Cornwall County Council commissioned JMP to devise and implement a marketing and promotional campaign with a primary aim of encouraging a demonstrable increase in the number of bus passenger trips within a particular segment of the population.
Segmentation of the population into traveler types based on attitudes suggests a number of traveler typologies. At one end of the scale there are committed drivers for whom bus use is not, and never will be, an attractive option. At the other end of the scale are population segments that encompass regular bus users.
The target audience for the current promotional campaign has been identified by Cornwall County Council as the ‘middle 50%’ of society. This refers to those people of working age (16-59) who fall between the segments mentioned above and who could feasibly use buses more often but do not. The first project objective is to understand the attitudes and perceptions of this ‘middle 50%’ with regards to bus travel in Cornwall. To this end the Transport and Psychology team at Bristol has undertaken a series of focus groups across the County with each group being made up of a different subsection of the wider 16-59 group.
This research investigated the main barriers to bus use; identification of possible motivators that would encourage this group to overcome these barriers and increase their bus use; as well as investigating how best to get promotional messages and material to the right people at the right time.
Several themes were identified that act as potential barriers and would need to be addressed if the various subsections of the middle 50% are to be encouraged to increase their bus patronage. Major themes are:
Cost and Duration – perceptions of overall cost, cost calculations and cost comparisons, journey duration (perceived and actual), express and direct routes;
Experience and Information - environment, convenience, independence, freedom, uncertainty and information provision;
Parking and Use – employer provided free parking, use of car for business travel;
Provision and Ticketing – service times, vehicle type (capacity and accessibility), range, complexity, knowledge and availability of ticketing, multi-operator and multi-modal ticketing.
In terms of communicating promotional messages/information the most popular avenue of information dissemination was via employers. It was felt that they are a more credible source than the operators or council and information is likely to be given more attention because of this.
Consideration of the habit discontinuity hypothesis would encourage promotional campaigns to be undertaken in conjunction with a natural and/or unassociated break in normal travel habits brought about by a life event such as learning to drive or having a family. Other examples of habit weakening events discussed in the focus groups included the recent rise in fuel prices and the county council parking scheme which restricts free parking to 4 out of 5 days both of which lead to the consideration of travel at which point more attention is likely to be paid to information regarding alternative options. Lastly the issue of the self-relevancy barrier was raised in that any message has to clearly target drivers/non frequent bus users, in order not to be ignored.
These findings will be included in a scoping report and will then be utilized by the team, which includes a communications specialist, to frame a marketing communications strategy to cover the use of printed material, the web and the media. A programme of activities to implement the strategy will be devised with the final roll out of the campaign due in Spring 2009.
