New £25k Boost for York's Shops
20/07/2009
A major piece of research has been commissioned today to find out who exactly is shopping in York and why? And, most importantly, who isn't shopping in York and how Visit York, the tourism agency responsible for marketing the city, can encourage more Yorkshire shoppers into the city.City of York Council has allocated £25,000 to Visit York to deliver a new piece of research and then follow this up with a strong marketing and PR campaign, encouraging new shoppers into the city centre.
Retailers in York are concerned that not enough visitors are coming into York to shop from York's ‘hinterland area', ie towns and cities within a one hour traveling distance. Addressing this concern Visit York and the City Council have teamed up with The Press newspaper's ‘York means business' campaign to gain the intelligence needed in order to position York as the number one shopping destination in Yorkshire.
The aim of the research is to establish current perceptions of York as a place to shop and what barriers are preventing potential day visitors to shop in the city. A marketing campaign, building on the work already carried out by Visit York, will be developed based on the findings of this research.
There are two aspects of the research; the first is the initial activity to commission research into competing regional destinations. This will involve one hundred shoppers in six different locations who will be surveyed, resulting in a total sample of six hundred interviews.
Secondly the research will involve an on-line survey which will run on both the websites of The Press in York, and City of York Council. The results of the research will be used to inform and structure a hard hitting marketing and PR campaign for York's retail offer.
The chosen locations for the on-street interviews are Leeds, Hull, Doncaster, Darlington, Harrogate and Scarborough.
Kate McMullen, Marketing Manager for Visit York said, ‘York is already one of the most successful shopping destinations in the UK, with visitors flocking from London, the South East and the rest of the UK to stay and shop here.
York's shopping offer is special, offering many family run and independent shops alongside big retail names. However, what we want to do with this campaign is generate more shoppers from Yorkshire. To do this we need evidence of any barrriers to visiting York to shop. Armed with that we can launch a strong marketing campaign to set about changing people's shopping habits and bring in thousands more shoppers from the rest of the region.'
Vivienne Westwood recently lent her name to a national shopping campaign run by Visit York to position York as the best place to shop in the UK. This campaign generated a 26% increase in traffic to the shopping pages of http://www.visityork.org/ and over 54,000 hits to www.shopandthecity.org.
Now Visit York hopes targeting day visitors will be just as successful, highlighting all that is different and unique about shopping in York. The on-street interviews will be taking place in the six identified locations over the next couple of weeks and should be completed by the 17th July. Visit York's on-line survey will go live on http://www.thepress.co.uk/ and on http://www.york.gov.uk/ on Tuesday 21st July. ENDS