Softsurv
03-04-2009, 04:02 PM
Hey everybody,
I'm working on my marketing degree at Portland State University, and for one of my class I need to create a survey and interpret the results. Since I love rhythm games and public relations, I created a simple survey around how well companies are communicating with their customers.
The survey is really simple and takes about 15 minutes (at most), and is confidential. There is no identifying questions on the survey (the most I ask about you is what consoles you own and what age group you are in).
Please give me a little bit of your time and complete the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6vZXbL0FiF5THH6xooiCig_3d_3d
Thanks!
==Results for those of you who are interested==
So, I got though all 109 responses and found some things that I thought were interesting.
First of all, I should say that you generally should have more than 120 respondents to get a good approximation of the general populace, but given the time constraints I didn't expect to get a truly random sample (for instance, it was posted and completed in a few days, so there wouldn't likely be a correct number of people who log on once a month... unless all light users logged on the exact same day.... which would be awesome). But at the same time, in business school, we're taught the 70/30 rule which means that 70% of your sales will come from the core 30% of your customers, and I believe that you forum users count as the core users. You guys talk about it all the time, so it was good enough for me. The survey was also posted on these forums and the GH forums, so I wasn't expecting a lot of "I don't play these games" responses.
So, the result stuff:
Of the 109 people who responded:
63.3% own a Wii, followed by 59.6% XBox 360, and 53.2% for PS2. Also, statistically, there is a correlation between people who prefer Rock Band over GH:WT and those who own 360's. Although I didn't answer the survey, I like to imagine that it's because RB was one of the reasons they got a 360... because that's why I did.
38% of people who answered wrote in the Gamecube as a console they own. Because Cubers love it, I guess.
100% of you play music games. Shocker.
84.4% of respondents play Rock Band, followed by 77.1% who play pre-world tour Guitar Hero, and 56.9% who play World Tour. 12 people wrote in Rock Band 2 (I should have mentioned that I consider 1 and 2 part of a platform and was counting them both the same, sorry), and 8 people wrote in DDR. 1 person wrote in the name of every rhythm game I've ever heard of, a few I haven't, and then added etc, because... I guess to make me look them up. There are a lot of rhythm games out there, so thanks guy!
66.1% of survey-takers prefer Rock Band. Also, one person doesn't play either of the options (RB and GHWT). I was scratchalachin my head on that one.
The majority of Rock Banders talk about the game (62.9%), music (57.1%) and make gameplay suggestions (35.7%). 58.6% of you are lurkers lurking. Also, only one of you self-promote on these forums. Whoever you are, I want to hear your band now. I will send you some of my music too. It will be a fun trade.
Now for some of the bitter rival comparison stuff:
72.9% of you get your info about upcoming HMX stuff right here on the forums. One person wrote in about how awesome it is to be a mod (braggart), and one person sent me to 1-900-HOT-RB-MODS. I called, it was restricted. That's compared to 71.4% of Guitar Heroites who get their info from their forums. One thing that's interesting, though, a higher percentage of GHers also get their information from external websites like kotaku (60% of them, actually), where only 38.6% of RB users do. External websites were the second choice for both RB and GH guys.
82.9% of Rock Bandits (I like that one!) feel that HMX does a good job of letting people know about upcoming releases. 88.6% of Guitar Heroes feel that Neversoft does a good job in the same department. I have no color commentary here.
Tied at 34.3% in both categories, Rock Band lovers have either never posted about a problem they have or requested a song -or- have just requested songs for the game. 25.4 percent of you said you had a problem and it was addressed by a HMX member or mod, and the last 6% felt that their problem was never addressed. On the Guitar Hero side, they also had a tie in first, with 28.1% saying that they had never posted about songs or problems -or- that they did have a problem and they were never helped by a NVS member or mod. A second place tie at 21.9% says that they have had a problem and it was handled, or they've only requested songs.
When asked to rate HMX on helping them with their problems, Rock Band...ites gave a resounding "We only request songs on the forums," but second was an excellent/5 rating (19%), 12.1 gave a 4, 10.3 gave a 3, and 2 and 1 ratings got 1.7% of the vote. Guitar Heroines (no disrespect to them, just thinking of new things to call them) were a bit more scattered. Like RB dudes, the majority of them request songs, but of the people who did have a problem, 23.3% of people gave Neversoft a 4, 16.7 gave them a 1 (ouch), 3 and 5 both got 6.7% and 2 received 3.3%. I honestly wasn't expecting that one.
Almost finally, you guys rated HMX an average of 3.82 in how well they listen to you when it comes to suggestions and songs, a little over half of which were 4/above average's and 5/excellently's (36.7% and 28.3% respectively). Neversoft received a 3.07, 50% of votes were 3/average.
The last question was about age. A quick aside, I'm 26 and for some reason I thought that would mean that I'd see that RB appealed more to older gamers than kids, which I figured GH would have nailed down. A clear case of making an assouttauandme, I was way off. The majority of players for both games are under the age of 18 (35.3% for Rock Band, 41.9% for GHWT). After the initial shock of "I'm playing a kid's game" wore off, I noticed the curve of ages is far more gradual for Rock Banditonians than for Guitar Heroatins. The RB audience slowly tapers off (32.4 aged 18-25, 25.0 for 26-35, 7.4 for 36-50 and no one who is over 50 answered the survey) while GH users drop quickly and spike in the 36-50 bracket (25.8, 19.4 and 12.9 percents respectively, with no one over 50 again.
I ran a T-test on the game preference and age expecting to find a statistical difference in means (meaning that one age group would appeal more to one game than another), but there was no statistical evidence that one game appealed more to a certain age group. While I still disagree with this (mostly because I don't want to think of myself as an old dude playing with toys), the responses didn't agree with me.
The second test that I wanted to run was to see if there was a correlation between what people played and how well they felt that company was listening to them (mostly because as I lurk on these forums, sometimes it seems that there are nothing but complaints amirite). I was hoping to statistically prove that the audience of one game was more satisfied to the degree that they're heard than another game. Unfortunately, I compiled the data in such a way that SPSS couldn't analyze it how I wanted it to. The deadline for my paper came up, so I haven't gotten to it. I hope to recompile it so that I can run the test, just for my own curiosity's sake, but finals are coming up, so I'm not sure that's going to happen.
At any rate, I had a lot of fun creating the survey, and as I'm told happens, when I got done with this one, I started thinking about other questions, like how many players would consider themselves musicians (I do), or how important some issues are to the whole of the forum users (like stars or free songs that aren't mainstream artists), or examine issues that are important to specific genders or user types, but that's probably not going to happen unless people wanted me to do them.
Finally, I want to thank you guys for helping me out. I didn't think I would get enough responses to satisfy my professor's limit in something that I'm genuinely interested in (he wanted me to make it school oriented so I could hand out paper surveys to his classes). Your responses were enlightening and made me smile (I'm looking at you, "Mr. I Use the Forums to... Breakdance. Naked.").
So, thanks. You guys are awesome.
.soft
I'm working on my marketing degree at Portland State University, and for one of my class I need to create a survey and interpret the results. Since I love rhythm games and public relations, I created a simple survey around how well companies are communicating with their customers.
The survey is really simple and takes about 15 minutes (at most), and is confidential. There is no identifying questions on the survey (the most I ask about you is what consoles you own and what age group you are in).
Please give me a little bit of your time and complete the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6vZXbL0FiF5THH6xooiCig_3d_3d
Thanks!
==Results for those of you who are interested==
So, I got though all 109 responses and found some things that I thought were interesting.
First of all, I should say that you generally should have more than 120 respondents to get a good approximation of the general populace, but given the time constraints I didn't expect to get a truly random sample (for instance, it was posted and completed in a few days, so there wouldn't likely be a correct number of people who log on once a month... unless all light users logged on the exact same day.... which would be awesome). But at the same time, in business school, we're taught the 70/30 rule which means that 70% of your sales will come from the core 30% of your customers, and I believe that you forum users count as the core users. You guys talk about it all the time, so it was good enough for me. The survey was also posted on these forums and the GH forums, so I wasn't expecting a lot of "I don't play these games" responses.
So, the result stuff:
Of the 109 people who responded:
63.3% own a Wii, followed by 59.6% XBox 360, and 53.2% for PS2. Also, statistically, there is a correlation between people who prefer Rock Band over GH:WT and those who own 360's. Although I didn't answer the survey, I like to imagine that it's because RB was one of the reasons they got a 360... because that's why I did.
38% of people who answered wrote in the Gamecube as a console they own. Because Cubers love it, I guess.
100% of you play music games. Shocker.
84.4% of respondents play Rock Band, followed by 77.1% who play pre-world tour Guitar Hero, and 56.9% who play World Tour. 12 people wrote in Rock Band 2 (I should have mentioned that I consider 1 and 2 part of a platform and was counting them both the same, sorry), and 8 people wrote in DDR. 1 person wrote in the name of every rhythm game I've ever heard of, a few I haven't, and then added etc, because... I guess to make me look them up. There are a lot of rhythm games out there, so thanks guy!
66.1% of survey-takers prefer Rock Band. Also, one person doesn't play either of the options (RB and GHWT). I was scratchalachin my head on that one.
The majority of Rock Banders talk about the game (62.9%), music (57.1%) and make gameplay suggestions (35.7%). 58.6% of you are lurkers lurking. Also, only one of you self-promote on these forums. Whoever you are, I want to hear your band now. I will send you some of my music too. It will be a fun trade.
Now for some of the bitter rival comparison stuff:
72.9% of you get your info about upcoming HMX stuff right here on the forums. One person wrote in about how awesome it is to be a mod (braggart), and one person sent me to 1-900-HOT-RB-MODS. I called, it was restricted. That's compared to 71.4% of Guitar Heroites who get their info from their forums. One thing that's interesting, though, a higher percentage of GHers also get their information from external websites like kotaku (60% of them, actually), where only 38.6% of RB users do. External websites were the second choice for both RB and GH guys.
82.9% of Rock Bandits (I like that one!) feel that HMX does a good job of letting people know about upcoming releases. 88.6% of Guitar Heroes feel that Neversoft does a good job in the same department. I have no color commentary here.
Tied at 34.3% in both categories, Rock Band lovers have either never posted about a problem they have or requested a song -or- have just requested songs for the game. 25.4 percent of you said you had a problem and it was addressed by a HMX member or mod, and the last 6% felt that their problem was never addressed. On the Guitar Hero side, they also had a tie in first, with 28.1% saying that they had never posted about songs or problems -or- that they did have a problem and they were never helped by a NVS member or mod. A second place tie at 21.9% says that they have had a problem and it was handled, or they've only requested songs.
When asked to rate HMX on helping them with their problems, Rock Band...ites gave a resounding "We only request songs on the forums," but second was an excellent/5 rating (19%), 12.1 gave a 4, 10.3 gave a 3, and 2 and 1 ratings got 1.7% of the vote. Guitar Heroines (no disrespect to them, just thinking of new things to call them) were a bit more scattered. Like RB dudes, the majority of them request songs, but of the people who did have a problem, 23.3% of people gave Neversoft a 4, 16.7 gave them a 1 (ouch), 3 and 5 both got 6.7% and 2 received 3.3%. I honestly wasn't expecting that one.
Almost finally, you guys rated HMX an average of 3.82 in how well they listen to you when it comes to suggestions and songs, a little over half of which were 4/above average's and 5/excellently's (36.7% and 28.3% respectively). Neversoft received a 3.07, 50% of votes were 3/average.
The last question was about age. A quick aside, I'm 26 and for some reason I thought that would mean that I'd see that RB appealed more to older gamers than kids, which I figured GH would have nailed down. A clear case of making an assouttauandme, I was way off. The majority of players for both games are under the age of 18 (35.3% for Rock Band, 41.9% for GHWT). After the initial shock of "I'm playing a kid's game" wore off, I noticed the curve of ages is far more gradual for Rock Banditonians than for Guitar Heroatins. The RB audience slowly tapers off (32.4 aged 18-25, 25.0 for 26-35, 7.4 for 36-50 and no one who is over 50 answered the survey) while GH users drop quickly and spike in the 36-50 bracket (25.8, 19.4 and 12.9 percents respectively, with no one over 50 again.
I ran a T-test on the game preference and age expecting to find a statistical difference in means (meaning that one age group would appeal more to one game than another), but there was no statistical evidence that one game appealed more to a certain age group. While I still disagree with this (mostly because I don't want to think of myself as an old dude playing with toys), the responses didn't agree with me.
The second test that I wanted to run was to see if there was a correlation between what people played and how well they felt that company was listening to them (mostly because as I lurk on these forums, sometimes it seems that there are nothing but complaints amirite). I was hoping to statistically prove that the audience of one game was more satisfied to the degree that they're heard than another game. Unfortunately, I compiled the data in such a way that SPSS couldn't analyze it how I wanted it to. The deadline for my paper came up, so I haven't gotten to it. I hope to recompile it so that I can run the test, just for my own curiosity's sake, but finals are coming up, so I'm not sure that's going to happen.
At any rate, I had a lot of fun creating the survey, and as I'm told happens, when I got done with this one, I started thinking about other questions, like how many players would consider themselves musicians (I do), or how important some issues are to the whole of the forum users (like stars or free songs that aren't mainstream artists), or examine issues that are important to specific genders or user types, but that's probably not going to happen unless people wanted me to do them.
Finally, I want to thank you guys for helping me out. I didn't think I would get enough responses to satisfy my professor's limit in something that I'm genuinely interested in (he wanted me to make it school oriented so I could hand out paper surveys to his classes). Your responses were enlightening and made me smile (I'm looking at you, "Mr. I Use the Forums to... Breakdance. Naked.").
So, thanks. You guys are awesome.
.soft
