Assignment 12A- Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

Assignment 12A- Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

Choosing a segment:

            For this assignment, I chose a segment of young environmentally conscious students to pick their brains on their opinions of a reusable straw case. All three of my interviewers are people who have worked within the realm of non-profit sustainability therefore I wanted to use this opportunity to finalize any product plans or designs I have created. One of my students is a twenty-one-year-old male who works for the Alachua Country Conversation Trust, and has a specialty in environmental consumerism. My second interview was a remote interview via Skype because she is a nineteen-year-old Sustainability studies major who is working at a camp in Wisconsin. My last interview was a twenty-year-old male who currently works as an intern at the Environmental Protection Agency in the communication departments.

What I learned:

            I learned that the demand for this product currently exists, and they were all very passionate about that. Throughout my interviews, I learned that while many people have tried before to create a product like this, they have been unsuccessful. The issue in the past is that people have not created something like a phone case which makes it so accessible to the average consumer. The three people I interviewed all loved the idea of the product and were more than happy to share more advice.

            Most of their advice leaned more towards the side of marketing rather than the actual product which is what I was hoping to get out of the interviews. The interviewee who currently works at the EPA suggested a marketing strategy that works just like a grassroots campaign. For example, he suggested creating a page on a website like KickStarter where a ton of environmentally conscious ideas grow. They also all suggested the greatest way to spread a product like this is to start with organizations like the ACT or as large as the WWF as a base of consumers and then move on if sales are good to the rest of society.

            One last thing that I got out of these interviews is that when marketing this product, I have to play with people’s heart-strings. I need to make people realize that if they buy this product they are helping fight against pollution. Therefore, I should do something like partner with a non-profit that has a very specific goals like beach restoration, in order to maximize the impact which, I think is a very clever way to double the good a single product can do.

How I would describe this segment:

            After doing these interviews my excitement about the product really skyrocketed. They loved the idea and had a ton of visions of where it could go. This segment would not only buy this product but if I was the CEO of this company I would hire them as employees. This segment would be the driving force of this product taking off, without this segment I would not even have a vision.