Who Comes to the Orchard, and Who Could: The Buyer and the Market for a West Michigan Orchard, Established From Evidence Before Any Tactic
Student Name
American College of Education
MRKT5003: Marketing Management: Strategy, Impact, and Engagement
Module 1 Assignment
Instructor Name
January 15, 2028
The Business
Harwell Hill Orchard is a composite third-generation family farm on 180 acres in west Michigan. Last year it earned about $3.4 million in revenue from four lines: wholesale apples sold to a packer, about 38 percent; u-pick admission and picked fruit, about 22 percent; the farm market and bakery, known for cider donuts, about 25 percent; and a hard cider taproom opened two years ago, about 15 percent. The three on-farm lines together earned about $2.1 million and account for nearly all of the farm's profit, because wholesale apple prices have barely covered the cost of growing them for several seasons.
The on-farm business is also highly concentrated in time. About 71 percent of on-farm revenue arrives in September and October, and about 78 percent of autumn visits fall on Saturdays and Sundays. On the busiest weekends, the parking fields fill by late morning and visitors wait up to 40 minutes for the bakery, while on autumn weekdays the market is often nearly empty. A farm that earns most of its money on eight weekends does not have a demand problem so much as a timing problem.
The Evidence Used
This analysis draws on four sources. The first is online ticket records for last season, covering 61 percent of paid u-pick admissions, which record the buyer's ZIP code, the number of adult and child tickets and the date. The second is point-of-sale data from the market, bakery and taproom, which record transaction value, time and product but not the buyer. The third is an email survey sent to 5,000 online ticket buyers after the season, which received 1,150 responses, a response rate of 23 percent. The fourth is a count of competing orchards and farm attractions within 60 miles, compiled from their websites and state agritourism listings.
Each source has a known gap, and those gaps are discussed in a later section. None of the evidence comes from people who have never visited, which is a limit that matters when the question is who could.
Who Visits Now
Distance is the clearest pattern. Of online ticket buyers, 58 percent live within 30 miles of the orchard, 27 percent between 30 and 60 miles and 15 percent further away, mostly from the Chicago and Detroit metropolitan areas on weekend trips. Party composition is almost as clear: 64 percent of online orders include at least one child ticket, and the median order is two adults and two children. Visitors come back. Matching email addresses across the last two seasons shows 34 percent of last season's online buyers also bought the year before.
The survey adds motive. Asked for their main reason for visiting, 57 percent of respondents chose a family outing, 21 percent fresh apples, 12 percent the cider taproom and 10 percent photographs or events. Asked what prevented a weekday visit, 68 percent cited school or work schedules, but 41 percent said they would come on a weekday for a special event such as an evening harvest dinner or a school-holiday program. Taproom sales tell a separate story: 62 percent of taproom revenue arrives after 3 p.m., and weekday taproom sales in October are about a third of weekend sales, a smaller gap than for u-pick.
What the Buyer Is Buying
The evidence suggests that most visitors are not buying apples. At about $18 per paid visitor, u-pick fruit costs more per pound than the same apples at a supermarket, and only 21 percent named fruit as their main reason for coming. Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) argued that much consumption is experiential, pursued for the feelings, fantasy and fun it provides rather than for the product's function, and that such consumption should be analyzed by what the experience means to the consumer. Pine and Gilmore (1998) went further, describing staged experiences as an economic offering distinct from goods and services, for which customers pay for the time spent.
Both views fit Harwell Hill. The family outing is the product, and the apples, donuts and cider are props within it. That has two implications for later modules. Competitors include not only other orchards but any family outing within an hour's drive, and the orchard's weekday problem is really a problem of designing experiences that fit the times families are free.
The Market Within Reach
Because 85 percent of online buyers live within 60 miles, the market is defined as households within that distance, about 620,000 in the composite region. About a quarter of them include children under 18. The orchard's online ticket records identify about 14,500 distinct households last season; allowing for visitors who paid at the gate, Harwell Hill probably reached about 22,000 households, or roughly 3.5 percent of the market within reach.
Competition is dense. Within 60 miles there are 11 other u-pick orchards and two large farm attractions with corn mazes, hayrides and play areas, all concentrated in the same autumn weekends. Two of the orchards also operate taprooms. Harwell Hill's advantages, according to survey comments, are its bakery and the view from its hilltop picnic area; its disadvantages are crowding and parking on peak days, mentioned unprompted by 29 percent of respondents who wrote comments.
What the Evidence Cannot Show
The evidence has three limits. First, online ticket buyers are not all visitors: people who pay at the gate may be older, more local or less planned, and nothing in the data describes them. Second, the survey reached only online buyers with email addresses, and only 23 percent of them responded. Groves (2006) showed that a low response rate does not by itself mean biased results; bias arises when the reasons people respond are related to the answers being measured. Here that risk is real, because the most satisfied and most engaged visitors are the likeliest to answer a post-season survey, so the survey probably overstates enthusiasm for new events.
Third, and most important, nothing in the data describes people who do not visit. The 96 percent of households within 60 miles that did not come last season are invisible to every source. Module 2 will need to size segments using external data on household composition and leisure spending as well as the orchard's own records.
The Problem the Plan Must Solve
The evidence points to a single marketing problem. Harwell Hill's on-farm business depends on families with children who come for an outing on autumn weekends, when the farm is already at capacity, and the orchard earns little on weekdays and outside September and October, when it has space to spare. Growing weekend demand would mostly add to crowding. The plan developed in this course should therefore aim to move or add visits to times the farm has capacity, which means finding buyers whose free time falls on those days, or giving existing buyers a reason to come then. Module 2 will test which groups within the 60-mile market could do that, and in what numbers.
References
Groves, R. M. (2006). Nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias in household surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(5), 646-675. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfl033
Holbrook, M. B., & Hirschman, E. C. (1982). The experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(2), 132-140. https://doi.org/10.1086/208906
Pine, B. J., II, & Gilmore, J. H. (1998). Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review, 76(4), 97-105.
How this MRKT 5003 Module 1 example is structured
MRKT 5003 Module 1 often establishes the buyer and the market with sourced evidence first; your classroom's instructions decide whether the firm is assigned, chosen or your employer. This example states the business and its sources of evidence, describes current buyers on four dimensions, sizes the market within reach and then assesses what the evidence can and cannot support. The final section states the problem the marketing plan must solve, so later modules have a target defined by data rather than by assumption.
MRKT5003 Module 1 questions, answered
What does MRKT5003 Module 1 usually ask for?
MRKT5003 Module 1 often asks students to describe the firm's customers and market with sourced evidence before proposing any marketing action. Many sections expect data on who buys, why and how many could. Your classroom's instructions decide whether the firm is assigned, chosen or your employer.
What counts as evidence about customers?
Sales and ticket records, customer surveys, loyalty data, industry reports and census figures all count, as long as each figure is sourced and its limits are stated. Descriptions without numbers or sources rarely earn credit.
Should I mention the limits of my data?
Yes. Saying who your data leaves out, and how that might bias the results, shows judgment and tells later sections what they need to find elsewhere.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
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