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Southern California Contractors Association |
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SCCA Magazine |
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The Southern California Contractors Association recently completed its first-ever scientific readership study in an attempt to gain insight into the needs and preferences of our members. Specific objectives: · To determine the level of importance to respondents that a publication cover certain issues. · The current level of usefulness of articles on those issues to improve our editorial content. · To gauge respondent readership and usage of SCCA Magazine and four other local construction publications—Cal Contractor (CC); California Builder & Engineer (CB&E); California Construction (formerly known as California Construction Link) (CCL) and the Engineering Contractors Association Magazine (ECA). · To establish the most important publication among readers, to assist our advertising sales efforts to increase funding for and improvement of the magazine and directory.
Results: Frankly, we were surprised by the strength of the support the magazine receives from its readers. We knew that we had made improvements in the mechanics of the publication and in its editorial content but the study revealed a great deal more. The first question was if they received the publications personally address to them—a key to actual readership because magazines that are not personally addressed tend to be tossed. SCCA was the leader at 85%, followed by CB&E at 46%; ECA at 39%; CCL at 29% and CC 21%. Then we asked about readership, in terms of the last three issues. Figure 1
We found that while with certain publications people answered “Never” over 50% of the time, with the SCCA Magazine 80% read every issue and 15% read two out of three issues. No respondent reported that they never read our book. We asked “How important is it to you that a publication focuses on the following topics, and have ranked the topics in order of importance as follows in Figure 2:
Figure 2
It should be noted that since many of the
readers measured in this study are members of associations, the question
regarding association information ranked far higher than it does in similar
studies of the industry as a whole. Research in the field indicates that
roughly 20% of contractors belong to any association (and they do more than
80% of all construction work performed in a given market.)
We asked “How useful is the information that you are currently receiving on the following topics?”
Figure 3
We then asked, “Which ONE publication in your opinion does the BEST job of covering the following topics?” (See Figure 4) We were considered doing the best job in almost every category—although it appears we need to do a better job of covering association information!
We asked the respondents to rate the publications from Excellent to Poor and we are happy to report that 59% felt the SCCA Magazine “Excellent,” 30% rated it as “Good,” 12% said it is “Fair” and, fortunately, for us (and CB&E) none said it was “Poor.”
Figure 5
In the area of web site usage, 77% of those who responded had visited our site, but just over half of the people who responded to the survey answered this question. The question of publication web sites in the construction industry remains an open question. However, the SCCA site (http://www.sccaweb.org) received 85, 864 individual visits during during the past twelve months, generating 1.2 million hits as these visitors combed through the site for more information!
Finally, we were stunned by the response to the question “Which of these publications is the most important publication you read to gather information you need to do your job?”
Figure 6
A note about our methodology The recipients were mailed a four-page questionnaire. The survey was conducted as a blind study to keep from prejudicing the response as to the recipient of the study. We offered eligibility to enter a drawing to win a digital camera as an incentive to those who responded. We received a 12.2% rate of response, which is a good return for these kinds of studies.
We hope to continue to improve the SCCA Magazine, Directory and web site for the use and enjoyment of our members and the 3,500 other union contractors who receive the publication. A key ingredient to improvement is feedback from our readers that this study provided. We are always open to suggestions for improvement and welcome additional feedback on this report as well.
Respectfully submitted, SCCA Magazine
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Copyright
©2007 Southern California Contractors Association |
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