Introduction

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) is the national representative body for the veterinary profession with over 11,000 members.

The BVA operates in the veterinary membership services market, generating income from subscriptions, publications and services. The BVA's role is to represent the veterinary profession and help members fulfil their professional roles.

The BVA's membership had increased significantly in the three years prior to the project on the back of significant marketing of its professional membership services and the individual benefits offered. However, the BVA were aware that consistent promotion of its message was essential to maintain this trend.

The BVA asked AHC to help it obtain feedback from members and non-members to help target future marketing campaigns and feed into an overall review of its membership offering.

Research Objectives

The primary objectives for the project were to:

	Measures and evaluate BVA member satisfaction
	Assess whether members felt adequately represented and whether they were consulted enough by the BVA
	Examine members' perceptions of the publications and services offered by the BVA as part of their membership package
	Gain an understanding of members' views on current and recent marketing activity and to inform future member marketing activity
	Assess non-members perceptions about the BVA and gain an understanding of the barriers which prevent non-members from joining

Our Approach

Taking into account how busy vets are, we used our online survey tool to obtain the feedback, enabling vets to complete it at their own convenience. This was also extremely cost effective and enabled us to maximise the response levels and gain a far larger sample than would have been possible through other forms of research such as telephone or postal surveys.

We were therefore able to canvas the opinion of over 1000 vets, without disturbing them during working hours. The response rate indicated not only their willingness to participate but also the effectiveness of our web-based tool.

The Benefits

The BVA has been able to use the results to:

	Adapt services and policy activity to suit member expectations and needs and identify potential new services of interest
	Develop and target member marketing messages focusing on the different issues of relevance to different groups of members
	Target marketing recruitment campaigns based on the feedback received from non-members