As announced at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Flamborough Chamber of Commerce (FCC) held earlier this month at the Dutch Mill Country Market, the FCC will now start providing ‘Membership Decals’ for all current members. The decals are meant to be placed on glass surfaces in prominent locations and designed to encourage customers to support the products and services your company provides.

Concurrent with the distribution of the decals, the FCC will be launching an aggressive ‘LOOK FOR THE SIGN – THE SIGN OF GOOD BUSINESS’ campaign through the pages of the Bottom Line.

In the next couple of weeks, we will be mailing the membership decals to all current FCC members who have paid their annual dues since January 1, 2012. For those whose memberships are due the last three months of the year, we will forward the decal once your membership renewal payment is received.

A survey by the America Chamber of Commerce Executives concluded that IT PAYS TO BELONG TO THE CHAMBER. The article below explains why. Enjoy.

AND THE SURVEY SAYS …

Advocates of chambers of commerce have long believed that when a company is active in its local chamber, it is doing the right thing not only for the community but for its own success as well.

While there is plenty of evidence to show the impact of chambers of commerce on their communities, it is much harder to find data that quantify the impact of belonging to a chamber.

A recent study, commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, is designed to do just that: determine the real value to companies in terms of consumer outcomes of joining and being active in their local chamber of commerce.

Do consumers really support businesses because they are chamber members?

Data for the study come from a scientific web-based survey of 2,000 adults nationwide. What makes the study unlike most, however, is that almost every question on it is part of one of several imbedded experiments.

This means that respondents were randomly assigned to different groups at several points during the survey. Each group reads something slightly different – like a description of a company that changes only a little for each group – but then everyone is asked the same questions thereafter, regardless of which company description they just read.

Therefore, when there are statistically significant differences in how different groups answered the same questions, we know exactly why it happened. This approach yields powerful results because it bypasses the subjectivity of most opinion polls.

A sampling of some of these results proves this to be the case.

• Most consumers (59%) think that being active in the local chamber of commerce is an effective business strategy overall. It is 29% more effective, however, for communicating to consumers that a company uses good business practices and 26% more effective for communicating that a business is reputable.

• If a company shows that it is highly involved in its local chamber (e.g., sits on the chamber board), consumers are 12% more likely to think that its products stack up better against its competition.

• When a consumer thinks that a company’s products stack up better against the competition because the company is highly involved in its local chamber of commerce, it is because he or she infers that the company is trustworthy, involved in the community, and is an industry leader.

• When consumers know that a restaurant franchise is a member of the chamber of commerce, they are 40% more likely to eat at the franchise in the next few months.

• When consumers know that an insurance company is a member of the chamber of commerce, they are 43% more likely to consider buying insurance from it.