Survey of the Friends of the NMM

The new Director of the Friends of the National Maritime Museum wanted to know more about the members to inform her business plan.

Alix Slater Consultancy & Training was commissioned to undertake a postal survey of more than 4,000 Friends, of which just over a third replied. The survey found out who the Friends were, where they lived, their motivations for purchasing membership, how they used their membership and what they valued about it.

At the time this research was quite unusual, as very few schemes had clear objectives and there was a lack of data about Friends and their behaviour in the public domain. The insights this major survey revealed remain useful today for benchmarking other studies against - for example, the point after which members are highly unlikely to leave a scheme.

The findings into members' motivations and behaviour were also published in an academic journal.

Visitor Study, Caird Library

The Caird Library & Archive at the National Maritime Museum (NMM) is the most extensive reference library of maritime history in the world.

The Museum wanted to know more about the users of the Caird and E-Libraries to inform their future planning, and invited the consultancy to undertake a visitor study.

The consultancy worked with the Museum team to develop a survey that captured data on how users found out about the library, how frequently and why they used the libraries, what their experience was and how it compared with the others they used.

The outcome of the project was a summary which the Museum team used to inform their future plans for the Library.