Using market research as preparation for introducing a new service

[Pete_Martin]

Hi Everyone

I was wondering if any repair cafes had utilized any market research tools to help inform them about the viability of a new service or a new repair cafe? I would love to hear if any repair cafes had done localised surveys or questionnaires to gather data before trying out a new venture

Pete

[neil]

Hi @Pete_Martin

I’ve seen a couple of groups running surveys recently to gauge interest in adding support for the end of Windows 10 at their repair cafes - mentioned in this thread:

Surveying community demand?

RIngwood RC is contemplating supporting End of 10 and as part of that consideration I feel we need to get an idea of likely demand from the community … Has anyone developed a community survey to gauge likely local demand for an End of 10 support initiative being tacked onto their repair café? If you have, would you mind sharing the questions posed and an indication of how successful or otherwise the activity proved to be?

It’s a good question - interested to hear about other cases of groups’ experiences of doing research in the community before starting a new activity. Are you thinking of starting a new activity at your repair cafe?

[Gareth_Coleman]

We set our repair services up based on research Sophie Unwin conducted - I think it was a survey in Edinburgh in the mid 2010’s but I can’t find the source now annoyingly.

It identified three strands of most requested repairs: electrical/electronic, furniture and textiles.

However, two aphorisms spring to mind, Henry Ford “If I’d asked what people wanted they would’ve said a faster horse” and a nameless city official said you can’t estimate bridge traffic from the number of people swimming across.

That’s to say because repair isn’t really a thing in the market, market research will only tell you so much.

[Ian_Barnard]

We didn’t do any surveying, just went ahead with the events and learned from what people brought.

IMO the things people need repairing are not so different from the things we ourselves need repairing.

Of course doing a nice visible well-signposted non-arduous (not many questions to answer, all easy) survey at perhaps public/open air events could be a good way of marketing/getting people aware of what you were hoping to start, but IMO it would be best to be prepared when you do the survey with a date and location so you can tell interested people when the first event is, and/or sign them up to a mailing list/fb page.

This also might be a way of finding volunteers

If people do make specific/unusual requests be prepared that they may also not turn up, i.e. don’t rely on them to bring the thing to be repaired.

[Guy]

I’d agree with this sentiment, since repair cafes are free and do more than just serve a “market”, market research that might be conducted to figure out the viability of a paid service isn’t as relevant, in my opinion.

The fact that repair cafes are free services that also serve a community-building function mean the value can be high even if demand for repair isn’t obvious up front. Having volunteer labour also means that the “cost” of piloting a new idea is not much different than conducting a survey.

With that said, I think the demand for this as a free service is huge, I know this because the electronic waste bins in our city are constantly filling up with items despite our regular repair cafes and charity shops are rejecting electrical items because they can’t process them effectively enough (partly a problem of low value items not being worth the time taken to inspect and PAT test).