Sunday, December 6, 2009

Project Blog

Project Blog

One of the main things that I took away from this project was the idea that even after you get an data from potential customers, you must continue to go back to them as you work on your prototype. It’s not just a one and done type of thing. The whole idea of developing prototypes and eventually products is a long process that involves a good relationship between researcher and customer. For example, our initial data showed us that our target market valued relationships very highly. It seems like so many times companies will get initial ideas and just run with them. The need to reevaluate with the target market is put to the side and because of that, lackluster products are developed. I really enjoyed the emphasis that Professor Walls put on going back multiple times to our target market to continually improve our prototypes. Our first Girl Talk TV came out very boxy, and the girls found it difficult to hold. We then came up with a more ergonomic model, but the girls felt that the keyboard was too small on the newer model. So that gave us even more input for our product. It seems as if you could continue to do iteration after iteration and keep coming up with new improvements for our product. This was certainly one the key take aways from the project though, and one that I hope to apply later in my career—never forget about the target market and continue to go back to them during the researching and prototyping phase of product development.
Another key concept that I took away from this project was the importance of generative research. I have just never thought that photo journals from a few members of the target market could provide such key insights into customer wants and desires. Our group received photo journals from six girls that fell inside of our target market. They each took about ten different pictures of their bedrooms. Each one of the pictures revealed a different nugget of information that we just couldn’t have gotten from a typical survey. I don’t think we would have gotten the same sense of the desire of these girls to have ownership over “her” room. Also, the importance that these girls placed on their relationships was revealed from their stuffed bear collection given by family members, or bracelets made by a boyfriend that was proudly displayed on a desk. Each one of these pictures made it very obvious how these girls felt about their rooms without them having to say a word. Photo journals can really help reveal the real identity and tastes of individuals. They, along with other generative research methods, are important tools for revealing insights about your customers.
The first day we discussed the project in class, I honestly felt shear terror. The idea of essentially inventing a new product and doing research all semester to come up with that product was intimidating. But as the project progressed throughout the semester, each step was taken one at a time and really made the project much more manageable. One of the most overwhelming moments was the day that you brought materials to class to start working on our prototypes. It was at the point where we had all of this information, but what do we do with it? This is where my group made this project experience so much more enjoyable. I certainly couldn’t have come up with our idea on my own. We balanced the prototyping class with brainstorming product ideas and playing with the clay dough. That’s what I most enjoyed about the process was my group. We were able to focus and come up with quality work, but still manage to enjoy ourselves at the same time. During one meeting we spent perhaps four to five hours straight together, and it went by so fast because of how hard we were working and how much fun we were having while doing it. Another thing that made this project so manageable was the help that Professor Walls gave us. The structured class updates and work days that he gave us were phenomenal. It kept overwhelming anxiety from sinking into me. I felt like if we ever had an issue with the product, Professor Walls made it easy to ask for and get assistance.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Social Media Blog

Social Media has the power to provide companies with valuable customer insights and in some instances can create enjoyable customer experiences. First, let’s address the possibilities of gaining customer insights through social media. Someone in class yesterday mentioned that they had written a poor review of a product online, and
by the end of the night the company had contacted that person with a free offer to try another one of their products. Companies can easily monitor social media and other user generated content online to gauge how potential and existing customers feel about their products. This past summer I worked for a small skin care company. All of our sales are transacted over the internet through eBay, Amazon, and the company website. More than half of our sales take place on Amazon.com where users can write reviews of the products and have them displayed to anyone who is looking to buy our products. Since the skin care company was small and did all of its sales online, it was very important to monitor what our customers were saying about us. One of my jobs was to monitor customer reviews and flag the ones that warranted a response from the company. The company received about eighty to one hundred reviews a week which gave us great insights into what our customers were feeling about our products. For example, if we got an in depth review detailing how our salicylic-20 peel did nothing for their oily skin, then we would respond and make them an offer to try our glycolic-35 peel which may work much better for their skin type. The reviews off of Amazon.com gave us valuable customer insights and through those reviews we were able to offer customers a good shopping experience with our customer service. Companies can use social media then to gain valuable insights and use them to create positive customer experiences.
Professor Walls mentioned in class that you do not want your social media sites like Facebook to turn into a replica of the company website. He mentioned that companies must offer real value on their social media websites, or they could develop into annoyances to customers. I called up the head of the skin care company that I worked for this summer last week and asked him if beginning a company Twitter account would be a worthwhile endeavor. One of the goals of Twitter is to create a community of followers. Since the skin care company does 100% of its sales online, I believe it could be a good idea to make them feel more connected to our company through online social media. We are brainstorming and discussing ways that we could create value for our customers through a Twitter account. We could send out offers for discounts on our products periodically or perhaps we could send out skin care tips and advice. It will be valuable if we can draw a sizable following on Twitter because the result could be more repeat customers to our business.
One useful tool for companies to use to monitor what is being said about them on the web is through Google’s zeitgeist tool. I researched Puma using Google’s Insights for Search on zeitgeist. The search brought up a chart that displayed online interest in the company over the past five years and where there was most interest in the company around the world. Trinidad and Tobago topped the list of highest regional interest in Puma shoes. This tool can help companies get a basic idea of where they might need to spend more marketing dollars to promote awareness of their products. It also allows companies to gauge if they need to change up their website if they see that sales are doing well but website traffic has dropped off severely. Low interest online overtime should spur companies to conduct more online activity which could improve interest in the company as a whole. The hot trends search tool on zeitgeist allows companies to see if they are one of the hot companies for the day being searched online. It can allow companies to see if there is extremely harmful information or even great information that is being hotly researched by the public.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Blog 4 Wal-Mart

Blog # 4 Wal-mart

I believe that Wal-Mart has done as successful a job as it can with all of the customer data that it has amassed. I do not think that it is unique in its ability to create positive customer experiences at big box stores. If Wal-Mart could somehow make its in-store experience individualized, then it could have a unique advantage in terms of customer experiences over other competitors. Even with that said, Wal-Mart does have a definite competitive edge over the competition because of its discount pricing strategies. The article mentioned an instance of how Wal-Mart might advertise discounts on cold medicine to get people in its doors. It said people who typically buy cold medicine usually buy orange juice and chicken soup too. Wal-Mart then could optimally price orange juice and soup to maximize profits because they know that customers are going to buy them along with the discounted cold medicine. Every store does this though. My father manages an HEB, and told me that they employ the same techniques. He said for example that you might see discounted whip cream next to frozen pie crusts in the freezer aisle at their stores. That is a small example, but the whole store is based around combinations and “get you in the door deals” that will optimize profits. HEB also has a record of by the basket items that each customer buys. They don’t know who is buying what, but rather what is being bought in each grocery basket. This is what helps the store managers decide which items should be discounted and placed next to other items in order to create the best deals for customers and the company itself. So it seems that basically all stores employ strategies to keep there stocks shelved with consumers want when they come into the stores. Wal-Mart might have more information to do this slightly more accurately, but I believe their competitive advantage lies elsewhere.
Where Wal-Mart trumps the competition is in its ability to command its suppliers. “According to the Wall Street Journal, ten thousand companies each year compete to become Wal-Mart suppliers and only about two hundred, or 2 percent, get accepted. Those who do can see their business skyrocket overnight."^1 No other business is able to command the market in such a way as Wal-Mart is able to do. The article entitled, “What Walmart Knows about Customer Habits” is absolutely correct when it states that “Wal-Mart lives in a world of supply and command…” Wal-Mart gets to turn down 98 percent of suppliers. That is astonishing, and I seriously doubt that any other one store has the ability to do that. Wal-Mart is able to command what they want at what prices, and because the market share that Wal-Mart controls there will be at least one supplier that will meet its needs. Wal-Mart can under cut the price of the competition at any level because it can virtually control the price at which it buys products from suppliers.
As for the amount of data that Wal-Mart stores on individuals, I have no problem with it. People put intimate information about themselves on social media websites for the world to see. So I think it is silly to worry about what Wal-Mart knows what you bought last week at its store. For the most part, unless you are silly enough to believe that Wal-Mart is an evil empire trying to conquer the world, your information is safe in their database. If you don’t want them to have your social security number, driver’s license, or credit card numbers, then pay with cash. But since we live in a world where we give that information out online (credit card numbers at least) whenever we buy anything, I see no sense in worrying about Wal-Mart having that information as well.

^1 http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/03/creative-disruption-forbes-opinons-walmart.html

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Technology and Innovation

Blog # 3

It will be cliché to talk about, but one of the truly most innovative products that have come out in the past few years is the iPhone. According to your lecture slides creativity “is an idea that is both ‘useful’ and ‘novel’”. The iPhone embraces both of these ideas of creativity. Let’s first explore the “useful” component of the creativity of the iPhone. The iPhone includes every type of communication in one device except for old fashioned letter writing. On this one device you can make phone calls, check email, tweet on twitter, and make Facebook posts. It is so useful to have one device to keep in touch with the world with all of these different mediums of communication. What differentiates the iPhone from Blackberries and other smart phones is the novelty of its application programs. No other phone has the vast array of “apps” that the iPhone has. You can download an application for just about anything you can imagine, and if the iPhone does not have the application you want, iPhone allows users to program applications and submit them for other users to download and use. The iPhone is also very innovative, which according to the class slides is, “applied creativity”. Apple applied creativity to its touch screen interface and made it one of the easiest to use in the phone business. The ease of use of the touch screen and the user centered feel that the iPhone focuses on makes it the most innovative and creative phone on the market today.
The article “The New, Faster Face of Innovation” discusses how technology has allowed companies implement new ideas quickly across the company. Technology, the article states, is rapidly leading to innovations across the business world. I worked for a skin care company where I saw evidence of this throughout this past summer. The article states, “…technology also lets companies easily scale those ideas – or implement them rapidly and cheaply throughout the whole business.” Skin Laboratory, the company I for which I worked, came out with a new product this summer and wanted to promote it. We sent out a coupon code to our mailing list of past customers that allowed them to obtain a free sample of the new product if they entered in a code on our company website when making another purchase of one of our products. We were able to see the effects of the promotion immediately because the number of codes entered were recorded in a computer data base. Being a web based company allowed us to test the idea of free sample right away, and we were able to see the effects of it right away because of technology.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Perceptions

Perceptions

Dan Ariely emphasized over and over that perceptions and preconceived notions have a tremendous effect on people. He illustrated this point with several different experiments. My favorite of which was the math test given to Asian-American women. One group was primed with gender questions and the other with race questions before a math test. Because of perceived stereotypes, the group of women who were primed with race based questions out performed their gender primed counterparts. Dan Ariely’s primary lesson in chapter nine of Predictably Irrational is all about how perceptions can affect a person’s experiences. I believe that this relates to one of the points Kate Canales made during her presentation to our class last week. She told us that one of the worst things someone can do before you go to observe them in their own home is for them to clean up the house before you arrive. She told the class that if possible, you should disguise the purpose of your observations as best as possible. This is because people will develop ideas of what the researcher wants to observe and will try to conform to that perception. In order to gain valuable customer insights, we as researchers must identify before testing some of the preconceived notions that people may hold for the product or service that we are testing. Then, we must design observations and/or experiments to disguise the purpose of the experiment in order to eliminate preconceived perceptions of people if that indeed is the purpose of the experiment. This will help us as researchers gather much more valuable insights about our customers.
Dan Ariely stated in his book that “…we are trapped within our perspective, which partially blinds us of the truth…” He began the chapter with an example of how two die hard football fans from opposing teams saw the same play in a completely different light. His main experiment that he uses to illustrate the point that we are all at least partially blinded by our preconceptions is the beer test that he conducted in an MIT pub. He set up a blind taste test with one pitcher of Budweiser and another pitcher of Budweiser with added drops of balsamic vinegar. With no knowledge of the vinegar students preferred the beer with vinegar; with prior knowledge that one beer had vinegar in it, the students more often chose the regular Budweiser; and with knowledge about the vinegar after the taste test, students enjoyed the vinegar laced beer better. This illustrates as Ariely said not knowing about the vinegar or learning about it after the taste test, “allowed the true flavor to come out”. Another example preconceptions affecting viewpoints, which I believe was briefly touched upon in this book, is the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Being Israeli or Palestinian greatly affects the perceptions of who is at fault for the war. Israeli’s often view Palestinians as striking first and their attacks as only retaliation for the Palestinian attacks. But Palestinians see it in the complete opposite way. They often view Israelis as initiators of attacks, and they are only retaliating for the wrongs done to them. The perceptions that each of these groups hold against one another greatly affects who they view as at fault for the ongoing war between the two peoples. Ariely states that interjecting a neutral third party’s opinion if at all possible “can yield substantial benefits”. If our preconceptions are blinding us to the point where the truth can not be agreed upon by two parties, then Ariely believes it is very beneficial to have a neutral party interject its opinion in order to achieve a compromise between two opposing truths.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

10 Characteristics

Ten Characteristics of Me

1. Enjoy the Outdoors

I am always outside doing something. Three out of the five jobs I have ever had have involved me working outside, and they have definitely been my favorite. I also enjoy hiking, fishing, and just taking walks in the park. My favorite trip by far in the past couple of years was to the Grand Canyon for back packing trip with three of my friends. We went hiking over twenty miles of trail over five nights in the canyon, and despite going in the dead of winter with it snowing/raining for half of the time it was quite the trip.

2. Health Conscious

If a marketer was designing a product for me, then they should really target my health conscious bone. I really enjoy being healthy, and how do I do that? Play sports, lots of them all of the time. Right now I am training for my first marathon in October. The finish line is right at Niagara Falls and I am pumped. Also, I enjoy playing tennis, soccer, pick-up basketball, and any other sport where I can run around and be active.

3. Cost Conscious

I’m a poor college guy so I am always watching what I spend. Often at the grocery store, if I can buy the HEB store brand, then I will. Cereal, yogurt, milk, soups, pastas, if its Hill Country Fare and cheaper then I’m definitely buying it over name brand items. I also enjoy making a budget for myself and sticking to it. I like to save my extra money and put it away in my IRA or savings.

4. Love trying new foods

I love trying new things in general, but especially food. I had Greek food for the first time this weekend, and I really liked it. I would definitely recommend NikoNiko’s in Houston. It’s a lot of fun trying all different types of food because I feel that it lets you experience a bit culture just by eating. Next on my list of edible adventures is Indian food. If anyone knows of a good place in Austin, let me know it’d be much appreciated. Marketers could definitely reel me in by marketing products as new and unique.

5. My T.V. watching has switched to almost solely online

Hulu.com and network television sites are great. Somehow I always manage to miss The Office when it comes on, but now I can catch the next day for free online without having to buy a DVR. The only things I watch now on my actual TV are live sports. So marketers, you know where to target me now.

6. I’m beginning to do more shopping online

The only time I used to use a card to buy something online, was when I was signing up for a tennis tournament, but for the first time this summer, I actually bought two shirts online. Given it was with my Co-Op rebate card, I almost always would rather go to a store to shop for clothes or other things like that, but it was easy to do and I may begin to do a little more shopping online now.

7. Enjoy philanthropic activities

I have been on several mission trips with my church and really enjoyed them. I got to work in a food bank and help build a house in Honduras for a few weeks one summer. Also, I occasionally go out on Saturdays and work with Habitat for Humanity in Austin. I think this all might relate back to me just love working and being outdoors.

8. Value products’ usability over aesthetic appeal

This attribute relates to my cost consciousness. Generally, if a product works well, I feel that it is unnecessary to upgrade to a “prettier” model that does the same job at a higher cost.

9. Have a close family

I have three brothers and am very close to my parents. This can be important for marketers to know because I plan on conferring with my parents on probably all of my first large financial decisions. I plan on using them as a resource when buying my first car out of college and perhaps some other buying decisions.

10. Enjoy driving as opposed to flying

There is something about the open road that I just like much better than flying. The different sites that you get to see while driving along makes up for the longer travel times. The longest road trip I have ever taken was 24 hours one way from College Station to Los Angeles. I find it enjoyable to stop into small town cafes and people watch over lunch.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009