Whether marketing to a horticulture consumer or educating them, understanding motivations is crucial. In 2023, a nationwide survey of gardening consumers conducted by a regional team of horticulture researchers provided key insights into how backgrounds and experiences impacted motivations of horticulture consumers. Cluster analysis performed on the data provides the ability to group consumers in terms of their interest and spending to enable more tailored education or marketing efforts. This workshop will investigate the key characteristics of those ten groups according to demographics, experience, motivation, and spending and integrate the experience and insight of attendees to best utilize the survey information. The goal of this highly interactive workshop will be to develop representative avatars and actionable outreach and marketing ideas that can be integrated into Extension programming as well as used to equip garden centers and horticultural businesses to be intentional and effective in reaching, educating, and retaining these new consumers. Horticulture professionals with research, Extension, teaching, and/or business focuses are all invited to attend and aid in honing audience descriptions based on current data. This session will set the stage for developing more tools to support Consumer Horticulture outreach and marketing to current and future audiences.
This workshop is grounded in current research findings and will focus on turning findings into tools that can be used by a wide range of ASHS professionals to reach current and future audiences.
Engage a diverse set of Horticulture professionals and define up to 10 core target audiences in today's horticultural market whether that is a retail business, classroom, or other outreach program.
This session will have minimal large-group presentation time. Six team leaders will break the audience into small groups based on interests and lead them through a series of prompts to assign descriptors to different audiences as defined by recent survey data. Participants will aid in coding different types of audience members, report out to the larger group, and group work will be cross-checked to determine key target audiences and best methods of communication with each.
Coordinator(s)- Kristine Lang, South Dakota State University, Agronomy, Horticulture, and Plant Science, Brookings, South Dakota, United States
Moderator(s)- Gerald Burgner, Texas A&M University, United States
- Natalie Bumgarner, University of Tennessee, Plant Sciences, Knoxville, TN, United States
- Sheri Dorn, University of Georgia, United States
- Heather Kirk Ballard, Louisiana State University, United States
- Julie Campbell, University of Georgia, Horticulture, Athens, Georgia, United States
