During their free time, would people rather go out or stay in? Here’s what cultural organizations need to know about the growing “couch contingent” audience.
Organizations tend to believe that other cultural organizations and destinations are their primary forms of competition for visitation. For folks who want to go out in the first place, this is often the case. But what about those folks who would rather not get out of their PJs?
Data suggests that even people who profile as high-propensity visitors are increasingly preferring to stay home as opposed to going out. High-propensity visitors are folks who demonstrate the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate an increased likelihood of visiting a cultural organization – such as a museum, zoo, aquarium, botanic garden, or performing arts entity, for instance. The first requirement for somebody to visit an organization, however, is that they leave the house. Let’s break down some of what we know about the people who do – and don’t – want to do that.
How do people prefer to spend their free time during a week off of work or school?
This data is from IMPACTS and the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study, which consists of now over 106,000 individuals residing in the United States. “HPV” stands for “high-propensity visitor” and is cut for those who would be likely organization attendees. Depending on where your organization is located and if you tend to attract a majority of local audiences or tourists may influence your immediate reactions to the data.
You’ll notice that about half of the US composite market wants to stay in or around their home (‘staycation’ and ‘stay home’ preferences.), but that ‘stay home’ contingent isn’t going to visit you. Or at least, they would prefer not to. And – remember – just because people are traveling doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to visit the museum (or symphony, theater, zoo, aquarium, or another type of cultural organization).
For organizations trying to engage locals – a particularly fickle audience for most cultural organizations regardless of city – this “staycation” number is good to see. The “travel and stay overnight with friends and family” number is also important as it relates to local audiences. Word of mouth endorsements and reviews from trusted resources play a big role in visitation. Engaging local supporters means that there may be a higher likelihood that those friends and family members will bring their visitors to your organization.
For those organizations that depend heavily on local audiences, the nearly 50% of folks that prefer to travel out of the area may be of interest. After all, if they are leaving your market, they aren’t visiting.
For all of us, that “stay home” number isn’t great. Simply put, 24.4% of the US composite would simply prefer to stay home than go out. Yikes!
How do people prefer to spend a free weekend?
But Americans don’t tend to have (or take) tons of vacation time. What about how people prefer to spend their weekend? There’s a little bit of good news here for cultural organizations when it comes to ‘staycation’ preference, but mostly it’s a point for Netflix…
Almost HALF of the US composite prefers to stay home rather than travel or explore their city. Of course, the ‘staycation’ numbers go up, and this is a good thing for many organizations – but those ‘stay home’ numbers are alarming!
For those wondering, “How are high-propensity visitors a part of the couch contingent?! I thought they profile as likely visitors!” They do profile as folks who would be interesting in visiting. They simply prefer the couch. (To be a likely visitor does not mean that the thing that you want to do most is necessarily visit a museum, for instance. And having propensity to visit doesn’t mean that they even will visit – it means that there’s potential to be motivated to visit. Simply, an organization may not have hit the right chord yet.) High-propensity visitors in the ‘stay home’ category are still potential visitors – but they need to be made aware of the opportunity and better motivated to go out in the first place. These individuals may know, for instance, that they’d like to binge watch Stranger Things. They may NOT yet know of what is going on at your organization. High-propensity visitors in this category are a marketing and communications opportunity. (We’ll talk about this more a bit later when we discuss what folks are actually doing when they stay home.)
How has the preference for staying home grown over time?
Has the ‘stay home’ group consistently made up the same percentage of the population in recent years? In other words, how has the percentage of folks who prefer to stay home changed over time? Let’s look at the change for free time preference during a week off of school or work.
It’s increased. In fact, it’s increased quite a bit since 2011! There has been a 17.3% increase in the desire to stay home vs. go out for the US composite! Yes, if given a week of vacation time, there’s been growth in the number of people who don’t want to “go on” vacation! They would rather stay home!
What about the change in people who would rather stay home over the weekend?
Yikes! Those with the preference to stay home over the weekend has grown 19.4% for the US composite since 2011.
There are a couple of reasons for the increased desire to stay home. The first is rather obvious: home is comfortable – and you can be more “connected” to others while staying home than ever before. In the past, it wasn’t as easy to be home and still be social – and chat, text, message, tweet, and snap with others.
The second reason is more compelling: There simply are fewer reasons to change out of your pajamas in the first place. In the past, we had to leave home to do our banking, grocery shopping, visit the pharmacy, go get the movies that we wanted to stay home and watch, and purchase gifts. Today, we can do all of that from home. If the only reason to get out of the house is to go to the science museum, for instance, than the science museum needs to be a more compelling reason to put on pants than it was in the past. People may go out less because there’s less reason to go out – and thus the motivations to leave one’s cozy living room must be more compelling.
What do people do when they stay home? (The good news)
What are these people doing when they stay home?! We asked the folks who reported preferring to stay home what they actually report doing when they stay home. Here are the percentages of respondents who reported doing each of these activities when they last stayed home.
How is this good news, you ask? People who stay home are still connected to the world and thus, visitor-serving organizations can (and should) aim to reach them. Those who prefer to stay home browse the web, watch TV and sporting events, have friends over, host parties… There are still opportunities to reach these audiences via social media, advertisements, and word of mouth endorsements. (Social media and word of mouth endorsements are particularly powerful in motivating visitation).
There’s an opportunity to “reach this market where they are,” as 33.4% of high-propensity visitors profile as having visitation potential over the weekend, but need stronger motivation. While organizations that highlight their missions outperform those marketing primarily as attractions, there’s a critical opportunity to use ad servers to make sure that targeted audience members get compelling place-based messages. Ads to these audience members still need a “so what?” take-away, but entertainment value is the biggest driver of overall satisfaction, and the goal of reaching this, particular behavioral demographic is to let folks know that they need to have this fun, unique experience in person.
The “couch contingent” is growing more and more powerful, and that may strengthen the superpower of cultural organizations as facilitators of shared experiences. We live in a connected world. It may be easy to look at this data and think, “Stay home to watch TV and browse the web?! What is the world coming to?!” However, it’s also important to realize the power of the in-person that exists within this same world. The path forward is not in scoffing at change, but in realizing that it may give our experiences new meaning. Smart organizations can use this information to better target and determine messaging and adapt to our changing world.
