Discussion
The survey instrument included 13 questions concerning general drum corps likes and dislikes. Each question dealt with some aspect of customer satisfaction -- the drum corps fans that took the survey being the "customers" -- and attempted to isolate an issue facing the activity. The questions included the following:

1. Entertainment value for the money
2. Judging as accurate representation of performance.
3. Scoring as a fan concern
4. Elimination of scoring
5. Bringing friend to a show
6. Talk about drum corps with friends, family
7. Ticket pricing
8. Maximizing fan enjoyment
9. Show publicity and advertising
10. Appeal of the top five finalists (show design)
11. Ticket prices/attend more shows
12. Like/dislike musical selections
13. Agree/disagree: Drum corps is changing for the better

While not exhaustive, the question list and the topics covered provide us a useful starting point for further discussion about drum corps and how it can better market itself to its clients. In this discussion, we will concentrate on the junior corps responses, since the senior corps responses included a great deal of incongruity and indifference that tend to make analysis not as worthwhile as we may perhaps hope it to be. The average survey respondent was less familiar with senior drum corps than with junior corps -- many junior-oriented respondents do not closely follow the senior activity. Of course, this leaves great opportunity for further study -- an exclusive survey of senior corps participants and fans would likely remove a great deal of the static that made data from the present survey more difficult to interpret in the case of the senior groups.

As we saw in Part I, respondents seem genuinely interested in drum corps scoring, would be less interested in drum corps if scoring were eliminated, but are less sure that the scoring is accurate. This is evidenced by lower numbers in the ‘strongly agree’ category and higher number in the categories indicating ambivalence or disagreement. Most fans seem willing to do their share to personally market the activity, by talking about it (preferably in a favorable way) with friends and family, and taking friends unfamiliar with the activity to shows.

Fans are more divided on the issue of ticket prices -- there is obviously a body of fans that believe prices for regionals and championships are too high, or are not entirely convinced that the ticket prices are justified at their present levels. About a third say they would respond to lower ticket prices by attending more shows, but about half are either not sure what they would do or tend to disagree that they would attend more competitions.

As for the question regarding the state of the drum corps activity, fans seem evenly divided across the spectrum. Many do not feel that drum corps is headed in the right direction, but more are positive that it is.

Demographics
Map of Survey Participants
Discussion
Factor Analysis
Regression and Correlation
Acknowledgements
Part 1: DCW Survey Results