midterm study guide

Written Report On

The Awareness of Dodgers’ Cal State LA Night vs. Los Angeles Football Club

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

For Marketing Research Quantitative, MKT 4460-01

Under the Guidance of

Dr. Maryam Tofighi

Submitted by

Team 1

Vivian Khuu

Michelle Shaihor

Aaron Rodriguez

Nathaniel Alam

Hector Camberos

Prepared

November 27, 2018

Table of Contents

Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………….2

Problem Definition………………………………………………………………………………...3

Research Objectives……………………………………………………………………………….4

Research Methodology………………………………………………………………………….5-6

Data Analysis & Results………………………………………………………………………...7-9

Conclusion & Recommendations………………………………………………………………..10

References/Exhibits/Appendices…………………………………………………………….11-12

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The comparison of California State University of Los Angeles Dodgers’ Night and the LAFC was the topic that we have chosen for our paper. In our decision of choosing Cal State LA Dodgers’ Night and the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), its being that not many students were aware of these two topics and out of all the sports teams in LA they are the only ones that try to interact with students. The Dodgers’ Cal State LA night is an event that is hosted at Dodger stadium dedicated to the Cal State LA community. With this event, they provide those that attend the special event with a special gift including an exclusive hat that was made dedicated for the event as well as some of the proceeds going to the alumni association.  We decided to do our research on sports entertainment to see how aware the Cal State LA community is with the events that are hosted for them. From a bit of research, we have seen that there is a weak presence of promotions at Cal State LA about these types of events on campus as well as online.

The LAFC has teamed up with Cal State LA and together, they have created a new training facility on the campus. This training facility will be the new training home of this Major League Soccer team. However they will be holding their games at Banc of California Stadium. They have an offsite training facility located near the northern gateway of the University. The benefits that LAFC brings to the students of Cal State LA are possible internships and funds.

What we plan on gaining from conducting this research study is that we hope to understand the area of exposure our programs and events have on Cal State LA students. We want to know the effectiveness and the awareness of these promotions. We also want to address the four main research questions we have, which will later be introduced.

A result of answering the questions, it would allow us to know if Cal State students are actually aware of the special events that are taking place at the Dodgers stadium or if Cal State student are aware of our relation with LAFC. With the knowledge from the answers of the questionnaires, we can analyze the problem and it will allow us to have a better understanding of how we should be promoting and getting the event to be more well known to the targeted subject. With these answers, if the targeted audience really does not know about the special events, we can publicize it more on social media,since the demographic is generally a younger population of students. We can also promote on campus as well, for those that don’t necessarily use social media, so we won’t be excluding anyone from the targeted audience.

Problem Definition

(1 page)

As stated in the executive summary, we wanted to gain a better understanding of how many students on the campus of California State University of Los Angeles knew about the programs and events that were offered to them by the Dodgers team and the LAFC team. We wanted to know the effectiveness and where the awareness of each program stood. We also wanted to address four main research questions; the first question being, how many people actually attend the Dodger games and LAFC games and if they do, how many? The next question is that we want to know if the students are aware of the special Dodgers program that is out there for them,  Dodgers’ night. Third question is what could be implemented to give enough motivation for students to come out to these baseball games. The last question is we want to know is if the students know about the specific Cal State LA night that the Dodgers have for them or if they are aware of LAFC’s presence on our campus. So our main objective is to find out about what the Cal State LA students know about the Dodgers and LAFC.

Our reasoning for pursuing this information and why it is important to address it is because we believe that understanding how they are doing in these programs that they offer and understanding their presence on campus will help in solving the problems that they have with connecting to the students which will be vital to the special event’s success in the future; in this case and our study, it will help bring out events that are dedicated to Cal State LA students or are related with Cal State LA students. It will help improve participation in events because this is an ongoing problem that is negatively affecting the event outcome. With the solution, future events can apply the needed changes and watch as the outcome of upcoming events improve.

Research Objective

(1 page)

Our objective was to find out people’s awareness of the Dodgers Cal State LA night and the LAFC’s presence on campus as well as what they could do to increase their popularity among Cal State LA students. From our own observations we hypothesized that students would not be aware of the programs because before we did the project we had no idea about the programs ourselves. Our methodology was using online surveys in order to find the data which we sought to improve the relationships of the teams with the students on campus and what strategies and incentives they could implement in order to sell more tickets to students. The way in which we got responses was through posting it to the Cal State LA book exchange as well as other Cal State LA exclusive forums. These methods were effective in getting responses due to their direct approach and convenience to us as well as the respondents. We wanted to see a pattern on if students knew about the programs offered or if they had no idea about the promotions of the teams. We also wanted to know what would get students more involved with both teams and what types of incentives could be implemented in order to get students to go out and watch games.

Research Methodology

(2 pages)

For the research method, we conducted a quantitative online questionnaire targeting Cal State LA students. The type of quantitative research we conducted was a quantitative descriptive design. We originally had no hypothesis but as we collected data we started to formulate a hypothesis. The fact that we started with no hypothesis made it easy to determine that we needed to use a quantitative descriptive design. We had about 50 students take the survey and we used simple random sampling because we wanted to see all the perspectives of all the students and not limit the answers we got by limiting who could answer the questionnaire. The way we distributed the survey was through online methods. We posted it on the Cal State LA book exchange as well as other Cal State LA exclusive online forums. These methods were to ensure that we reached our target audience while being able to gain results conveniently and quickly.  

We also did some research on both teams on the Cal State LA website, the LAFC website, and the Major League Baseball website for more information on the events and the teams. These websites gave us background about the team and their efforts to engage themselves with the Cal State LA community. Most of the information gained from these websites was to get a feel of how the organization is and what their values are as well as the type of environment that they have in their organization as well as bring to their stadiums. We used these two sites to gather secondary data on our research topic. Another website that we used was Baseball Reference. From this website we are able to see the number of people who attended certain baseball games. Using this data we could cross reference the baseball games that are Cal State LA nights and see in general if there was a higher attendance at these specific games. We would also have to rule out the possibility that these nights could have had a higher attendance for other reasons but if we were to see a pattern then we would know if these Cal State LA nights were working.

Data Analysis & Results (3-4 pages)

Based on the results from the questionnaire, 61.90% of the respondents live in the LA area, about 10-19 miles away from Dodger Stadium. 19.05% of the respondents  live closer than 9 miles away from the stadium. When looking for lack of attendance to a certain demographic, this piece of information is vitally important in knowing what their accessibility to the stadium is and if it is convenient for them to go to games. This information is important to us because it shows us if Dodger Stadium is not too far away to drive to, the results show us that distance is not a reason for lack of attendance. We have noticed the lack of attendance is due to other factors. 62.86% of the respondents are Dodgers fans. The respondents were about even when it came to gender which gave a good mix 48.44% male, 51.58% female. On top of that, the average age came out to 21, telling us that many of the respondents are around their third or fourth year of college, assuming they started right after high school.

Our study showed that a majority of students at Cal State LA are Los Angeles Dodger fans our results showed that over 60% of the respondents stating so when asked who their favorite MLB team is with the second closest being the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at 17.14%. This is no surprise to us with these two teams being the closest to our campus in Los Angeles area out of 30 teams that are in Major League Baseball. These two teams can capitalize on this opportunity by increasing their presence on campus and publicizing their special offers and events on social media as well as on specific sites on campus. Despite living extremely close to Dodgers stadium and also being fans of the team, 29 out of the 61 respondents have never been to a Dodger game which shows their current lack of interest in going to games for the team they claim to be fans of. Most of the reasons that people did not want to go to games was that they could not afford tickets. This means that they are finding other ways to keep up with the team such as watching it on TV or using social media to keep up to date with the team. The Dodgers are a very successful organization which has gone to the World Series for the past two seasons so it is surprising that students are not willing to go to games and sacrifice their money because they are extremely successful. Even after knowing that they would receive a free Cal State LA hat 63% of students were unsure if they would go to the Dodger game which shows that the free hat is not enough of an incentive for them to go to games. On top of the fact of an unwillingness from the Cal state students to attend to Dodger game, students were also unaware of any special ticket deals that the Dodgers held. 80.95% of students were unaware that the Dodgers had ticket deals for students. The Dodgers have missed opportunities in selling tickets to students. Deals or promotions can entice the target students. Knowing this the Dodgers can advertise their discounted tickets more to get students to come out to more games and create new lifelong fans who can pass their fandom to the generations after them.

The results showed that the students were more aware of the LAFC opposed to the Dodgers Cal State LA night. The students were about even on having heard about the LAFC presence in campus despite having only 6.35% of them who watch Major League Soccer games and 65.08% of them never had watched a game as well as 63.49% of students having little knowledge of their presence on campus. Despite the fact that LAFC team has a facility near campus they are clearly not taking advantage of this opportunity to introduce students to the sport as well as get them to be familiar with their team. Currently students do not go to the LAFC games with the maximum games attended being 3 games. Students are also unaware of any soccer leagues 67.19% of respondents stated that they did not know of any of the leagues listed in the questionnaire. Targeted of awareness is needed to improve students attendance to both teams. The Dodgers problem seems to be the same as the LAFC team. Cal State students are aware and love the Dodger team but are unwilling to go because of price. If the organization wants to get more college students at their games, they need to do a better job at promoting their special events to campuses. Also, they should have campuses promote their special ticket offers for students a bit more since prices seem to be the main issue with lack of attendance. Frequent sale promotions will make Dodger accessible to more students to attend more games. On the other hand, the results show that students are just unaware of what's going on with these two sports programs in campus. Lack of promoting their special events in campus seems to be the main problem. Our study showed that a majority of Cal State students are unaware of special events to the campus from the Dodger team and the LAFC team.

Conclusion & Recommendations

(1 page)

The responses from the survey showed that Cal State LA students are in fact, not aware of the Dodgers and LAFC’s presence on campus, Nor are they aware of the promotions that these two organizations have to offer. This satisfies our research objective, which was to find out how exposed students at Cal State LA were to the Dodgers and the LAFC.

The first action that the Dodgers and LAFC should implement as a result of these findings is to market on platforms that Cal State students use. A way to figure out what platforms they use is to create a survey and send them out for students to take. Once the top platform is identified they could use their resources to promote themselves efficiently. Another issue is how Cal State LA students value these games. Relating back to the survey, a sufficient amount of Cal State LA students said that they would attend if the tickets were cheaper. So this showed adequate comprehension of how students perceive the costs outweighing the benefits. According to our research done, It’s recommended that the dodgers either enhance their value in the eyes of Cal State LA students or they lower the costs of their ticket. so it encourages students to come out to their games. considering that not all Cal State LA students have a job to be able to purchase a ticket. Another thing the Dodgers can do is make their presence known on campus as well as highlight the events when they have giveaways to the students and maybe look at different giveaways then hats because students seemed uninterested in the hats. In the case  for the LAFC their advantage is that one of their faculty training centers are situated on campus. This showed that half of the students that took the survey were actually familiar with them, even though participants chose Dodgers as their favorite baseball team and said they did not watch MLS soccer at all, students were more aware of LAFC being on campus than Cal State LA Dodgers night. When correlating to the awareness of students, this represents how strong of an impact a physical presence can have. Lack of promoting their special events in campus seems to be the main problem along with prices. We have a concern about the lack of awareness of the Dodgers amongst its target, we advise implementing to lower the cost of their tickets, to have physical presence in campus and to have a better advertisements systems.

References/Exhibits/Appendices

(As many pages as needed)

Below is a copy of the actual questionnaire that was released to Cal State LA students to answer. In which the surveys were taken place online.

Instructions:

Hello Fellow CSULA Students!

My group and I are currently taking a Marketing Research class (MKT 4460) and we are doing a report on how aware students are about the resources that are provided to them, this one resource, in particular, is of the Cal State LA Dodgers’ Night and of the LAFC. We are trying to get a response on student preferences for the project that we're working on together with the CSULA Campus.

1. How old are you?
2. What is your gender? (Female/Male)
3. what city do you live in?(LA, LB, Pasadena, Riverside, Etc)
4. about how many miles away from Dodger Stadium is the city you live in? (0-9,10-19,20-29,30+)
5. Who is your favorite baseball team? (LA Dodger, Boston Red Sox, Etc)
6. About how many Dodger games do you attend per year?(0,1,2,3,etc)
7. On a scale from 1 to 5, how aware are you of Cal State LA night at Dodger Stadium?
8. What would get you to attend more Dodger games?
9. When attending Cal State LA night you receive a free Cal State LA edition Dodger hat and The Dodgers also donate some of the proceeds from the tickets sold that night to the school. Knowing this information, would you be more interested in attending Cal State LA night? (Definitely yes/ Probably yes/ might or might not/ probably not/ definitely not )
10. Do you know about special ticket offers to Dodger games through Cal State LA? ( Yes / No )
11. Have you heard about LAFC? (Yes / No )
12. Do you watch MLS soccer? (Yes / No , sometimes, rarely)
13. About how many LAFC games do you attend per year?
14. On a scale from 1 to 5, how aware are you of the LAFC at Cal State LA?
15. Which Leagues are you aware of? (English Premier/ Serie A/ La Liga/ Bundesliga/ MLS)
16. Who is your favorite soccer team?
17. How do you feel about the LAFC presence at Cal State LA?
18. About how many miles away from Banc of California Stadium (LAFC home field) is the city you live in?

Below, We have the responses for each question.