The aspirations of prospective customers (or other customers: existing ones, lapsed ones, etc.) should be identified through the processes of market and marketing research, which can be either primary or secondary research (or both), qualitative and quantitative, using an inductive or deductive approach (or both).

Customers can be researched and reached using a variety of techniques (depending on time/cost factors and information required) including, telephone, email, direct mail, face-to-face, observation (ethnographic research) and experimentation.

The aim should be to track changes in consumer profiles and attitudes over time. The information gained can be used to demonstrate the value of the heritage product, evidence that is increasingly being called for by all types of stakeholders.

A survey, part of which is usually a questionnaire, should maximize the opportunity (a respondent can usually only be engaged for a maximum of 30 minutes and may need an incentive to respond in the first place, such as a free drink in the caf or an associated gift item) to solicit relevant information for current and future strategic marketing planning.

The questionnaire should be divided up as follows:

• 10 per cent of the questions should be related to the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the respondent, as follows:

  1 gender

  2 age

  3 nationality

  4 ethnicity

  5 education

  6 address or postcode;

• 60 per cent of the questions should be on consumer behaviour. The example below is about a heritage visitor attraction:

  1 Did the visit take place alone or in...