involuntary Penny-Pinchers
- Pragmatic Spenders
- Apathetic Materialists
Steadfast Frugalists
Steadfast Frugalists are committed to self-restraint, engaging in prudence with unequivocal enthusiasm. They make up about one fifth of the American consumers, representing all income and age groups. 80% say that their new behaviors will likely stay with them for a long time. 6 in 10 are women.
Impact to meetings and event attendance: Likely little impact. Nearly one-third of this group considered themselves as tightwads before the recession and probably did not pay for conference attendance out of their own pocket.
Involuntary Penny-Pinchers
Involuntary Penny-Pinchers have been the most severely affected, financially and emotionally, by the recession. Over represented by people in their 30s and 40s, this group was forced into frugality, as many had not saved for emergencies. Their behaviors do not differ much from Steadfast Frugalists. 6 in 10 are women and they represent 29% of the population.
Impact to meetings and event attendance: Unless their employer is paying for their registration, travel and lodging, Involuntary Penny-Pinchers cannot afford to attend a conference in 2010.
Pragmatic Spenders
Over represented by those in their 60s, Pragmatic Spenders have the greatest capacity, both financial and psychological, to willfully resurrect their past spending patterns. Representing about 29% of the population, they have a cautious spending approach. They have cut back on expenses and embraced thrift like others. 6 in 10 are men.
Impact to meetings and event attendance: This is the most attractive group for conference marketers as they have the above-average financial means. Conference organizers will have to show extreme value to attract this group since they are cautious about unnecessary spending.
Apathetic Materialists
Apathetic Materialists, over represented by people in their 20s and 22% of the total population, seem least changed by the recession. It is likely that their relative indifference springs from their life stage–younger, single people with limited disposable income at the moment.
Impact to meetings and event attendance: An attractive target for youth-oriented conferences and events. The challenge is that many may not have the same respect for attending a two- or three-day conference and sitting passively in chairs for eight hours or more. Many from this group have been attracted to non-traditional conferences like Unconferences and BarCamps.
Ultimately, the Great Recession has induced new attitudes towards thrift. Many have internalized simplicity and thrifty-living and expecting conference attendance to return to 2008 numbers may be a fallacy of the past.
So, how will these four consumer spending trends influence your next meeting or event attendance?
Today, StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening, is celebrating the National Day Of Listening.
In honor of the National Day Of Listening, consider how you listen to your conference attendees onsite, during the conference?
How do you listen to your customers, members and conference attendees?
We’ve all experienced it. The hallways of the conference are buzzing with chatter about the event. Attendees are discussing what’s working, what isn’t, why the organizers planned it this way, what they are happy about and what’s discouraging them.
As meeting and event planners, we often wish we could be a fly on the wall listening to everyone’s discussions all at once. With today’s social media tools, we can engage in discussions with our registrants before, during and after the big event. Now, we can capture those hallway conversations and respond in real time. So, where do you start?
1. Create and encourage a culture of listening.
Listening is something that every staff member can and should do, and the organization’s principals should lead by example. Staff should listen in the hallways, invite feedback on evaluations and encourage attendees to provide comments and concerns to any staff member both face to face and through the social media tools available. The event is all about attendee, not you the meeting professional.
2. Develop a system for capturing feedback and ways to respond.
a. Setup an event presence in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social media tools.
In today’s web world, people go to several different sites to find information about an event. They no longer turn only to your organization or event website. They turn to their friends, colleagues and compadres. They also turn to the social media tools they use and you can help them by setting up “listening and chatting posts” within each social property. Twitter Tip: When using Twitter, identify one person to manage each event account and encourage them to list their name in the profile. For example Jeff4CVG09 meaning Jeff for CONVERGE 2009.
b. Decide who will be the champion for each account, keep the information updated and communicate to people within that network about the event.
Encourage the champions to provide outstanding customer service and do the right thing for the attendees when challenges arise. Let your team members know that you will back them with their decisions to provide outstanding customer service to the attendee.
Read the remander of my post, The Art Of Listening And The Science Of Responding on Event Manager blog.
Happy Listening!
This is the last in my series for TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on November 30, 2009.
Thanksgiving looks two directions at once.
It looks to the world: shopping for the family meal, retrieving visitors or being a visitor, receiving “Black Friday – shop tomorrow!” messages and deciding whether to comply, savoring time off work, and in many instances, dealing with the onset of holiday angst.
Offering thanks and gratitude this Thanksgiving.
And it looks to the heavenly: glimpses of our being interwoven with those who give to us and those who depend on our gifts, signs of unearned grace, lives connecting as if drawn together by a higher power.
Somehow, at the center of our gratitude and our delight, or our seasonal despair, is a Love far beyond anything we see or control. We cannot define it, measure it, or bar our door to it. That Love simply exists, and it graces our lives no matter what we do.
Last Saturday night, for example, as my parents, family and friends gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50 Wedding Anniversary, I sat at the “children’s table” away from the commotion with the Gen-Y generation. I was warmed by the roaring laughter of friends and family celebrating this occasion. I marveled at this gift: a kitchen where everyone felt safe, three generations in a circle, love in full bloom, those honoring their elders.
Yes, I can trace the years of my parents nursing and guiding as well as many family relatives doing their part. But I also see the mystery of a goodness that comes from a belief in a Divine Love, not from parenting. When my sister and I built snow castles and took well-worn sledding paths down a neighborhood hill several decades ago, I’m sure our parents had no idea where we would go or where our futures would lead. That flight passed through the heavens and returned to earth on wings of the Love, not theirs or mine.
In these challenging times, I hope for two things.
First, I hope that you glimpse such goodness coming toward you. And that you will know it as a higher power’s doing, not yours. For if this goodness is of Love , so to speak, then it is reliable and durable.
Second, despite the politicization of faith and the many ways every festival is turned to commercial advantage, I hope that nations trapped in war, famine, poverty and worsening inequality will remember their first Thanksgiving Day, when a harsh winter of despair turned to hope because unexpected friends showed up with food.
The first Beatitude still prevails: we are blessed, not when we have enough food on today’s table or enough credit for tomorrow’s shopping, but when we know our need of each other, faith and the Divine.
Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and yours!
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.
For the next few days, I’m participating in TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on in a few days. Please indulge me with this post about gratitude.
When I travel, I will leave behind a spacious office with several computers, high-speed Internet access, several desks and comfortable chairs. I will settle into “portable office” mode.
Portable office on the go.
My workspace will be my lap, as I sit in two airports. Sometimes, my workspace is a professional office with ample computers, printers, cubicles and phones. Sometimes, it is the table in my dining room, a table at Starbucks, or the porch swing on my front porch. Or maybe it’s the desk in my den.
And, you know something, it was fine. It was enough. I got my work done. In fact, looking back at the years of work, I remember most fondly the times I had to make do: sharing office space with several others, turning a closet into a small office, typing elbows-in on airplanes, working at restaurant tables, scouting out plugs and telephone jacks in hotels, finding quiet corners in busy airports, even using pen and paper.
I don’t want to over-dramatize such making-do. Compared with what famine and war victims are enduring, it is nothing. My point is that enough is indeed enough, or as my friend would say, “Enough is as good as a feast.”
Enough is as good as a feast.
That is a hard lesson to learn. Many of us are raised in a world of “more,” where wants become necessities, minimums are unacceptable, and our goal isn’t to avoid excess, but to find a secure place to store excess. Entire industries exist for the purposes of creating a demand for more, managing more, protecting more, proclaiming more, and justifying more.
This is a dilemma for people. Chasing more requires us to ignore giving wealth away to those in need. Hunting treasures keeps us from dying to self. Hording keeps us from enjoying the gift of giving.
Ancient texts talk about a wandering generation receiving manna in the wilderness with explicit instructions that: enough is enough. Take only what is needed for the day. The one exception was the sixth day, when they could take an extra day’s worth, so that they could observe rest on the next day. The point of the extra amount wasn’t to accumulate more, but to make sure they had enough for the seventh day, their special day to remember who they were.
By making the leap from enough to more, and then working 24/7 to achieve it, we enter into that spiritual amnesia which loses true identity and sees self in possessions, accomplishments and worldly status.
It would be better for us if we were content with enough and set aside time to rest, rejuvenate, consider those in need and give when we have more than enough.
Today, let’s help those in need get “Enough as good as a feast.”
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.
For the next few days, I’m participating in TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on in a few days.
As I sit on my front porch in the cool of Autumn, I look around my front yard. Landscapes one flush with spring and summer flowers look barren and cold.
I smile as I remember where the yellow columbine bloom every spring. Then I recall another story:
I picked a flower for you.
I am sitting on my front porch steps when my neighbor’s dog and kids see me. They all come bounding across the street to greet me. Their mother shakes her head and apologizes. I smile.
Mom walks across the street and I say, “You know, Emma, brought me a wonderful flower the other day.”
Emma hangs her head, sits down beside me and says, “I have to tell you something.”
I hear the serious tone and look her in the eye. “I picked that flower in your yard,” she confesses.
My grin expands. “Emma, you can pick our flowers any time.”
She looks up at me with bright eyes and then at her mother. “He says I can pick their flowers any time!” Mom sighs and tells Emma to pick just one, every now and then.
“Good things happen when we are honest,” I say.
Honesty. The unworthy becomes worthy. Through confession, the offender is forgiven. And not with grudging limits, but extravagantly. “You can pick flowers any time.”
Worthiness, it seems is ours to gain or lose. The invitation is open to all, both good and bad. I believe that worthiness isn’t determined by past behavior but by acceptance of grace today.
Our neighbor, her kids and dog turn to walk across the street. A light-hearted girl runs back to pick a flower.
I watch her and smile, once again.
She then places the small yellow flower in her mom’s hand. “I picked this for you.”
Grace begets grace.
Today, I’m grateful for the grace many people have given me. May I be able to show others that same grace.
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness.
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.
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