The Cremation Association of North America partnered with Homesteaders Life Company to conduct a cremation motivations study, offering seven key insights to audiences in Phoenix and Nashville. This much-awaited qualitative research was provided by focus group studies conducted prior, four of which were in Nashville and two in Phoenix. These included discussion guides for each group, which were interestingly only women participants. “The research we have done at Homesteaders generally points to the fact that women are the decision makers and the ones more involved in these activities and planning – and that’s why we chose to focus on women,” says Pam Kleese, director of research and insights for Homesteaders. Barbara Kemmis, executive director of CANA, joined Kleese in sharing the results at CANA’s annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky.
We have summarized them for our readers below.
“Consumers want to focus on the person – not the body.”
Women from each group were alike in their responses; they talked in the same language about what they planned, how they planned it and what was important, Kemmis says. For example, “There was this focus on the person and not the body,” Kemmis says. “Almost never did they have an embalmed body as the centerpiece of the service they were having.” Therefore, having the body embalmed was not critical to study participants. This insight was a challenging one to hear – especially for the embalmers in the audience at the CANA convention.
“Cremation offers connection and flexibility.”
Cremation offers families the chance to enjoy a deeper connection with their loved one. “The memorialization options are much greater for those people, and they talked about doing multiple things – maybe they did some scattering and maybe they had some keepsakes,” Kleese says. “It just provided more flexibility and options.” Often having a physical representation of their loved one brought comfort to some of these women.
“Cremation provides simplicity and satisfaction.”
Kleese explains this point well, saying, “Simplicity is something we are kind of obsessed with – people are putting ‘simple’ in their names or emphasizing ‘simplicity’ in their marketing because that is what consumers are looking for – and it was a key value expressed by these women.” The satisfaction side of things comes from another insight: the women in the study in most cases kept the cremated remains of their loved one with them – and what happened to the remains in the future did not particularly concern them. They cared more about the essence and memory of their loved one.
“Is it about price? Yes or no.”
Some study participants did not have the money to choose a method other than cremation. However, others that did have the money, stated that they did not want to spend it in that way. For the purposes of the study, CANA and Homesteaders screened out people who did not meet a minimum household income because they did not want truly impoverished people to distort the results, Kemmis says.
“Provider perceptions vary.”
Whether it was a direct cremation family or someone who worked with the funeral home to plan a service, in almost every instance they bought products or services that did not come from the funeral provider, Kemmis says. In addition, the findings resulted in an observation that Kemmis wishes she didn’t have to make: “I think what it boiled down to is these women understood the central goal of providers as body handlers,” she says. “In other words, there was one problem they could not handle themselves – the body. They needed someone to pick up the body and do something with it, and so it really pleased them to find providers could do that and that offered additional services that were challenging – like getting the death certificate or making some financial and legal arrangements.”
“Consumers want more information.”
Even after going through the cremation process, many of the women still had questions that were not answered. Many of which involved how to handle the ashes, if there might be some kind of laws regulating it. They were also uninformed about the role that cemeteries play in final disposition, Kemmis observes.
“When it comes to cremation, there is a language disconnect.”
In many cases, the language that death-care professionals use to describe cremation just does not connect with families—and this poses challenges. There is a balance to be found between speaking with dignity and in a professional matter, while also using terminology that consumers are using.
To finish, Kemmis encourages death care professionals not to reject these insights, even if they may be hard to hear. “This is solid research grounded in good methodology, and this is the reality for many cremation consumers,” she says. “It is worth seeing how this applies even when it is hard.”