Customer Insights & Experiences - Nordstrom Project

Finally, I can say I made it! And I really enjoyed it a lot. I am taking about finishing my Customer Insights course. I admit that this course was kind of a challenge for me and a chance to change some of my paradigms. Being an Engineer without any previous background in marketing (besides the core course) it was not the kind of classes that I was used to. However the name of the course kept my attention when I received the classes available for me as an exchange student. After the first day of classes when the content of the course was presented I was totally on board. Later on, after learning about the project for Nordstrom I felt I received a premium in the course. I never had the opportunity of visit any Nordstrom store before. I had read about their legendary customer experience and quality on service in some classes before, but I always wanted to know what they meant about that. I might say that most of the topics that we covered were new for me, however one of my favorites was the concept of “creating a persona” and the empathy map tool. During the first phase of the project we worked with the empathy map in order to brainstorm ideas of how would be our target customer and her environment. This was a very helpful tool for the team to contribute with different ideas from our own experiences and try to picture how would be like to walk in the shoes of this hypothetical customer would represent our target. I found that it was very powerful to have a clear idea of the customer, not only the traditional marketing segmentation but also her feelings, influences, motivations and pains. Using images made things even easier to brainstorm ideas and create this persona. Developing this American girl named Cyndi helped me to understand her better, to know about her concerns and constraints. Almost automatically we started to find ways for how to make her life easier.

Another tool that was not precisely new for me but we used slightly different was the rapid prototyping. I had the idea that prototyping was to create products very close to the final products and almost fully functional. However by using rapid prototypes was a very useful way to explain our product propositions. When we were using the rough prototypes in paper with our participants it was clear to us that many times the customers cannot explain what they want, however they can easily tell you what they don’t want. By using these insights is easier to discard ideas and focus on the development of a refined prototype containing only the features and characteristics that were more appealing to the customers. The rapid prototyping is an excellent way to save time by not developing products or ideas that the market is not interested.

If I have to choose one concept that was least useful for the project I would say that it was the Business Model Canvas. I think this tool is very useful when developing business ideas or concepts. However in the case of this project it was not that easy to use it since we did have not enough understanding of the entire Nordstrom business model. We were trying to find information that would be available out there on which were the Nordstrom partners for instance, but it was not possible to find enough information about it. Also we were not sure about the key resources at Nordstrom for the mobile and online channel however we used assumptions instead. I would say this tool may work better when we have a better understanding and more information.

During this project I had different emotions and thoughts. At the very beginning , when we were given the paper explaining the structure and scope of the project I was very excited because it was not another school project only; there were people from Nordstrom interested on the results, which made it very interesting. Then the first team meeting came and I felt kind of lost, my team seemed they were very integrated already, but me, I was trying to get used to the new school, country and topic and making my best to connect with them. During this first meeting they were discussing and working very hard and fast but I barely understood what was happening; it was clear to me that they knew a lot about the topic. However in the following meetings I was able to catch up with them and understand the concepts we discussed in class, they were very supportive with me all the time. I would say that I learned a lot in the class but also I learned lot from my teammates. During the second phase of the project we lost a little bit the tracks when we turned our deliverable, the project was a little bit messy and we did not get a good result. However after we meet with the professor everything was clearer and we were able to continue with the project. This second phase deliverable might be improved by expanding the explanations and guidelines; I think this is one of the most important parts of the project and would be valuable to make sure everything is clear and how the deliverable should look like. In the third phase of the project I enjoyed the evaluation of the insights, especially our visit to the store and shop-along experience. I was fun and interesting to sit in the store and watching the behavior of people and talk to them later on. Also the coordination with the team was great and we were able to evaluate the insights from our own perspectives. By the end of the project I felt satisfied with our final result, the tool and features that were in the final product were very interesting and we thought these would help our customer to make her life easier. Also the fact of presenting videos was very nice; especially for us that we had the professional help from Christine.

My final conclusion is that I really enjoyed this class, the project with Nordstrom and being working with a very good team. I find this new knowledge will be very helpful for me in the future.

Ethics in the digital world - Information Gathering

The ethics of insight in the digital world is a topic that I have found very difficult to establish an opinion about. The quick evolution of the digital world has left behind not only users but also rule makers to define what is right or not when it comes to the web. Some governments have worked on policies to try to protect the privacy of their citizens in the web. One of the cases that I remember was a couple years ago Germany prohibited Google to use the street view application in the country, arguing this application intruded the privacy of the German people. This fact can be viewed as an exaggeration for some people but legitimate for some others. One could argue this is an intrusion to the “real” privacy of people who did not want the images of their houses in internet when they did not sign up for any related service or were asked for. However when it comes to “online information” that the people is freely uploading, is this a intrusion or is part of the service they are receiving?

The point is that the ethics in the internet is still in development, and there are not clear rules on what is right or not in the digital world, there is anything such as a universal ethical code. Since the digital world has not borders and involves so many different cultures, the task to unify a single code seems to be the main challenge.

The light regulation of the data gathering created a new business model for the internet where companies such Rapleaf are profiting with people information; this new business model is based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities. However as the articles show, many times they are getting more sensitive personal information that is not relevant for marketing purposes like real names, ID numbers, addresses and location in real time.

I have some arguments in favor of this practice but also I have others against it, but I cannot establish my real position about it.

In favor to this practice I would say that:

-          It has never been easier than today to get valuable insight about group of people and especially about customers.

-          This information, when used in correctly can be of a big advantage not only for companies and marketers but also for consumers. As the RapLeaf CEO Auren Hoffman says “…a more personalizable world is a better world”.

-          Many of the online services, specially the social media are free of charge. Users should be conscious that nothing is for free and they are paying for the service they receive by using the information they are loading when using this kind of services. That is the case of the Google search engine, you can use it for “free” but in reality you are paying back by providing information on what your interest for information are.

-          Users should be expected to be accountable for their actions. For this I mean for sharing information, ultimately they are the ones that freely decide what information to load in internet. They should be aware that the web is more a public place.

Against the practice one could argue that:

-          Users are not being asked for permission on how the information can be used or not. At least it is not in a clear way. Even when the services provide disclosures clauses, those are made in a way that few of the users will go through the entire document.

-          Tracking your behavior on line is one thing but installing cookies in your computer to track you offline is a total different thing. Here they are trespassing to private property (your computer) and it is not clear what can of information they could get from it. It is very likely that the user has personal information that could be gathered through this mean which would not be right.

-          When signing to a web service, your ultimate goal is not to load information to share with everybody. In cases like Facebook or Myspace, users’ intentions are to share their personal life with family and friends not for analysis or sale it.

-          There is no an entity in charge to regulate what information may or may not be gathered from the internet, so the criterion of what is right or not depends on the companies sharing their user information.  What is wrong for one company may not be wrong for another, even further, what is wrong in wrong in one country may not be wrong in others.

-          When companies are gathering information necessary to market research is a good practice, however as the WSJ.com exposed in its article “A web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name”, companies such RapLeaf are collecting more than necessary data such as names and ID numbers. There is nobody really taking care that they are doing what they say about what information they are being able to collect.

The only think that is clear to me is that in the future we can expect more regulations to appear in this topic; regulations that help to protect the personal information in internet. The new framework should include not only rules  and standards for the information gathering and use but also ways to make sure the companies comply with it. In the mean the ethical decision will rely on the companies gathering the information, buyers of the information and marketers using it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393173432219064.html

Creativity

1.      What are you personal experiences with individual creativity? Have you had times when you felt especially creative or, even, especially uncreative?

I would say that most of the time I used to think in myself as uncreative person and straight forward thinker. My engineering background had a big influence on me to adopt a more systematic thinking when solving a problem, trying to find the right (and only one) answer as in any math or physics problem. But this was not always the case, some other times I felt very creative and motivated to find different approaches to solve problems or inspired.

During a recent training on self-awareness I assisted, the trainer explained an interesting theory about behavior that I found very useful to explain my creativity process. Here some of what explained:

He explained the Behavior we have is in function of two factors, Personality and Environment. The former is considered a constant in the equation, which means that we hold the same personality during all the time and it is not very likely to change during our life (but can be affected by extreme experiences); the latter is a variable in the equation since we are exposed to different environments where we have different roles: school (student), house (son, daughter, father, mother, husband, wife), work (employee, boss), and so on.

Behavior = F(Personality x Environment)

That means that our behavior is dictated by our environment. Now, as the articles suggests, the creativity is also related to the environment as well. Relaxed settings were found the best places to inspire creativity. So we could use the same function for behavior to explain creativity.

Creativity = F(Personality x Environment).

In this case, personality can represent genetics, interests and skills. I just read an article where it is mentioned that according to some studies of identical twins separated at birth indicate that our ability to think creatively comes one third from genetics; but two-thirds of the innovation skill set comes though learning. (Dyer, 2009)

Based on this I could explain that I am creativity in specific environments where I have more freedom and not much pressure on me. On the other hand, I have experienced that when I feel pressured to make something creative it does not work and most of the time nothing comes up.

 

2.      What are your personal experiences with organizational creativity? Have you worked at companies that felt or behaved in ways that made them more creative or, even, especially uncreative?

When it comes to professional life I have experienced both sides of the coin in the same company. Working for a German automotive company in the manufacturing engineering department I used to have a lot of freedom when designing tooling for new projects introduction or to solve every day problems, the main restriction was to keep everything into the budget. The fact of being reporting to a local management made easier to have freedom in decisions.

But switching job to the Product Engineering department things were a different. By looking at the title you can imagine that being designing products would require higher creativity. However in many big organizations like this, the product is sometimes untouchable; there are many specifications and standards that constrain any change on the design. In this kind of environment the creativity is not as much required as one may believe. Main changes on standard and product design are responsibility of a specific group (R&D in Germany or US) where they were the responsible for all the creativity and analysis. In order to request or make a change the process is long and complicated.

In general, depending on the strategic crafted by the organization they can define which areas or departments need to be empowered to be creative in order to reach its objectives.  

3.      Do you think you, as an individual, are even capable of being creative by yourself? And, better yet, do you think a group within an organization is capable of being creative?

Yes, I considered myself as capable of being creative but it depends on the situation. I would not say I can be creative all the time and for everything. My creativity flows easier when I have something that I find interesting and challenging to solve and when I can have more freedom to think and operate.

The groups within organizations can be creative; it is just matter of finding the right people and creating the atmosphere to inspire creativity. However I don’t think there is only one formula for all the companies to have creative teams; teams should be customized according to the necessities and culture of the company.

4.      What do you think about this article and the way this author describes different creative types of problems and, thus, different creative processes? Should we trust ourselves just to know or sense when we need one type of approach versus another?

I found this article very interesting and I totally agree that creativity is part a skill that anyone can learn and practice to improve it. This theory aligns to others articles I have read about this same topic. I really think that people can improve their creativity when they have a real interest to work on it.

The creativity types and processes make a lot of sense to me; different kinds of problems require different approaches and I like the ones that are proposed in the article. The two creative types that are proposed make a lot of sense with one phrase I just read in one article “Innovation is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration”.

On the other I do not truly agree that we can trust on ourselves to decide the approach we need in all the problems. Sometimes is useful to have a guide or standardized process to use the right process on a given situation, especially when working in solving problems as a team.

Having different people working in a problem at the same time need to have a structured process that helps to bring the experiences from each one; it may be possible that part of the team thinks that one approach works better that the other and the other way around based on their knowledge and background. If they don’t have a clear process it could lead to a team paralysis where not outcome can be reach.

Senior Consumer Insights

During the last years we have been witnesses and participants (or victims) of the increasing technological developments in different areas. We passed from the days when the computers were exclusive used by big corporations to the point where they were an essential home device in every household and later on to be considered a personal use device. The continuous development of such advancements made the technology more accessible to most of the people. This accessibility helped to satisfied the basic need of the people of being communicated in a different way than we were used to; this and also created opportunities for new business models to appear on this Internet era. 

Nowadays one of the most popular topics between the Marketers has been how to use the new communications tools to get closer to the customers and also in a more interactive way. As mentioned in the previous blog, everyday there are new gurus that assure they have the key to help business to take the most from the Social Media and the e-business, using these tools not only to reach more customers but also to get insight information that could be valuable for the companies

In parallel to the IT technology some other areas have done meaningful developments that have shape our present, which is the case of the medical advancements. During the 20^th century made possible to gain 30 years in life expectancy, which together with the higher birth rates in the post-Second World War years had resulted in a different new demographic composition. The expectation is that the aging population will continue to increase in the upcoming years. The new social structure will have different implications in different areas such as economic growth, care giving, living arrangements and quality of life.

Under the above scenario new challenges will arise for companies looking for attracting and retaining more customers. It looks like most of the companies are focusing their efforts in new technologies and emerging channels to reach their customers. However they need to pay attention to include the growing senior segment in their strategies and not underestimate their value as consumers.

Based on the above information I would like to go deeper on the senior market segment and answer some of the following questions

• Is there only a senior segment with similar necessities and tastes? Or are there many different senior segments with different characteristics?

• How is the senior segment attitude toward technology and Internet usage?

• Are the Internet marketing efforts suitable for this market?

• What are the needs for the senior people and how they look for ways to satisfy these needs?       

• What are the best ways to get Senior Consumer Insights?

In order to define the scope of this research I would like to focus in the post-retirement life of American senior people. I would like to focus especially in senior retired people looking for re-start their lives abroad and try to understand what make them look for the expatriate adventure in this stage. Also I would like to find out what are the most common difficulties they face after taking their decision and starting their new lives abroad. 

Social Media Insights

Nowadays one of the most discussed areas of insights for marketers is social media. It looks like everything has something to say about the best way to use them as marketing tool, either for companies to interact with customers or as source of insights to understand the customers in a best way.

Every time there are new companies or gurus that appear saying they have the key to understand how to get the most from the social media for marketing.  They offer new ways to measure the digital world and help the brand agencies to maximize the value of their social marketing programs. That is the case of Buddy Media, who recently announced a strategic partnership with eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers to help them to optimize their social communications on their own media and also quantify the impact of the earned media using meaningful metrics. They propose as meaningful social media metrics the reach / frequency, demographics, online behavior and benchmarking of competitive brands in the social landscape. (Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com, 2011)

The reality is that the social media is an emerging phenomenon, which is still in evolution and has not been completely established, there are a high variety of social networks available for different purpose and some of them do not last long time and others are appearing. The ones that have survived the most time are constantly adding new features and are still developing the business model.

Additional to the evolution of the social media tools that are available there is one more factor that is important to consider, the way the people is using these tools. The fact that the user is not required to proof his / her identity has made possible for people to create alternative life on the web and the information it cannot be as reliable as the experts may think.

Under this scenario it is not very likely that the information generated is a fully reliable source of customer insights.

BLOG 1: PERSONA

Margarita is a 69 years old Mexican woman who lives in Guadalajara, Jalisco. She was widower in 2005 of her only marriage; from which she grew up five daughters, all of them married by now. She has 9 grandchildren and two brothers older than her. Her family visited here frequently but not as much as she would like.

Margarita owns a well know restaurant in Guadalajara, which is run by the oldest of her daughters. However the performance of her business has not been as good as it used to be many years ago. Due the business situation she cannot afford the life style she would like to have; however it is enough to hold her big house where she lives and an apartment in the beach.

About five years ago she got an unusual decease that took her mobility, after a lot of hard work of on many rehabilitation sessions she was able to recover almost all her mobility. However she got some collateral damages that affected her autonomy. She walks only short distances using a cane now; also she is not longer able to drive. But life goes on and she is rebuilding her life now. She got back to her aerobics classes every other day where she can meet with some of her friends. It can be said that she has a lot of women friends; most of them are around her same age that share similar backgrounds and problems.

1.       What does she think and feel? 

She feels alone, most of the time she stays at home by herself; “my daughters are very busy and they have not time for me” she thinks. She is afraid of being a burden for her family and also she is not comfortable with her current situation where she depends on others to go out and get her things done, every time she needs to go out she calls to a driver to take her but does not like to do this frequently. She feels that he is not capable of many things especially when it comes to the use of technology as cell phones and computers. 

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2.       What does she see?

Every morning the newspaper is delivered to her door, she is interested on different kind of news and articles related to her community as well as sports; she also likes to check if there is any upcoming event or special sales.  She dedicates long time of her day to watch the TV, she likes to find movies during the day and follow the soap operas at the evening. 

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3.       What does she say and do?

She says that there are many things she would like to do but she cannot because of her movement impairment. Every other day she enjoys of going to the aerobics classes for seniors. Also one of her hobbies is to knit clothes for her grandchildren and also for her daughters. Sometimes she complains that her family is very busy and they have not time to take her to do the things she wants or need to do outside. She says that is not capable of doing anything related to technology. When she feels optimistic she says that it is time for her to take the control of her life back, face her fears and do the things she wants by herself besides her impairment. She also says that she needs to accept her reality and her loneliness. However she is not optimistic every day.  

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4.       What does she hear?  
She hear many different people every day, she likes to talk by phone with some of her friend, sometimes they invite her to go out, other times they talk about their problems with them or within their families. Some other days she receives calls from her brothers, which make her very happy (she loves to know about her two brothers). Almost every day she also receives the calls of most of her daughters at night to say hi and talk about how their day was.

However not everything what she hears is what she wants to hear. Many times she receives feedback, mostly from her daughters, when she is complaining about her situation and giving up. They always try to encourage her to put more effort and do things by herself; however she argues that they do not understand her

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5.       What are his or her pain points?

She yearns for her old days, when she used to have control of her life. She remembers when she was able to do the things she wanted without depending on someone. She is afraid of  being a burn for her family in the future, and even worse to be more dependent of others around her. Basically she is afraid to lose the most valuable thing for her: control.

As most mothers she is very concern about the happiness of her family, specially her daughters and grandchildren. She is always worried about any problem that her daughters would be facing and tries to support them the best she can. Fortunately for her all her made a good life and happy, with minimal problems.

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6.       What does she hope to gain?

She is working hard to rebuild her life and she is positive most of the time about the future. She expects to improve her condition as much as possible. Eventually she would like to get more control over her life and be able to do what she wants when she wants.