The Steamery, Inc.

Brand Awareness Measurement

Research Findings Report

Texas Star Public Relations

Adrianna Alejandro
Tesla Barrera
Devon Paige Garrison
Blake Springfield
Brittany Holden

MC 4320: Public Relations Campaigns

T/TH 12:30 p.m.
Professor Paul Villagran

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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This research report includes findings from a 12-question survey answered by around 200

people within the San Marcos area and beyond. The main goal in conducting this survey

was to see how familiar our audience is with The Steamery and to get a better idea of the

brand awareness of The Steamery. Some of the things that Texas Star PR was interested

in surveying people about was how knowledgeable people are when it comes to different

types of mold and water damage and home restoration, as this is what The Steamery’s

services would be needed for. We found that many of the surveyees think that they would

be able to identify water damage and mold in their homes and that many people prefer to

work with small businesses rather than big contractors when hiring people for specific

services. This is beneficial to The Steamery because it shows that there is a lot of

opportunity for new business considering that they are a small contractor and that since

people can identify the damage to their home, they will know the right people to call to

get these damages taken care of.

This report will be beneficial to The Steamery in the future because it gives Texas Star

PR a better perspective on the current and prospective audience for The Steamery and

will help aid in marketing and promotion efforts for the company as well.

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INTRODUCTION

Texas Star Public Relations sought out willing participants to take part in a five minute

survey utilizing Google Forms to measure brand awareness by their ability to identify

what The Steamery, Inc. is, measure their knowledge regarding restoration services, and

identify general demographics regarding our target audience.

With nearly 200 survey responses, Texas Star Public Relations will breakdown the results

of the survey into separate categories as well as provide graphs of participants’ answers.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Research Goals

● Determine The Steamery’s presence rate.

● Identify target audience research preference (how they find contractors).

● Identify which dominant demographic to target.

Research Questions

1. What is your gender?

2. What is your age?

3. Where do you live?

4. Do you feel that you could identify mold or water damage in your home?

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 5. Do you feel that contractors are trustworthy people?

6. When hiring a contractor, do you prefer large companies or locally owned small

businesses?

7. How important is it to you that local businesses are involved in the communities

that they operate in?

8. How would you go about finding a contractor for remediation work on your

home?

9. Since you've moved into your home, have you had inspections done for mold, fire,

or water damage?

10. If you live in student housing, do you know what company your apartment

complex uses for its cleaning and restoration (mold, water and fire damages)

services?

11. Have you heard about The Steamery?

12. What is The Steamery (to your knowledge)?

Research Objectives

● To propose and formulate recommendations to The Steamery for community

exposure.

● To evaluate where customers are hiring contractors.

● To assess the current level of customer knowledge regarding The Steamery and

the services that they offer.

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Methodology

Population

Our target population mainly consisted of females between the ages of 18 and 29 who

live in the San Marcos area.

With a total of 191 responses, females made up 56% (106) of the population and males

made up 44% (84) of the population.

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74% (141) of the population indicated that they were between the ages of 18 and 29.

37% (70) of the population listed they lived in San Marcos.

Sample and Sampling Technique

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Our sample (n) consisted of 195 participants from all over Texas with a few outliers from

Michigan, Denmark, Louisiana and Maryland to name a few. Our sampling technique

included creating a form via Google. Texas Star Public Relations used the opportunity to

share the form via social media (i.e. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter) to invite friends and

family to participate in completing the survey. Texas Star PR’s advantage is that the firm

consists of students who live not just in San Marcos, but in Austin and San Antonio,

which assisted in avoiding skewed results. No incentives were used at this time.

Instrument

Texas Star PR used Google Forms as the choice of instrument to conduct our research.

WIth Google Forms, we created a survey designed to be short in form but straight to the

point to avoid surveyees getting frustrated and exiting out of the form. We began the

survey with asking general demographic questions. Next, we surveyed participants

regarding restoration services and lastly, worked into more specific questions focused on

The Steamery.

Data Collection Procedures

Google Forms automatically converts the surveyees’ answers into graphs for each

question. The survey was active for approximately two weeks before we closed it to

analyze our findings.

Data Analysis

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After we closed the survey, we reviewed each question and found that we received a few

irrelevant answers (i.e ice cream shop). To avoid skewing the results, we decided to

group those irrelevant answers into “other”.

FINDINGS

The report of our findings is what follows and is based on the total of 191

responses that were received from our accessed audience. Our survey covered a variety of

demographics, general knowledge questions, and current attitudes of the restoration

industry.

Demographics:

To get a closer look and to better understand our audience, the Texas Star collected

demographic information such as age, gender, and geographical location through our

survey. The majority of our respondents (73.8%) were between the ages of 18-29, while

leading in the second majority (19.9%) were between the ages of 30-44, and third (4.7%)

to ages 45-59; leaving the two outliers to (1%) ages being 60+ and (0.5%) 18 and under.

Most of our respondent’s residency resides in the San Marcos area at 37%, while 17.5%

lives in San Antonio, 12.7% in Austin, 6.3% in New Braunfels, and leaving 26.5% to

Dallas and “Other” residencies. Also 55.5% of female respondents and 44% male

respondents were consisted in the survey.

General Knowledge:

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Through our survey we wanted to determine where our audience’s knowledge resides

when it comes to identifying mold, fire, and water damage in their homes, if they have

had previous inspections, general knowledge of how they go about finding restoration

services and The Steamery itself. 82.7% of our respondents felt that they could identify

mold or water damage in their home while 17.3% could not. Also, 64.9% of respondents

reported to have had inspections done for mold, fire, and/or water damage since they

have moved into their homes leaving 35.1% to have not. An astounding 93.7% of

respondents that live in a student housing complex do not know the company their

housing complex uses for its cleaning and restoration services but 6.3% do. To seek out

restoration and carpet cleaning services, 52.4% of respondents reported to resort to a

search engine to find a contractor for remediation for their home, leaving 38.2% to asking

a friend, and 9.4% to social media. When asked about The Steamery 90.5% responded

with not having not heard of The Steamery prior to the survey while 9.5% have. Also

when asked what The Steamery was 46.7% responded with “I don’t know”, 36.7% with

“Carpet cleaning and home restoration”, 7.8% with dry cleaning services, 7.1% with “I

don’t Know”, and 1.7% responded with “Ice cream shop”.

Current Attitudes:

Within our survey we had three general questions pertaining to contractors within

the restoration industry, and with small and large businesses, to examine feedback on

what perceptions reside with our audience. 56.8% of respondents felt that contractors are

deemed to be trustworthy people while 43.2% felt that they weren’t. Also 79.6% of

respondents would prefer to hire a contractor that works for a local small business rather

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than a large company while 20.4% oppose and don’t mind a large company. However,

48.4% of respondents expressed that it is very important that a local business is involved

in the community they operate in while 40.5% of respondents say it is somewhat

important. This leaves 11.1% to report that they don’t care or don’t feel like it is

important for community involvement.

INTERPRETATION

The limitations Texas Star PR had with distributing the survey includes: the main

audience receiving the survey are students; Facebook friends from differing geographical

locations; and college students. One way to improve future findings is to create

questionnaires through Facebook and promote them to target San Marcos residents

between the ages of 18 through 60, and to other business pages.

Based off of the findings from the survey, many students who live in apartment housing

are unaware of what company their complex uses to inspect for mold and restoration

purposes. This isn’t too dire of a drawback considering that, while The Steamery aspires

to include students as part of their customer base, homeowners and commercial

businesses are top priority. Targeting the apartment complexes and landlords would be

more beneficial and have a better ROI (return on investment) than targeting students on

the individual level.

With only 37% of respondents identifying as living in San Marcos, The Steamery would

do well in creating campaigns through social media platforms that increase awareness of

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the company from residents in the San Marcos and surrounding areas. Part of the issue

with so few of the respondents being in the San Marcos area is that the survey was

distributed on Facebook, which produced responses from participants in the DFW area,

Oregon, and even Denmark. This reiterates the need to produce a similar survey targeting

local San Marcos residents which will better gauge the actual level of brand awareness. A

survey targeting local San Marcos residents and businesses would be well received as

80% of participants indicated that choosing a local business is important to them. While

The Steamery has multiple locations, it’s not as franchised as other companies such as

Stanley Steemers and SERVPRO.

Participants indicated that community involvement in the city of which the company is

located is critical, with only 11% indicating that it’s not of importance. The Steamery has

some room to improve its community involvement, and could consider participating in

“Small Business Saturday.”

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REFERENCES

● Garrison, Devon Paige. “Brand Awareness Measurement” Feb. 18, 2019

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc172feAHlnO6w7qZAeqAW-
7MXLpGfY0SrTzUgNaRM4ttIsNQ/closedform

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