Why They Buy:Introduction Part 2How to describe and understand your customer

Congratulations!  You just landed a job in the Marketing Department of On Deck, a small company that makes skateboard decks and a limited amount of skate gear.  Actually, you are the Marketing Department!  Your college friend Taylor started On Deck in his basement as a sophomore, and now he’s sold enough merch to actually move into a converted warehouse near Laguna Beach.  That’s because his designs caught the attention of an “angel investor” who pumped enough money into the business to give it a good kickstart.  A staff of five guys (all fraternity brothers of Cody’s) make the decks, and Cody designs the hats, hoodies and shirts that then get made in China. 

 Your task is to understand the skateboard market and help Cody to grow the business with a limited research budget.  You need to get a handle on how potential customers think about the emerging On Deck brand, and understand how “wood pushers” choose one board over others. 

 You have a variety of tools available, such as:

•  Interviewing boarders about their purchase decisions and product use.   
•  Conducting a focus group, where a small group of people discusses a topic, either in person or in some kind of online format.  
•  Stories, photos and diaries:  You can ask consumers to write stories about their own experiences with products or those of others.  You may also ask them to take pictures of people using the product, or perhaps to react to pictures they provide.  Or, maybe you can pay people to keep a diary about their product usage.  They may record how much they use the product, where and under what circumstances.   
• Ethnography:  A research technique adapted from anthropology that requires the researcher to “live with the natives,” i.e. to immerse herself into a natural setting where people consume the product of interest.  So, you might spend a lot of time at a skateboard park and get to know the life from the inside. 
•  Shop-along: You accompany customers while they shop in a store or online.  You can ask questions as the respondent looks at different options to get a sense of his/her turn-ons or turnoffs.  
• Survey:  Today it’s pretty easy and very inexpensive to conduct a survey, especially online.  This usually includes a number of closed-ended questions that respondents answer on a scale of some kind (for example, a 7-point scale with the ends labeled something like Strongly Disagree and Strongly Agree).  It may also include some open-ended questions that require respondents to write or type in their own responses. 

Assuming your have only a minimal budget (well under $1000), devise a battle plan to understand the skateboard market so that you can provide recommendations about what the company’s new products should look like, where they should sell, how much they should cost, etc.

     Assuming your have only a minimal budget (well under $1000), devise a battle plan to understand the skateboard market so that you can provide recommendations about what the company’s new products should look like, where they should sell, how much they should cost, etc.