Marketing research

This page has been created to foster discussion on the use of Market Research by the Fedora Marketing team. rbergero is in draft mode right now.

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Next Steps

Next steps go here. At the top of the page. So they get noticed. :)

Questions to Answer

1. What questions do we want answered by market research - and how will we incorporate the feedback we get back into the development cycle?
2. Is there a budget for market research?
3. Is there a simple open-source tool for developing surveys to be posted and aggregating the answers?
4. Could we get companies to donate free swag (tee-shirts, netbooks, mp3 players, messenger bags, etc.) to provide as an incentive for completing surveys?
5. It would be awesome to have a Master List of conferences / Events where a laptop could be set up for on-site surveys. (Linuxcon, Linuxworld, Linuxwhatever, RH Summit, Linux Symposium, etc.)
6. Does Red Hat have any research that could legally be shared with Fedora (maybe a small group of people, or have one person be a gateway - ie: The Gateway person collects questions, and then asks RH market research folks (are there any??) if they can provide answers).
7. Does anyone have any contacts at any major PC / Server vendors (the usual suspects - Dell, HP, IBM, Sun, and the like) that would be a good starting point to see if they would participate in surveys about shipments? We would need a good blurb about why it would be important to participate and what they would get out of it (ie, they are good community participants, it helps them develop a broader market, they get access and input to free research, etc.)

Activities in the same spectrum - Related to Market Research

1. Benchmarking / ensuring the community is recognizing that someone is taking notice of market research results and doing something with it. ie: "Based on user feedback, Fedora 13 has developed / improved 90% of requested features in the following areas...."
2. Educating Fedora/Other distro developers on (a) what market research is and (b) how to use it or incorporate it into their planning / development. This could be a class, presentation given at conferences, guide, or <insert clever idea here>.
3. Develop a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletter dedicated to highlighting other market research resources that are available. (This information could also be tracked / disseminated / portal-ized on Fedora_Insight. This includes things like:
   • Reports done by the Linux Foundation
   • Reports done by anyone else that are free
   • Reports that aren't free but have really nice press releases that give out tidbits of information that could be useful.
   • Research / Survey information done by Fedora project marketing. :)

Proposed Market Research Categories / Projects / Surveys

Overview

1. Fedora-Centric Market Research. This research would answer questions like:
   • How is Fedora doing?
   • Feedback from Fedora-centric events (ie: FUDCon)
   • developer feedback
   • etc.

1. Fedora-Competitive Market Research. (This category could possibly be combined with #3.) This research would answer questions like:
   • (Of end-users): What distro are you using, please rank distros according to your preference, etc.
   • (Of developers): What distros do you make an effort to add your project to, why, please rank distros by their ease of contributions, etc.)
2. Community-Shared Market Research. This category is probably a little more ambitious; the goal here would be to provide market research to the greater Linux community in general, with the overall goal of helping to foster better decision-making, pointing out strength and weaknesses or market gaps with the goal of bringing new solutions / projects to Linux that meet end-user needs. Theoretically this not only brings new projects to Fedora - but helps to improve quality and/or availability of projects in general in the Wider Community. Most start-ups and/or projects do NOT have the benefit of having a boatload of money to spend on market research.

Additionally, and this goes without saying, I suppose, that this information would be published under some sort of open/ CC license. Working with other community distros to find out what questions THEY would like answered would certainly be encouraged and their contributions / analysis of both questions and results should be welcomed.

Fedora-Centric Market Research

The first two items listed are surveys which have been done in the past (in some cases, the very, very long ago past). I think they would be valuable to continue / start up again for input. Additionally, I've added some other suggestions for Fedora-Centric market research. Feedback on my suggestions is requested / welcomed / probably needed.

1. FUDCon Surveys (These could be done onsite or sent out afterwards.)
2. General Improvements Survey - Fedora Community Poll
3. Developer-specific Survey
4. End-user Specific Survey

FUDCon Surveys

Surveys Fedora Community members on their experiences as an attendee at a FUDCon (including questioning those who did not come as to what prevented them from attending). This survey has been done in the past; see Marketing/Surveys/FUDConF9 for the raw questions, or Marketing_surveys for some of the extended results.

Questions (some have been shortened for the sake of being slightly more brief) included:

1. Did you attend FUDCon/F9?
2. When did you arrive in Raleigh for FUDCon?
3. What was your mode of travel to/from home?
4. When did you depart the conference?
5. Who paid for your attendance at FUDCon?
6. Which one of the following categories represent your relationship with Fedora? (select all that apply)
7. Please indicate, using a scale of 1-5, how important each of the following factors was in your decision whether to attend FUDCon: Cost of the conference, overall cost of attendance, where conference was held, meeting and networking with other attendees, hackfest sessions, BarCamp sessions, FUDPub and other extramural outings, physical closeness to a Red Hat facility
8. Please indicate, using a scale of 1-5, or 6 (did not attend), your satisfaction with each portion of the FUDCon event: Cost of the conference, overall cost of attendance, city where conference was held, meeting and networking with other attendees, hackfest sessions, BarCamp sessions, FUDPub and other extramural outings.
9. Which schedule do you prefer? (choose one) BarCamp on Saturday, Hackfest on Friday + Sunday; BarCamp on Friday, Hackfest on Saturday + Sunday
10. What did you like most about the conference? (short answer)
11. What did you dislike most about the conference? (short answer)
12. Based on your attendance at this event, would you attend another like it? (Yes/No)
13. If the answer to the previous question was "No," why not? (short answer)
14. Was there anything you would like to see at the next conference that you did not this time? (short answer)
15. Please include any additional comments about the conference you would like us to know. (long answer)

Community-Shared Market Research

(Please note that the lists of questions for these categories are not comprehensive, they are just used to give a general idea of what would be asked if it was decided that this was a Good Idea. )

1. PC / Server Market Sizing. This can be split out by ALL PCs / Servers sold, or by just PCs and Servers sold which shipped with Linux as the primary OS.
   • Shipments - total
   • Shipments by Region
   • Shipments by pricing
   • Shipments by Form Factor (ie: PCs would be split out by Desktops, Notebooks and Netbooks, Servers would be split by Traditional vs. Bladed, or whatever.)
   • Shipments by OS
   • Shipments by channel - business vs. consumer
2. End-User Surveys - Operating Systems
3. Linux Developer Surveys
   • What category does your development work fall under
   • Preferred development environments
   • What distros do you strive to have your project added to, which are easiest
   • Demographics (where are you, how long have you been a developer, etc)
   • What OS
   • What processors
   • Languages used
   • Source control methods used, preferred, familiarity, ease of use, etc.
4. Purchaser / Business decision maker Surveys. Spending plans, OS plans, etc. Are they aware of open-source solutions, what are their opinions, etc. Budgets for servers, PCs, software, support, etc.