Why do we have to do the AFOL survey so often?

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chump
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Why do we have to do the AFOL survey so often?

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Background

It is standard LEGO Group procedure to closely monitor and track developments in the market place. Surveys represent one of the tools whereby we do this. Survey data are part of a much bigger consumer market insights set-up that involves various forms of data, collected via multiple methods. Generally speaking, the insights we generate help us understand the context in which LEGO products are used and the characteristics of LEGO users all over the world. It also allows us to better understand user perceptions, concerns and evaluations of LEGO products and services. Insights like these provide the foundation for decision making about future LEGO assortment and they help identify things we need to pay attention to. Turning to the surveys you participate in and how they make a difference for the LEGO Group in general and CEE more specifically, they first and foremost allow us to understand how you practice the LEGO hobby, how you perceive the AFOL community and how you view your recent experiences with LEGO products and such. Each quarter we carefully analyze and discuss the feedback you provide. We compare and contrast previous results and we discuss and plan how we can best address the changes and developments we observe and how we can best support the AFOL community. This is, among other things, the reason why we repeat survey questions throughout the year – to be able to track developments. The survey results are furthermore used in other studies, such as the LEGO Ecosystem Project that many of you have contributed to. Your survey participation is in other words extremely valuable to our understanding of the LEGO hobby and the AFOL community, and together with other sources of information they directly our impact decision making and resource allocation.

Q&A


1) “Why do these [surveys] have to happen so often”?
The reason the surveys occur every quarter is twofold. First of all, we want to be able to pick up on changes in the way you perceive the hobby and the LEGO products fast and on a regular basis. The CEE and the LEGO Market Insights team have discussed whether we should scale down to two annual surveys. We concluded that it would leave us “in the dark” for too long. There are many adult LEGO builders who are not as active as you and who don’t belong to a LUG or another form of AFOL network. We want to make sure that they get a chance to share their experiences too. Since many of these builders are less active it also means that they have a lesser chance of being exposed to the survey. Consequently, to allow for their participation, we decided to have four annual surveys. Where does it leave the AFOLs who do “not want to continue to fill these out”?

2) Filling out the surveys is of cause completely voluntary. We have absolutely no interest in “forcing” anyone to take the surveys. Kindly think of the surveys as a chance to make your voice heard and a chance to help us better understand what goes on among the adult LEGO builders. We have instigated a one page summary of the survey results that we distribute after each survey. We had hoped that it would help close the loop, so to speak, in a way that could potentially make it more meaningful to participate in the surveys (i.e., you take the survey - you get access to the aggregated results by reading the one pager).

3) To the third comment “How many times do they really need the same data”? I can assure you that the surveys don’t give us the “same data”, or insights if you will. There are fluctuations and there are changes in the way you respond over time.

A few words on how we plan to do the quarterly surveys in 2014. We expect to keep some of the questions we ask today to allow for tracking developments within areas that are of strategic importance to our support and broader LEGO Group activities. But we will also introduce new questions that will help illuminate aspects of the LEGO hobby and the AFOL community. We plan to expand the Q2 survey so that it will cover many aspects of LEGO usage and the hobby. Throughout the year we will keep on sharing the one page survey top line results with you.
Pierre
VLC Ambassador to TLG & VLC Director

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