1) Find a business owner and talk to them about their customers. Who do they think their target customers are? What are their customers' unmet needs?Where do they find their customers? What are their customer's demographics? What kinds of media do their customers consume? Etc.
I decided to interview a franchise owner of a company called MyFitFoods that my wife and I frequent. We are health nuts and so I was somewhat amazed to hear that we weren't a part of their top 20% target market. The target audience is actually people looking for weight loss opportunities and those too busy to prepare their meals. I like that they target not only gyms and doctors offices but also local businesses to add to their client base.
2) Next, go and talk to 3 'target customers' -- using the demographics/psychographics the entrepreneur described. As these 'target customers' the questions in the paragraph directly above.
Target customer #3 elected not to be recorded but I had a similar experience with all three potential customers. All of them thought more towards the idea of busy families with children; weight loss never came up once. Kids came up all three times. Oddly; I brought this up with eh business owner later and she told me that they don't have a plan for children at all. While teenagers could partake in the program it is exclusively catered towards adults.
3) Reflect. Does the entrepreneur adequately understand their customers' problems? Where are the differences? Why might these differences exist.
I'm somewhat torn... they are a relatively successful business and based on my interview she seemed to have a very clear plan about who her customers were and how they gathered them to the store. That said perhaps she is just 'missing' a market opportunity to add in a 'healthy kids' section for busy parents to grab lunches and snacks for their children on the days when they're just too swamped to prepare a healthy meal.
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ReplyDeleteHi Kenneth, thanks for sharing this post! I thought this particular assignment was pretty interesting, especially considering the varied responses that could be given from the interview questions. In your case especially, perspective brings an interesting twist to the way that the business is viewed. This seems to be the case more often than not; businesses (especially newer ones) might have a very different view of their services and intentions than their clients might and it is very important to continually review your business to make sure your objectives are in line with the customers' understanding of the company. My only question is what kind of business MyFitFoods is; supermarket, restaurant, or something else?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to check out my blog, you can find it here at: http://sofiaent3003.blogspot.com/
Yo Ken. Good post. The business owner I interviewed elected not to be recorded so it was nice to see what you got them to. It's cool that you found a regular business that is actually trying to revolutionize the industry by adding healthier snacks. I would definitely have expected healthier people to be the top 20 percent so I enjoyed learning that. The only criticism I have for you is to actually put the video into the post instead of the link. Here's my blog http://joebestblog.blogspot.com/
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