Re: Marketing list action: Market Research for GNOME and GNU/Linux

[Sri Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

I think John's point is how do we find out what people really want.  A
survey to who we know right now would be:

* slashdot crowd
* gnome community
* minor fringe linux users

We really don't have any real outreach that I can tell.  Now, *maybe* we
could get a company like Sun who have deployed JDS to customers to ask
for feedback same with RH, Novell, and Mandrake.  That could be a
tangible short term approach to market research.

But I still think doing the market research is beneficial to the Free
Software and those who derive value from it.

As for the overall goal, thats lacking.  I can write something to debate
over tonight onto the wiki and people can try to figure out what works
best then.  Generally most people start out with a mission statement; a
single unifying sentence that we all rally around and keeps us focused.

sri




On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 02:58 +0200, Claus Schwarm wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 08:09:21 +1300
> "John Williams" <JWilliams business otago ac nz> wrote:
>
> > [snip]
> >
> > We can guess and opine all we want, but what are the facts?  I have
> > *never* seen any "real" [1] market research into:
> >
> > (1) What potential GNOME and GNU/Linux users want
> > or
> > (2) The barriers to free software adoption, split by user segment
> >
> >
> > The FOSS Europe report was the only document that even came close to
> > addressing these issues.  Perhaps I am simply unaware of what has
> > already been done?  I see the need for primary research into these
> > questions.  Am I alone?
> >
> > I can help construct surveys and questionnaires, analyse data etc.
> > However I don't have access to funds to pay for things like printing,
> > postage and data entry.  If there is a need for my services I would
> > love to contribute.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > John.
> >
> > [1] I mean: not based on secondary data, not "expert" opinion, not
> > focus groups or small non-representative or non-random samples.  I
> > suppose I mean large-scale primary research (mail-out self-completion
> > questionnaires, mall intercepts, telephone interviews etc.).
>
> I share your point of view. On the other hand, GNOME's potential market
> (or audience) is worldwide (or at least very large), isn't it?
>
> Thus, some questions arise. For example: What would be a representative
> sample size? How do we define the sample? How do we make sure the sample
> is indeed random?
>
> But the most important question would be: What do we do with the
> results?
>
> I really share your point of view, but it might be worth to consider our
> resources first, and maybe make small steps here.
>
> For example, we all know that network economics protects Microsofts
> position. We all do know that TCO studies in favour for a Microsoft
> solution is due to high training costs. This already hints to potential
> target groups.
>
> I also like to add that I've seen no concrete marketing goal yet.
> Without this, we can't even consider which potential questions might
> be the most interesting.
>
> Thus, I like to suggest we start small: Let's skip the "real" market
> research for a few years. A web-based survey would be sufficient for the
> start. As far as I know there has been no survey at all about user's
> wishes or what makes people don't use Linux or GNOME.
>
> This will give us also the ability to rework the questionaire. A
> web-based software for things like that might be:
>
> http://phpesp.sourceforge.net/ 
> http://phpsurvey.sourceforge.net/
>
> Nevertheless, even a low-quality survey would be great indeed. I'm sorry
> if my position is a little bit too pragmatical.
>
> Claus