The Golf Experience - YOUR Way! Survey

[Richard_Mandell]

Last year's opening discussion at the Symposium on Affordable Golf was a group discussion entitled, "What is Affordable?"  This year, our opening discussion is entitled, "Affordable Golf Survey Results: “Needs, Wants & Desires”.  In order to actually have an effective discussion, we needed an actual survey.  So we created one and I would love it if everyone would take it and share your opinions to questions we thought may be applicable to the golf experience.  Don't approach it with affordable golf in mind, just take it with your own opinions in mind because the choices run the gamut from low to high (so to speak).

The results will reveal something about the golf experience, we just don't know what.

Here is the link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22D2RC24H84

Also, if you intend to attend the symposium, please go to http://www.symposiumonaffordablegolf.com/default.htm and sign up ASAP.

Thanks,

Richard Mandell

[Joe Stansell]

Okay, I've taken the challenge and completed your survey but found myself disappointed that I didn't have a choice of, "it detracts from the golf experience." For example, water fountains in ponds detract, in my mind. As do cart paths, typically, no matter the surface materials used.

[David Harshbarger]

On some of the questions, the meaning of 1-5 doesn't make sense.  Instead of minimum need to luxury, maybe use care a lot to don't care.

[Richard_Mandell]

Joe (and everyone else):  Any comments where you want to hammer fountains or have other constructive criticisms about the golf experience should be made at the comments page at the end of the survey.

David (and everyone else):  Feel free to replace the words on the scale from 'luxury to need' wth other ones that may seem more applicable for that particular question (such as 'care to don't care').  In the end, we know what you mean.

thanks,

[Jason Topp]

I did not understand the question about green speeds that limit contours.  I put 0 because I was not quite sure what that meant.

[Peter Sayegh]

Just took the quiz. Did not use comment box at end but the only question that I had a problem with was pace of play. I EXPECT 5 1/2 hour rounds-HOPE for 4 hours.

[Garland Bayley]

Okay, I've taken the challenge and completed your survey but found myself disappointed that I didn't have a choice of, "it detracts from the golf experience." For example, water fountains in ponds detract, in my mind. As do cart paths, typically, no matter the surface materials used.

+1

Where were the locations to vote get rid of this nonsense? A majority of the items were not a luxury, they were a nuisance.

[Garland Bayley]

Joe (and everyone else):  Any comments where you want to hammer fountains or have other constructive criticisms about the golf experience should be made at the comments page at the end of the survey.
...

Oh, come on. You can't expect us to rewrite the entire survey for you.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Richard,

Pretty well laid out survey. Seemed a lot easier to take than some on here think.

[Kalen Braley]

Jim,

Well agreed, it was pretty simple to take.

The only thing I would have changed is the selection criteria to range from "very desirable" (5) to " very undesirable" (1).  I too wasn't sure how to answer questions like perfect conditioning, very fast green speeds, or water fountains. I didn't feel they are a "luxury item" and also didn't think they were "irrelevant".  To me they are undesirable.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Kalen,
It's not a perfect survey, but there never can be a perfect survey.

This one asks for personal opinions, not what's good or bad for golf on the whole. Therefore, water fountains and bag attendants in the parking lot are' irrelevant' for me, perfect conditions and very fast greens are easily a 'luxury', and I somewhat 'need' interesting architecture.



 

   

[Kalen Braley]

Kalen,
It's not a perfect survey, but there never can be a perfect survey.

This one asks for personal opinions, not what's good or bad for golf on the whole. Therefore, water fountains and bag attendants in the parking lot are' irrelevant' for me, perfect conditions and very fast greens are easily a 'luxury', and I somewhat 'need' interesting architecture.

Jim,

This is true.  I was simply stating my opinion that by using "very desired, vs very undesired" information can be more accurately captured about how one feels for something.

[John Kavanaugh]

This survey is nothing more than a way for consultants and club managers to justify to an owner that he needs to fire his head pro or raise your dues.  I answered the first ten questions and was bored to death.  People who enjoy to rest their head in the lap of luxury do not fill out internet surveys.  This method is skewed towards the bitter and uniformed casual consumer.

I'm sure that if people like Kalen could get a 5% reduction in fees, or the services of a certified PGA professional he and his kind would cut the coupon.

I am suddenly a value whore myself.  I felt like getting a new driver for my trip and rather than go out to the club to order one I went on line yesterday morning and my wife says it was just delivered to my home today.  I don't really need a guy who is too busy to play golf tell me what I want or works best for my game.  For the first time in my life I do not have in play a single club that I bought from a club where I am a member.  I bet I can get a deal on a used belly putter at Dismal, so things may change.

[Peter Pallotta]

JK - not to judge but just to say: I imagined you'd be the last person on earth to order a club on line instead of buying it at your local pro shop.  Especially with the coup you scored in joining DR at just the right time, I'd have thought you could resist the temptation to become a value whore for many years to come.  But that's just me asking YOU to do something I'M not doing myself, i.e. to keep the faith. That's okay.

Peter

[John Kavanaugh]

JK - not to judge but just to say: I imagined you'd be the last person on earth to order a club on line instead of buying it at your local pro shop.  Especially with the coup you scored in joining DR at just the right time, I'd have thought you could resist the temptation to become a value whore for many years to come.  But that's just me asking YOU to do something I'M not doing myself, i.e. to keep the faith. That's okay.

Peter

I am but the fifth hole on the landscape of humanity.  I first sinned when I fell in love with Scratch Golf, they are a custom shop where buying from my local pro is not possible.  Then my wife bought me a Mackenzie bag for Christmas, again no local pro availability.  The final gop of lube on the slippery slope of value whoredom came in the form of pro shop casino comps at French Lick.  Free golf clubs for gambling, ouch.  I'm a sinner, always have been, always will be. 

Please note:  Value whoredom can be a dependence on the value of time as well as money.  Scratch and Mackenzie ain't cheap.

[Carl Johnson]

I've taken the survey as best I could, but as others have indicated, the standard answer form of 5 to 0 for each question does not work in all cases.  For a survey to be worth much, you've got to have relevant answer choices for each question.

[Lloyd_Cole]

I had to give up on the survey when it asked me to rate the quality of greens based upon their colour. Sorry, I tried.

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

I completed the survey and it was ok IMO. Our company conducts these types of surveys every year with the employees (and we have 154 questions in our survey), so I guess I am a bit more accepting of it's faults. Sure, they don't have all the questions you'd like them to have, and sometimes you feel you're forced to answer a certain way, but consider it a work in progress. It can only get better.

[Richard_Mandell]

Thanks for everyone's passionate opinions on the survey. Regarding the rating system of irrelevant to luxury, we tried all sorts of different terms to best cover all the questions and came to the conclusion that most people could get the feel for what we were trying to get at regardless of the actual words we chose - you ether want it or you dont, you either think it is irrelevant or important, you think it is helpful or useless or you think it is desirable or undesirable.

Trust me, the last thing I want is for some of you to re-write this survey.  I think if most people stop looking at the survey with such a critical eye and just answer the questions for what they are while taking some license to interpret things where it may be helpful, then maybe the results can help some people to see that many luxuries are undesirables for the average golfer and that maybe people wouldn't waste energy on such things that are overly expensive to build, maintain, or operate.

The survey is actually skewed toward people who want to realistically look at the questions and give basic opinions on their own golf experience in an effort to make strides regarding the golf industry - in one direction (or another), without asking someone for essay question answers 19 times.

[Tim Bert]

Richard, I appreciate what you are trying to accomplish with this survey, but I really think it missed the mark.  You can harp on people being overly-critical about the survey but at the end of the day there are several places where the questions don't fit the response options.  You can suggest that those taking the survey need to be more imaginative in their understanding of how to fit their answers into your provided options for a response, but what will likely result is a situation where you've got multiple people providing the same response yet intending two different things. 

As you start on the left of the scale, need is pretty obvious.  But as you move to the right of the scale, you are going to be blurring two different types of responses on many of these issues.  First you'll have the people that view something as not a necessity but something that would be really good to have (taking luxury in a literal sense).  To these people responding luxury might be a very good thing in this category.  Second you will have some people that view the category as a negative or a detractor but have nowhere to put it other than luxury as you've defined the survey here.  I think you are grouping two very different types of responses. 

In fact there were several categories where I found myself choosing luxury for two very different reasons throughout the survey.   

I don't think essay questions were the way to go, but a better thought out set of responses would have gone a long way.  You can lecture the audience about how they are missing the point, but if that many of the people in the audience are missing the intended point then perhaps it is the speaker.

Hope I don't come off as overly critical here.  Just trying to provide some constructive feedback.  When I finished the survey my thought was that my answers were so all over the board in certain spots that my responses would be pretty useless.  It sounds like some others share this opinion and I'm concerned how it might skew the usefulness of the data you are collecting.

[Carl Rogers]

I took the survey.

I am a building Architect.  Inevitably, persons in my field get in involved in building occupant satisfaction surveys.  They are hard to do.  The survey creator must realistically confront their own agenda(s), yes we all have them.

Is this effort trying to ask the basic question:
-What is the golf consumer willing to pay for? or pay up for?

Last Februray, I had the unique and once in a lifetime experience of Bandon.  I have now become a very schizofprentic golf consumer.  If I am paying up, I want a life changing experience.  Otherwise I would like a good walking course, reasonable pace of play, practice range w/ grass, holes that have some options - but not excessively penal and a reasonable price without the irrelevant.

[Richard_Mandell]

Tim:

I do appreciate your feedback and understand exactly what you are referring to as we came across that same conundrum in developing the survey.  We may have erred in the spirit of consistency with our ratings explanation and in the future will be more flexible from question to question.  Your comments are not being overly critical at all. 

At the end of the day, hopefully most people understand what we are trying to figure out.

Carl, you are correct.  We would like to know what the consumer is willing to pay for (or up for).  In other words, do golfers think that a particular item is a Need (acknowledges that it is something he/she will always pay for, and gladly), Want (wouldn't mind having it and as a result, wouldn't mind paying extra for it), or a Luxury. We also want the operator, developer, architect, greens chairman, etc. to determine whether their efforts may or may not be worth the dollars those efforts require based on what the golfer thinks.

Luxury is where we really struggled with the survey but came to this conclusion in its development:  Some people would see that a certain item was a luxury and classify it as such and others would see that same item as an abosulute need and classify it as such.  For example, when confronted with the question of putting surface color:  Some would say that they think a perfect shade of vibrant green (think Augusta National) is a luxury and not required for them to enjoy their golf experience.  Others may say it is a need for them to enjoy their golf experience.  At the end of the day, if more people say that they believe that the perfect shade of green is unnecessary to the enjoyment of the golf experience, then maybe someone somewhere would decide not to make it a requisite of their maintenance regimen and as a result, save a few dollars of expense (and hopefully pass that savings on to the consumer). 

On the flip side, if most people felt that green perfection was an absolute need, then that would be a sign that maybe golf in many places isn't intended to be affordable.  I am not sure what to take from that. The information we glean from this survey may reveal many things that we can build on if we are looking at costs, or may reveal nothing and it tells us nothing.  The all-encompassing topic of whether golf can or should be affordable, and for whom, leaves much interpretation for many different people. If we don't ever at least attempt to think about it, then that would be a disappointment.

The bottom line is that this whole effort (including the Symposium itself) isn't intended to be "one answer for all".  it is intended to provide a different perspective for those who want that information and to make incremental improvements along the way on a person by person basis.

[RSLivingston_III]

I just took the survey.
Many questions I would give different answers if I knew it was targeted specifically at .. public, or  private,  or resort/destination.

If I were you I would also ask the respondents if they are, or have been private club members.

[Kyle Harris]

Richard:

Your survey needs a response that X will ultimately draw someone AWAY from the golf course.

For example, I generally avoid places where I am over-served or forced to ride/use a service because I know I am paying for services I do not want. This is not "irrelevant" to me, it is VERY relevant to my decision to stay away.

[Carl Rogers]

I assume it is necessary to pay up for the 3.5 hour round-all the time?? or is it??

Is it necessary to pay up for a reasonable practice facility??

probably so.