Harrisonburg Downtown

Renaissance

Team 2
By: Sydney Macauley, Audrey Hunter, Abby Langworthy,
Matthew Mooney & Jae Yoo

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Market Analysis
The Company
Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance is a mix of restaurants, shops, and boutiques. Some
of these small shops include A Little Bit Gilded, Bluetique, and Blue Ridge Dog. HDR revolves
their visions around constant dialogue on various social media platforms and looks for
community response. They work with each of the business owners, Universities nearby (JMU),
and residents to work towards a common goal of having downtown thrive. HDR occasionally
puts on events to showcase the different local shops. By adding lights and decorating for the
holidays it helps brighten the dark spaces and draws people downtown. HDR wants to have
students be involved with the consulting and marketing efforts in hopes to target that younger
demographic to come and shop downtown.
Customers
The main customers downtown are college students in the area. JMU students' primary
reason for visiting downtown is to hit the restaurants and bars, not the local shops. Consumers do
not lean to certain brands as much as before. Because of the pandemic, it brought huge digital
transformation faster than ever before. Due to the acceleration of digital transformation,
consumers’ expectations towards products and services went up so much. Companies now have
to compete not only with pre-existed competitors but also with the last-best-experience they had
in recent days. Customers are more value conscious than brand conscious. After social unrest
2020, level of awareness regarding which one to buy & consume became one of top concerns.
Though price, quality, and convenience still matter, sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, and
social responsibility influence decision making now more than ever. Parents of college students
use social media ads and reviews to learn about products. Being active on social media and
offering products online also leads to success in certain stores. 50% of college students have
made a purchase through Instagram, on Facebook, as many as 51% of users admit to having
clicked on an ad and nearly half of social media users (48%) have bought something after seeing
an ad. A number that increases to 53% and 56% for millennials and women, respectively. Online
shopping continues to increase the more that brands are moving to advertising online.
Conditions
Many college-aged students are eager to get back to pre-pandemic lifestyles and leisure
activities. However, during the pandemic, college students forgo basic needs to afford textbooks.

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Covid negatively impacted not only shops, but restaurants as well. Small businesses suffered
tremendously as people didn’t have spare money to spend. Customers all say they care about
supporting local/small businesses but usually don’t show it in their purchasing efforts. Two thirds
(Of people using social media) also say they’d rather pay more for sustainable or eco-friendly
products. Most JMU students' primary reason for going downtown is to go to restaurants. Overall
spending of JMU students has increased by 8% in recent years.
Competition
Downtown Harrisonburg faces many competitors including online retailers, which is a
major one. By January of 2020 the number of Amazon Prime users in the US rose by 11% for
shoppers between the ages of 18-34 (the main demographic downtown is targeting). College
students buy items out of convenience, price point, and the range of products a company offers.
Nationwide stores such as Target, Walmart, and Amazon are taking over. Other stores in the
Valley Mall for example, such as Old Navy, Ulta, and H&M also take up most of these sales. I
feel like a big weakness is that it is way more convenient to shop online because they provide
fast shipping and easy to access reviews at low prices. Another weakness of local businesses is
that they are relatively unknown compared to the large retailers and most small retailers cannot
afford to advertise as much as the nationwide chain stores can. A major strength is that they can
adapt to the needs and wants of the community, make cool offers that pertain to JMU students,
and they have a narrow target market. I think some big opportunities come within marketing to
JMU students, once HDR finds its niche in social media I think many more students will be able
to find ways to learn about the different shops downtown has to offer. One major threat is if
covid puts students online again many students will return home which narrows down the
potential buyers by a whole lot. Online retailers or big known retailers also can offer the same
product or one extremely similar for a lower price.

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Current Strategy Analysis
In terms of HDR’s current marketing strategy, they are active on social media-- posting
frequently and sometimes multiple times a day, they put on family-oriented events downtown to
draw in customers and bring life and excitement to the downtown area, and they have giveaways
and promotions with the purpose of encouraging people to visit stores downtown. These are all
great strategies. However, in conducting this analysis of HDR’s marketing strategy, we found
that the marketing mix is currently geared more towards the families of Harrisonburg and lacking
in terms of HDR’s other largest market segment-- JMU students. Due to this, college students are
likely to adopt the attitude that downtown is not relevant to them.
Downtown Harrisonburg is conveniently located to the James Madison University
campus and the stores downtown have high quality and unique products. However, the price
point for many of the stores downtown falls outside of the college student budget. With stores
downtown having the reputation of high prices students may be already turned off by the idea
because they know it is out of their price range. Luckily, downtown holds values to support local
business owners with great pride in supporting their community. These attitudes are reflected in
HDR’s current marketing strategy with community focused content and frequent promotion of
local businesses. This is a great advantage in hopes the community chooses to shop downtown
instead of buying from large franchises such as Walmart and Amazon. If students were aware of
owners' business stories the traffic in stores may increase due to the knowledge of uniqueness.
With high variety in stores downtown with different brand images and “personalities” the
potential is high to bring in cultural values to HDR advertisements.
HDR is very active on social media and primarily posts on Facebook and Instagram.
They have a Tik Tok, but do not actively post. In doing this, they are likely reaching an older
demographic. The posts on these accounts are mostly promotional and revolve around
community events, local businesses, contests, and giveaways. Other ads are placed on local
television programming and in the Downtown area itself.
After examining past campaigns and current marketing efforts, strategies do not seem to
vary by segment. Instead, they seem to be focused more on the family segment and likely would
not catch the attention of the student segment. For example, one of their most popular events that
HDR puts on is a holiday festival called Winter Wonder fest. The event downtown includes hot
chocolate stands and pictures with Santa, something that draws the attention of local families, but

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does not interest students. HDR effectively creates an association between shopping downtown,
buying gifts for loved ones, and enjoying holiday traditions with family. Holding such activities
downtown not only drives more traffic toward stores but brings the sense of Joy when entering
downtown. The Harrisonburg community will have a better attitude toward shopping after
experiencing a joyful time.
HDR’s marketing strategy and advertising appeals focus on the consumption motive and
need of belonging through community events and promoting the idea that all Harrisonburg
residents and businesses are a valuable part of what makes Harrisonburg, Harrisonburg.
However, the student segment may not feel this sense of belonging as most of the advertising for
community events is not targeted towards them and many are unaware of HDR and businesses
downtown.
With Christmas being their busiest season, they have multiple campaigns running to
spread the word to Harrisonburg families. Some are aesthetically pleasing, but many lack
interesting graphics and content. The commercial that is advertised on local stations is not eye-
catching and not very high quality. In addition to these holiday marketing efforts, HDR offers an
annual gift guide. The extensive guide provides gift ideas and is a great way to promote products
from local businesses. However, the catalogue itself is a bit wordy and cluttered. If there were
more pictures of the item with a little description, it would be easier to flip through.

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Focus Group
To select our focus group participants, we focused on two characteristics, whether the
student was an upper or lower classmen and the gender of the student. We separated the groups
by upper and lower classmen because they have substantial differences in perspective, needs, and
circumstances. For example, lower classmen are new to the area (still forming schemas for
Harrisonburg), have meal plans (no need to shop for food), are not 21 (makes drinking at bars
difficult), and are not allowed to have cars on campus (increases barriers to visiting downtown).
Upperclassmen mostly live off campus, have cars, are 21, and have been attending JMU for at
least 2 years. As a result, they have had time to build a perception of downtown, have the ability
to visit, have the need to go into town to buy groceries, and are able to go to bars downtown. By
having both segments in the same focus group interview, it would prevent the participants from
going into deeper depth. By separating them we can go into more detail about their particular
needs, perceptions, behaviors, and it also allows them to more easily build off and relate to each
other's experiences. In each focus group we believed it important to have a good mix of both men
and women to gain a wider and more complete perspective on HDR. Men and women have
different perspectives, wants, and interests and by having both present it will help paint a more
complete picture.
Our questions centered on four main topics. First, we had questions about the perception
of Downtown Harrisonburg which included questions such as who the participants thought as the
typical shopper at Downtown, what comes to mind when you think of Downtown, what are you
looking for in your visit, and questions related to the accessibility of downtown. Second were
questions about the buying behavior of our participants. This included questions such as “where
do you shop”, “why do you shop there”, “important factors in determining where you shop”, and
“what encourages or discourages visiting Downtown”. Our third set of questions were related to
special event shopping, such as holidays (Christmas/Halloween), birthdays, and other events
(back to school, parties) and included questions such as “is there any event where you look
Downtown to shop”, “what is your budget”, and “how convenient is it to shop for gifts at
Downtown”. Our last theme of questions dealt with advertisements, past and future, of DHR.
These included questions such as what ads have you seen, have they led you to further explore
Downtown or make a purchase, what they thought of the current state of HDR’s social media,
and what types of ads they would be responsive to.

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 We found that the most important factors in determining where our participants shopped
were price, convenience, and familiarity. Our participants reflected the stereotype of a college
student on a tight budget and as a result they prefer to shop at Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, or
Shein to stretch their dollar. They avoided Downtown as they viewed it as more expensive or
overpriced. Downtown is more of a place for locals than it is for college students. Our
participants mostly shopped online and valued convenience which explains why they mainly
shoppedat Amazon, Wal-mart, or Shien. They didn’t necessarily avoid shopping from stores
Downtown because of these factors, but their lack of knowledge about what businesses are
Downtown, what they have to offer, and the added effort of finding these things out leads them
away from Downtown.
Our participants visit downtown fairly often (3 times a month) but visit to buy groceries,
go to church, or restaurants and bars, not to shop. Restaurants/bars have waits that average 30-45
minutes. Most participants said they would go to restaurants downtown during homecoming and
said they had been to restaurants and bars already.This is great news for HDR. It means that
students are already going downtown, they just don't shop for other goods. Effectively, half the
battle is already won. Now they just need to get them into the stores.
The current HDR website, social media, and other advertising in general has been
ineffective. Our participants either were uninterested, discarded the materials immediately when
presented with them in the past, wouldn't follow their accounts now or in the future, or felt as if
they weren't the intended target for the ads. They were mixed on the prospect of if they would
follow social media in the future as they believed the content would be worth the follow. When
they were asked if they would go to restaurants downtown if they had coupons, answers were
positive.

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Strategic Strengths and Weaknesses
HDR has built a solid strategy to promote and inform their community about everything
they have to offer, but there are some ways they can improve. As mentioned before, HDR, at the
moment, targets more towards general demographics, mostly just catching the attention of
Harrisonburg families. HDR is expanding on different types of social media networks such as
Tik Tok. This can benefit them because it extends out to the younger generation. Two big
weaknesses pop up for this promotion. One, James Madison students are not aware these
accounts exist. If there was promotion around campus or an incentive to follow the accounts
more exposure would be drawn. Second, HDR does not actively post. This is a weakness for this
promotion because even if you are not following the HDR Tik Tok account it can still pop up on
your recommended page. By not keeping up with regular posts HDR is losing the opportunity of
exposure and could make followers they already have lose interest due to the lack of activity.
One of HDRs biggest strengths is the number of events and activities they have for the
community. When having events and gathering together the community the association of fun
and joy are connected with your experience of downtown. Some people dread the idea of
shopping but with that association of joy and belonging (coming from engaging with the
community during these events), HDR could encourage the community to do their shopping
downtown instead of with the big franchises. Another strength is the businesses and stores all
around downtown get involved with these events by having booths or tables outside to increase
their exposure when people walk by, sometimes offering samples or selling items. This strategy
increases awareness and encourages trial of stores and their products. These events are not
heavily advertised towards students or on campus. HDR misses out on a valuable opportunity to
involve the segment of students with the events being put on.
Additionally, another strength HDR has going for them is downtown dollars. When
giving out prizes for contests or games, giving out downtown dollars instead of gift cards is huge
in terms of the community having to spend those dollars downtown. This idea is very unique and
a great incentive to get people to try new businesses downtown. HDR has great ideas and
promotions for downtown, but just like anything else there is room for improvement. The biggest
weakness being the lack of involvement with the college students surrounding the downtown
Harrisonburg area.

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Recommendations
One of the biggest recommendations we suggest for Harrisonburg Downtown
Renaissance is targeting college students at James Madison and Eastern Mennonite University.
Social media is a huge channel that needs to be taken advantage of because college students
spend most of their days on it. A recommendation to get the number of followers up for each
account is to promote a giveaway on each of the three most used social media accounts for
younger generations -- Snapchat, Tik Tok, and Instagram. To be entered into the contest, a
student will follow each of the three social media accounts, reshare the post on their Instagram
stories, and comment that they have completed the requirements on the Instagram post
promoting contest (Figure 1.3). The winner will receive a certain amount of downtown dollars to
be able to shop in any store downtown. The exposure and number of followers for each account
will go up with the incentive of the prize.
Once the number of followers is up for social media accounts, we recommend adding
more interesting content, not just promotional and informational. Once a month you can choose a
different business owner to highlight on Instagram and share their story (Figure 1.4). This could
incorporate more of a community feel and encourage to support local businesses. To give an
incentive to go downtown to shop we thought of doing weekly coupons on Instagram (Figure
1.1). Once a week choose a different store to highlight and give a discount coupon on HDR
Instagram. This would encourage the customers to go downtown to use the coupon within those
24 hours of posting the discount.
Ideas for incorporating restaurants we thought of posting on snapchat and Instagram
some of the restaurant’s daily specials. This could encourage the community to go out to eat for
dinner that night and treat themselves. The restaurants downtown is some of the most popular
businesses downtown and are the main thing drawing students to the area. For this reason, we
recommend restaurants help out the local stores in terms of promoting their businesses. The idea
here is when there is a long wait to sit down at a table, restaurants could hand out coupons for
various shops around town (Figure 1.2). This would give the customers something to do while
waiting and, with a coupon, an extra incentive to encourage trial of the store. Another way to
incorporate restaurants with the shops is having a coupon at the bottom of the bill for people to
use after they eat. In addition to simply being an incentive to shop, it would be encouraging
customers to experience all of what Downtown has to offer and create the image of a destination

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for shopping, fun, and food. Restaurants helping stores will have customers feeling like they are
a part of a community and having a sense of family.
As we learned from our focus groups, downtown is not the easiest place to get to. This
can be a turn off to some people because parking and driving can cause stress. Some of the issues
that were brought up were not knowing where to park, too many one-way streets, and if people
have a desire to visit bars or consume alcohol at restaurants, there is not an easy way of getting
home. Some recommendations for this are a map online or even an app where the community
can check where there is parking open and the easiest route to get there. Another solution to
these problems is adding more signs of where parking is or marking where it is a one way. A
suggestion that was brought up within the focus group was adding bus stops within the James
Madison bus systems. This could help freshmen be able to go downtown to experience or even
help students who decide to drink to make it back to campus safely.

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Appendix 1: Focus Group Outline

What year are you?

Where do you live?

How often do you shop?

Would you say you shop more online or in-person?

- Why?

What are the determining factors of determining where you shop i.e What is most important to
you when shopping?

- Rank top 4 factors.

Where do you do most of your shopping?

- Why do you like shopping at these stores?

How important to you is supporting local businesses as a factor when shopping? (1-10)

As a freshman, how often do you go off campus?

Have you ever been to downtown Harrisonburg?

- How often do you go downtown?

What encourages/discourages you from going downtown?

Do you know where downtown Harrisonburg is?

- How do you get there/do you know how you would get there?

- Do you feel that downtown is accessible to you as a student?

- If there was an easier way to get downtown, do you think you would go?

What comes to mind when you think of downtown Harrisonburg?

- What do you know about downtown Harrisonburg?

What stores/businesses have you visited downtown?

- How did you hear about them?

- Have you ever purchased anything from a store downtown (not food)?

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What are your favorite businesses to visit downtown?

- Why do you like them?

How important is downtown Harrisonburg as a JMU student? Is it a part of the JMU experience?

What kind of stores/businesses do you wish were downtown?

What would encourage you to shop downtown over amazon, target, etc..?

When you go out to eat downtown, how long is the wait/is there a wait?

- How long is the wait on average?

- What do you usually do while you wait for your table?

- Would you consider looking at nearby stores if your wait was over 30 minutes?

Is there a certain reason/occasion that you go downtown?

- Family weekend/homecoming?

- Shopping for holidays?

Do you find holiday shopping to be enjoyable than regular shopping?

- What makes it this way?

Where do you usually do holiday shopping? Are the factors that

determine where you do holiday shopping different from your previously listed factors?

- If yes, what are 4 factors that you consider when holiday shopping? When
holiday shopping, do you view convenience or experience as more important?

How much do you typically spend on a holiday gift for family or a friend?

Have you ever seen an advertisement for a downtown Harrisonburg business?

- If yes, where?

- Do you remember what the ad was about?

Show HDR website. What is your opinion about the website?

- Can you tell what HDR does from this website?

Show HDR Instagram. What are your opinions about HDR’s Instagram page?

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 - Would you consider following it?

- Why?

Do you scroll past Tik Tok ads, or do you pay attention to them?

Would you follow a HDR Tik Tok page if they posted content about events or deals happening
downtown?

Do you follow HDR on Facebook?

Do you use Facebook?

Which social media are you on the most?

What would make you more open to shopping downtown?

- Would you be more likely to shop downtown if you had a coupon?

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Appendix 2: Transcript of Focus Group
Upper:
What years are you guys at JMU?
Girl student A: I’m a Junior
Boy student A: Junior
Boy Student B: I’m a Junior
Girl Student B: I’m a Senior
Girl student C: Junior
Where do you currently live?
Girl student A: I live at Southview
Boy student A: Southview
Boy Student B: Southview
Girl Student B: I live at Copper Beech
Girl student C: Southview
Do you shop more online or in-person?
Girl student A: Online, I feel like it is easier personally.
Boy student A: In-person because I do shopping only for groceries.
Boy Student B: Online, it’s easier and cheaper. But I also go shopping in-person for
groceries.
Girl Student B: Yeah, I kind of do a mix of both. Recently, I have been doing more
online since Covid.
Girl student C: I mainly do online.
What are the determining factors? What's the most important thing when you go shopping?
Girl student A: Part1 1:40.00~ If I can see myself wearing it multiple times and how it
looks on me.
Boy student A: How it fits, how it looks, that kind of all I look for
Boy Student B: Price in general, I'm not going to spend a lot on a jacket
Girl Student B: Price for me, if I’m going to wear it a lot as well as if, well, yeah it’s just
if I'll wear it
Girl student C: Probably comfortability and price.
Where do you mostly go shopping? Amazon, Target, Walmart?

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 Girl student A: I usually shop at Pac Sun or
Boy student A: I don't know, Lululemon, I don't really go anywhere specific. Macys
maybe, I don't know
Boy Student B: Amazon, Sharp Shopper for food, and good will, and occasionally
Walmart
Girl student B: Target, if I shop online to buy cheap stuff, I'll go to Shein. Also,
American Eagle and Urban
Girl Student C: Pac Sun, I like targets jeans, um, and like Shien
Have you ever been to Downtown?
All : Yes
How often do you say go downtown? Daily, weekly, monthly?
Girl student A: Mostly on the weekends, but like every other week
Boy student A: I’d say like once a month
Boy Student B: Just like to shop or just to be there?
Host: Either
Girl Student B: Biweekly on the weekends
Girl Student C: I mean i go down there a good amount 2 to 3 times a week but for
shopping wise, probably I never go shopping.
What encourages or discourages you from going downtown?
Girl student A: I guess what encourages me is probably restaurants and it's like a cute
little place to be. Discourages is that shopping wise there's not a lot of clothing stores,
like you don’t know a lot, it’s hard to get (Doesn’t know a lot about what’s there)
shopping wise.
Boy student A: I'd say what discourages me is that I’m not 21 and what encourages me
is that there’s some good food down there.
Boy Student B: I go to Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, which is like in downtown
so occasionally, I'll go there on a Sunday
Girl student B: Uh, the food and the different restaurants and stuff encourages as well
as the bars and stuff. Nothing like really discourages me but I don't really go into town
for shopping

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Appendix 3: Additional Material

Weekly coupon posted Instagram Story (Figure 1.1)

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While you wait coupon (Figure 1.2)

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Instagram contest post (Figure 1.3)

Small Business owner post (Figure 1.4)

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