Seminar 4 Consumer and Stakeholders

1.    1.   Consumer and Stakeholder

Current Consumer Characteristics

There are many characteristics of the current consumer at the San Diego Zoo. These characteristics range from the age of the consumer to their interests. The people who visit the zoo enjoy viewing and learning about animals and nature. The San Diego Zoo is 100 acres, providing consumers plenty of animal exhibits and plant life throughout the zoo, therefore, many of the consumers are active and able to walk through the zoo. Also, many people who visit the zoo have a membership, which provides consumers with a full year of free unlimited admission to both the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. With so many exhibits and attractions, the consumers of the San Diego Zoo have many different characteristics.

Demographics

The San Diego Zoo has millions of visitors each year and there are many demographics that make up these visitors. The zoo visitors are primarily woman, mainly mothers, with an average age between 25 and 35. The average household income of the visitors to the San Diego Zoo is between $50,000 and $75,000 annually (San Diego Zoo, n.d.). Two out of three adults visits the zoo with a child and the average visit is approximately four hours.

Physiographic

As with consumer characteristics and demographics of the San Diego Zoo, the physiographic aspects of the zoo vary as well. Physiographic includes the personalities, values, and interests of the consumers. The personality types of the consumer consists of caring, energetic, loving, and curious. The zoo has many animal conservation programs to help endangered and rescued animals, and this is an aspect that the consumer values. They like to see that the animals are being helped and endangered animals are being protected. Families enjoy seeing animals up close, and feel better about companies that support wildlife conservation. Consumers are interested in animals, learning about animals and plant life, and seeing animals in proposed natural environment.

d. Stakeholder’s Characteristics

Stakeholders have a number of ways that can define them. According to Brad Egeland, a stake holder has one or more of the following characteristics. A stakeholder is someone who stands to gain or lose through the success or failure of the project, provides funding for the project, has invested resources in the project, participates in (works on) the project, is affected by the outputs of the project, is affected by the outcome of the project, is in the “chain of accountability” (Egeland, 2011).The board of directors have a number of people on the board who are directly involved with the zoo. One role is being responsible for setting policy and maintaining the organization’s role as a leader in conservation and animal care, lead the team devoted to friend-raising and fund-raising efforts to support San Diego Zoo Global’s animal care, conservation and education programs (Zoo, 2015). The San Diego zoo membership offers members special privileges within the zoo and members can even join donor clubs where money that is donated keeps the zoo funded. All these characteristics make these people stakeholders because they participate, provide funding and invested resources, as well as being affect by the outcome of certain projects or donations.

e. Primary

Primary stakeholders are those who have a direct interest in a company. The San Diego Zoo is unique in the fact that it is a non-profit organization, has a 12 person board of trustees and an executive director, as well as has over 250,000 zoological memberships, and 130,000 child memberships. These people as well as the zoo staff are the primary stakeholders. The zoological memberships and children memberships directly tie into the business itself so these people would have a direct interest in the San Diego Zoo.

f. Secondary

Secondary stakeholders are people or groups that are indirectly affected, either positively or negatively, by an effort or the actions of an agency, institution, or organization.  The San Diego Zoo is one of the largest zoos in the world and one of the main tourist attractions for the San Diego area. According to wanderbat.com, about 5,000,000 visitors are attracted to the zoo each year, which is a relatively high number of annual visitors compared to other zoos (Wanderbat, 2015). This high traffic of visitors to the zoo affects the local economy and surrounding businesses. Everywhere in the San Diego area has a stake in how the San Diego Zoo does.  Hotels gain business, restaurants see an increase in diners, the city of San Diego could be vastly different if the San Diego zoo was not located within the city.

 2. Strategic Target Audience

a.Primary target Audience:

The residence of San Diego, since they have such a high population. They are located near the zoo and would be able to get there more often to take advantages of the membership. With the San Diego California areas population at 1,338,348 there are many people that would like to go to the zoo. The age range that we would target are between 33 and 37 years old. According to city-data.com there are 59% of the population in San Diego are families, this means that we need to make sure that we are targeting families in the San Diego area. 

b.  Secondary Primary Audience

The State of California has an estimate population of 38,802,500 according to the quickfact.cenus.org. The median income for the state is $61,094 as of 2009-2013. (quickfacts.cenus.org) with the population being mainly, females and children that would be the target audience for the state. Instead of targeting the families it would be a better opportunity to target women and children. 

References

Egeland, B. (2011, January 30). Defining the Stakeholder - Part 1. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from Project Management Tips: http://pmtips.net/Blog/defining-stakeholder-part-1

Wanderbat. (2015, November 28). San Diego Zoo. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from Wanderbat: http://zoos.wanderbat.com/l/1/San-Diego-Zoo

 San Diego Zoo. (n.d.). Visitor demographics. Retrieved on December 1, 2015, from website: https://www.aza.org/visitor-demographics/

Zoo, S. D. (2015, Novemeber 28). About the oard of directors. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from San   Diego Zoo: http://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/content/key-leaders