The first person that I interviewed to figure out their buying behavior was someone who attends FSU. I was told that when purchasing a product or service that the most important detail of the transaction is that price matters most. They feel like they don't want to overspend on a product or service at one place when they can get a cheaper deal for essentially the same thing at a different place. When they want something they want to get it at the right price and feel like they aren't being ripped off during the process. Another important quality was of course the quality of the product or service. They don't want to just purchase any product or service without knowing they are receiving good quality with it. Most of their purchases came from in-store and not as much online as they rather see what they were getting in person.
The second person that I interviewed was a local student at UF. They had a different perspective when it came to buyer behavior. They believed that the most important quality when making a purchase for a product or service was quality and only quality. They were not concerned with pricing as all they were interested in was having the top quality product or service. They as well are people who purchase in person, if they are spending serious amounts of money on these products or services they rather know what they are receiving in person versus ordering online and possibly an error happening and something going wrong. They are very old fashioned and think in person is the way to go. The things that help them determine a good purchase to a bad one is the necessity to it and the outcome it brings them.
The third and final person I interviewed was a student from UCF. This person is interesting because a huge factor in deciding products or services is style. They are very trendy and always want to be up to date with the top trends from either products or services. They did mention that a big factor was quality, they didn't want to buy something that was trendy, but had poor quality. They want to be able to show off what they are paying for. Pricing was not mentioned so I assume that did not have much of a barring in the buyer behavior. The thing that matters most to this person was the style of the product or service and that was what makes them think if a purchase was worth it or not.
All in all, after conducting all these interviews it should that not everyone is the same, but instead people have different buying behaviors. Even though people have favorite things to target when making purchases, a lot of the same behavior does replicate and overlap in certain areas. Even though you might like different things, quality for example might still be on the top of that list for both people. Overall, I learned a lot from these interviews and it taught me different behaviors.
Alex,
ReplyDeleteSeems like you were able to capture an interesting snapshot of the college students’ segment by picking people from different universities. From your reflection, it is clear that you encounter more variety than you expected, and perhaps would need to either narrow your segment or do more research to find emerging patterns. I am intrigued why did you address your interviewees as “they” if they were a single person; perhaps knowing a little more about them (e.g. gender and age range) would help the reader understand better their motivations. Also, I would recommend you explicitly mention your segment in the post, so readers do not have to guess –I know the context, so I searched on assignment 12, but other readers might not know that. Overall, great job capturing insights and learning more about your potential customers.
I like how you expanded your research across the state of Florida and interviewed people from the surrounding major universities to gain a seemingly unbiased observation of people's buying behaviors and habits. It's hard to pin point the number one factor someone uses when purchasing something because I think the criteria changes from product to product or service to service. For example, price might be the major factor for buying dish soap, but quality is the major factor for buying a car. Although these factors change frequently, I think you found that quality and the value of your service to your clients ranks supreme amongst the rest.
ReplyDeleteAlex,
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you summarized the interviews you had. You were able to go into depth during each interview and find out the most important qualities each person had when going through the purchasing process. It is definitely true that not everybody has the same ideals when shopping and it is important to know your target market when selling your product.
Alex, I think it was a great strategy to pick students from various campuses to interview. There are many different factors that people take into consideration before purchasing a product or utilizing a service. To me quality is important and the monetary aspect is as well. However, depending on what the service/product is one if often time more important than the other and vis versa.
ReplyDeleteI think its pretty cool how you interviewed three different people and got three different responses. Even though its difficult to kind of hone in on one potential customer, I think it is still interesting in the way that you can choose what kind of customer base you want and focus on that. For example if their is a big customer base on people who like the new trendy stuff, you can somehow implement that into your service / product and potentially have a lot of customers. Or on the other hand, you can focus on the quality of your work as you know people aren't worried about pricing and you could make some decent money.
ReplyDeleteI think its pretty cool how you interviewed three different people and got three different responses. Even though its difficult to kind of hone in on one potential customer, I think it is still interesting in the way that you can choose what kind of customer base you want and focus on that. For example if their is a big customer base on people who like the new trendy stuff, you can somehow implement that into your service / product and potentially have a lot of customers. Or on the other hand, you can focus on the quality of your work as you know people aren't worried about pricing and you could make some decent money.
ReplyDelete