Questions:

This exercise involves interviewing three customers to determine how they begin their buyer behavior process. Specifically, I'd like you to focus on the first two steps: need awareness and information search. This information is critically important to helping us maximize our marketing efforts.

Here's what you should do.

1) Pick a segment. In class, we have discussed how you might intuit the existence of segments that might exist in your venture's market. For this exercise, you must pick one segment.

2) Find three people who would fit that segment and arrange to interview them. These interviews, if conducted properly, should take about 10-15 minutes. Any less, and you won't be able to obtain adequate information.

3) Begin with need awareness. In earlier exercises, you have identified an unmet need and developed a solution. If the person you are talking to does not have the same unmet, then you need to move on. You may not include this as one of your three interviews. If the person you are talking to does have the problem, then you're on the right track! For need awareness, we need to figure out at what times, situations, places, contexts, etc., their need becomes the most salient. The questions you ask should be related to determining exactly when, how, and where their need awareness occurs.

4) Move to information search. When the person you are interviewing becomes aware of their need, what is the very first thing they do to find a solution to their problem? What sources of information do they look for? When they search in Google, what are their search terms? Do they talk to friends and family?

5) Report the findings of your research. Simply summarize what you learned in the interviews.

6) Draw conclusions. Based on what you know about this segment and what you learned in your interviews, how would you succinctly describe this segment in terms of need awareness and information search?

---

Answers:

The segment I picked was young entrepreneurial minds. I am actually traveling around to some local colleges to meet with young entrepreneurs. At these young entrepreneur meetings I am able to talk to students regarding purchasing real estate.

Interview 1. James is a college student that is graduating at the end of the year.

Interview 2. Eric is an entrepreneur that has already started two successful companies.

Interview 3. Sarah is a UF college student that is working on a fashion line with another student from UCF.

I had one interview with a UCF student and she did not have the same unmet needs. She had no plan on ever buying a house, and her parents always rented her whole life. I focused on interviewee’s that had a pose for being a young entrepreneur. I realized that not everyone is cut out for the position.

Most students I had the opportunity to interview understood the assumption that one-day they planned on purchasing a house. All the students’ realized a house would be the largest purchase of their life, but liked the idea of using the Internet to purchase and search for a house. Most of the students used the Internet to search for apartments and mentioned doing the same thing when purchasing the house.

I think students are more interested in renting then purchasing a house. Most students I spoke to, even in the young entrepreneur meeting, had little interest in purchasing a house at that moment. I think students should start looking to purchase a house much earlier in life. Smart students can buy a house during freshman year, live in it, and rent out of the other rooms to help pay off the mortgage.

---

---

Please help find new Steemains and FOLLOW/RESTEEM/UPVOTE :)