Research methods
Quantitative UX Study, Surveys​
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Industry
Media
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Role
Lead UX Researcher​
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Year
2023
Discount or zoo day?
I had the pleasure to work with one of the biggest media companies of the Netherlands, that manages close to a 100 newspapers, magazines, and radio stations. This case study explores the willingness of parents to subscribe to a kids' magazine, based on two different welcome gifts. Moreover, we assess the effect of the proposition page layout on decision-making.
Research summary
The client had proposed two different welcome offers for subscriptions to their best-selling children's magazine: A discount, or zoo tickets. They wanted to know which offer was more attractive to potential subscribers. There was a clear winner: 80% of the participants chose a discount. This was strong evidence for the client to focus on discount offerings, and forget about the zoo tickets.
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We also compared two different decision-making flows, and found that there was one design that significantly increased choice satisfaction.
Research question
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A common method way to win over potential subscribers is by offering an attractive welcome gift. But what kind of gift is considered attractive for a children's magazine? My client was considering two options: a discount, or zoo tickets for the family. It was my job to find out which offer would potentially increase magazine subscriptions, and how the subscription flow should be designed.
Who to target?
During the kick-off meeting, the client requested a sample of 40 participants, consisting of parents of children between the age of 7 to 12 years old. I advised them to diversify the sample by including other relatives, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts. Not only did this speed up the recruitment process, it also made the sample more representative. After all, it's not only the parents who can gift a child a magazine subscription.
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I used a screener to select participants that would consider a magazine subscription as a gift.
Study Design
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The client initially asked for a fully quantitative study. I strongly recommended adding qualitative follow-up questions, in order to understand why participants made their decisions. This proved to be a lot more informative.
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We opted for a within-subjects design, meaning that each participant would give their opinion on both prototypes. The reasoning behind this is that we wanted participants to compare the two designs and choose their favourite. And, not unimportant: a between-subject design would have required more participants, and therefore more time and resources that we did not have.
Task example
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“You indicated in your screener that you have one or more children in your family between the age of 7 and 12. Imagine that they like to read [magazine] and therefore you want to gift them a weekly subscription. Go to the website and choose between the two different subscription offers.”
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Question examples
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Why did you choose this offer? Explain your thought process in at least three sentences.
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Why do you prefer Prototype X? Please explain your considerations in at least three sentences.
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An attractive welcome gift would increase the chance that I will take out a subscription (5 point Likert scale)
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Avoiding order effects ​
Each participant was asked to compare two different flows. In any study where multiple products or variations are studied, it is important to consider order effect. Order effect is when participants’ responses in the various conditions are affected by the order of conditions to which they were exposed. In our case, participants' experience of the first prototype will likely affect their experience of the second prototype, because they are already familiar with the offers the second time around.
Therefore, we split the sample into two groups. Group 1 would see Prototype A, and then Prototype B. Group 2 would see the prototypes in the opposite order. This way, we avoid finding effects that are influenced by order.
A
Group 1
B
A
prototype
prototype
Group 2
B
prototype
prototype
Results
A detailed report was created to answer the research questions and sub-questions. Moreover, results were summarized per prototype to give a clear overview of pros and cons of each design.
01
Forget about zoo tickets​
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A whopping 70% of (grand)parents chose a discount over zoo tickets. Not only to save money, but also because they did not want to go to the zoo, specifically.
02
The "Bang for your buck" feeling is impacted by design
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You know that nice feeling of getting yourself a good deal? We found that in this study, that feeling was more related to the flow design, than to the actual choice.
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In prototype B, 79% of the participants felt like they had gotten themselves a good deal, regardless of the offer that they chose. This number was only 48% in prototype A.
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In an ideal world... ​
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01
Before starting this test, I would have created personas. The data we obtained showed that there were differences between parents and grandparents, for example. It would have been interesting to study both groups separately.
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02
In this study, we looked into only one type of welcome gift: zoo tickets. However, we had a lot of feedback saying that people would not want to go to the zoo, specifically. It would be worth exploring if other gift options would be more interesting to the target audience.
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Curious what I can do for your project?