Evaluating The Importance of Various Offerings and Satisfaction With These Offerings

 

A standard aspect of many member surveys is to ask respondents to rate the importance of various benefits and then to indicate their satisfaction with these benefits. Typically a 5-point scale is used for both elements. 

From there it is possible to rank order important benefits and satisfaction with those benefits.  It’s also desirable to create a quadrant upon which importance and satisfaction can be plotted.

We can further our analyses by labeling the quadrants. Items in Quadrant 1 are important to members but their satisfaction is low. Clearly this represents an opportunity for improvement. 

Quadrant 2 represents those benefits that are both important and generate a high level of satisfaction. These are benefits that can be further leveraged.

We label Quadrant 3 as medium to low priority. These are benefits that, although they under-deliver in terms of satisfaction, they are also relatively unimportant to members.

Quadrant 4 represents benefits that should be maintained at current levels. There is a relatively high level of satisfaction yet they are deemed to be somewhat unimportant.

Points to Consider

When you ask about the importance of various offerings it is advantageous to put this into context, for example, important reasons for joining the association in the first place. This will give you a clearer idea of what’s truly important to members.

But keep in mind that the benefits you are looking for when you first joined an association may change over time. For example, networking with your peers may be an important reason for joining initially but overtime your reasons for renewing may evolve into less tangible benefits such as advocacy.

Therefore, it’s important to ask about the primary reason for joining and primary reason for renewing.