Why does the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association feel it's necessary to conduct focus groups on how "consumers feel about plants." According to Garden Center Magazine, "CNLA (Connecticut Nursery & Landscape Association)plans to convene four group sessions in a specially-selected, representative sample of consumers throughout the state, using a professional market-research firm." That professional market-research firm will receive "$35,000 specialty crop block grant from the Connecticut Department of Agriculture and the USDA." Now I assume the money is collected from member companies by the Department of Agriculture via dues or some assessment? Kind of like we we're talking about in my last post.What will we get for $35,000? We will find out, "what consumers really feel about the quality of plants, the state's retail stores, service, price points and reasons why they don't buy plants, among others."
Why do you need to spend $35,000 for information that we have already have. Haven't we focused grouped this stuff enough? Does anyone really feel they will gain some new insight from this? Is this just a way to throw money at a problem? Couldn't this be done really cheap through social media? Just create a questionnaire, send it to garden centers, bloggers, media, etc., and ask for a response. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, and it wouldn't cost $35,000.