Bar Lines

Recently, I surveyed several college students to get a gauge of how significant the length and time involved in waiting in line to get into a bar is on people's preferences to go to that bar. I think that there are implications for bar owners and the people who work their doors in order to maximize positive feelings relating to their bar, even if only from the experience of waiting in line.

My findings suggest that people are most definitely waiting in line and have a threshold in terms of both people waiting in line and time devoted to waiting in line at which a person becomes deterred from the establishment entirely. This is obviously on the average and doesn't necessarily explain the behaviors of all individuals, everywhere.

• Results

The results of the survey are based on 82 respondents. The respondents varied in age from 19 to 27, with a mean of 21.6 years. The respondent's genders were evenly distributed (Males = 41, Female = 40, No Response = 1).

Generally, it appears as though the wait time in lines is generally pretty quick, however, there are some individuals who feel as though they spend lengthier amounts of time in line ranging from around 15 minutes to 25 minutes. These are quite significant time investments in order to experience the inside of a bar. There was no statistical finding that indicated that female respondents wait in line for a different length of time than male respondents, which is surprising.

Here are the results of one of the questions in the survey. It reveals that the respondent's in this survey are definitely influenced by the length of the line in terms of going to a bar. The majority of respondent's indicated that between 20 and 30 percent of the time they would not go to a bar purely based on the length. Several respondent's had even higher frequencies of this preference.

The preceding distribution of respondents is even further warranted by the finding that the length of a line outside of a bar is quite a deterrent to those individuals who would like to attend a bar. Taking a look at the results from this chart, one can see that a majority of respondents felt as though the line outside of a bar to be quite a large deterrent, measuring an 8 out of 10. A very small number of respondents felt as though the length of a line had a small degree of deterrence, heavily outweighed by larger degrees of deterrence.

The importance of the length of a line outside of a bar to an individual also tells an interesting story. Based on these results, it appears as though lines are generally quite important to individuals in evaluating which bar to go to. A high frequency of individuals had this ranked very high in importance, while other individuals had this ranked as only moderately high. However, it is important to note the lack of low importance that a bar line plays in the minds of individuals going to bars. It is clearly something that they think about.

The number of people also seem to have an influence on the willingness of an individual to wait in a line to get into a bar. It appears as though there is a definite threshold at which individuals become deterred from waiting in line based on the perception of how many people are in line. At the point the line reaches 45 people, individuals are just not willing to wait anymore in that line. While the majority of individuals begin to be deterred from a line that has 25 people in it, this is not yet the point at which people completely give up on the line. At 45 people, or at least the perception of 45 people, becomes far too daunting to the person waiting to get in line and he or she thus removes him or herself from it.

People also tend to go to bars mainly because they have friends that are there. As the results of the pie-chart above indicate, a large portion of people choose a bar based on the fact that they have friends there. Other competing elements to this are the atmosphere of the bar and drink specials there.

Finally, I looked into whether or not people were even inquiring about the length or size of a line outside of a bar before even getting to the bar. I feel like this is another suitable gauge of indicating how important the line outside of a bar is in determining an individuals choice and behavior. A large majority (70%) have inquired about the line ahead of time, therefore, suggesting that the line is something that people are thinking about even prior to actually arriving at the bar.

Taking all of these findings together, I propose some thoughts in my conclusion.

• Conclusion

The length and size of a line outside of a bar has significant influence on our preference to enter into that bar or even wait in line. There are several reasons that draw me to make this conclusion. First, people are inquiring about the size of a line to a bar, either by texting or calling friends already at the bar or in some cases asking cab drivers whose typical routes may take them to and from the bar, which suggests that this is important information in the process of personal decision making. Most people also rank the length of the line outside of a bar as a very important determinant in going to a bar.

Based on the frequency that individuals don't attend bars based on the length of the line alone, it is clear to see that bar line length ought to be considered by management of the bars.

Alternatively, it may be management's prerogative to keep a longer line outside of the bar in order to feign that the inside of the bar is very cool. This adds an element of exclusivity to the bar, which is a concept that I chose not to test in this current survey. Exclusivity is important, perhaps in bigger cities and when individuals have more money to spend, but in a college town, exclusivity loses its appeal the moment people have to wait in line for too long or there are too many people in line to begin with.

There is a tricky balance to be struck by people moderating lines outside of a bar and the choice of management in terms of how exclusive he or she would want the bar to be.

However, there can also be services that bars may want to provide to their customers in order to keep them in the loop as much as possible, seeming though the line is an important determinant for individuals attending bars. Bars could look into broadcasting the length of their line over the Internet and making it extremely accessible via iPhone or Blackberry so that the knowledge can be portable. This will help keep customers informed and content.