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What works in media?
A recent survey of the gardening public found that gardening magazines (97%) are the leading source for gardening inspiration. Coming in second place are television programs (66%), closely followed by open gardens + Botanic gardens (56%) and events + expos (55%). Garden centres scrapped in at 43%, beating garden clubs (34%), talk-back radio (25%) and internet (23%). The lowest ratings came in from newspapers (15%), other magazines (10%) with courses and professional consultants at 7% and 6% respectively. These results were similar to a survey carried out in 2006.
Garden Centre Visitation
The reason gardeners gave as to why they visited their local garden centre was to satisfy their hobby and passion in gardening (78%) and to see what was new (69%) followed by tracking down a plant, product or garden centre they have seen advertised (53%). In terms of seeking gardening advice and information from garden centres, it rated a disappointing 41%. The desire to update the garden with a fresh look generated 28% responses. Poorly rated reasons for going to a garden centre were to see non-gardening products (9%) and to catch up with friends and colleagues (4%).
Why Garden
‘Pleasure and hobby’ were the highest scoring reason why gardeners garden at 97%. Popular reasons to garden were to ‘exercise/meditate’ and to retain some ‘my time’, both of which rated at 59%, whilst the ‘environment’ held fast at 52%. Least on the priority list was ‘property value’ (27%), just below ‘lifestyle’ (33%).
Growing Trends
This survey also identified a growing trend since 2006 of gardeners looking on the internet for information and products, plus an increase in people carrying out an online purchase for gardening related products.
Additional key points of interest that increased from 2006 to 2009 were ‘fruit and vegetables’ and ’native animals’.
Magazine advantage
Magazines were identified as having the valuable ‘sticky factor’ for marketing – 95% respondents indicated that they kept copies of subTropical Gardening magazine as a reference with 30% of surveyed gardeners acknowledging that they share it with friends. The ‘sticky factor’ directly relates to the ‘shelf live’ and effectiveness of the advertising dollar, well above that for radio, TV or other media.
Good News for Garden Centres
On a brighter note, 88.6% of gardeners have bought or inquired about gardening products, plants or books after having seen them featured or advertised in this magazine. Extrapolating this result across all forms of media it shows the importance of branding your business and products to the public.
Additionally, 75% of survey participants bought gardening products within the last one week – 36% spent between $100-$499; 18% spent $500-$999; and 30% less than $100. This survey highlights the importance of keen gardeners spending significant income regularly in the garden industry.
Survey details
It is recognised that this survey is based on readers of the subTropical Gardening magazine and hence a bias may (or may not) exist towards print publications and also to the warmer climate zones of Australia (85% were from QLD; 7% from NSW; 5% from NT ). However, the survey respondents are identified as gardeners and represent consumer buyers of gardening plants and products.
NOTE: This survey focused on the opinions and trends of 419 gardeners who read subTropical Gardening magazine during May and July 2009, including subscribers and non-subscribers. In contrast the Nursery and Garden Industry of Australia’s (NGIA) survey carried out in July 2009 surveyed 1202 people, who are not identified as ‘public’, and who may or may not be be termed a ‘gardeners’.
This survey was carried out by Subtropicalia Media Pt Ltd, 2009.
