15A

Figuring out Buyer Behavior:

The specific segment I have chosen are freshman college students at the University of Florida with busy schedules and enough spending money to buy a room cleaning service.

 I waited inside the lobby of my dorm to find the exact customer fit for this segment. After them agreeing that this fit into this segment and offering me their time to interview them, I conducted the interview. I did this for each interview in this assignment.

Interview 1: This specific client was a huge fan of the service. The one thing they brought up to me, however, was that there is a technically competing service. Lazy dorm, which is notorious for picking up laundry from students, offers a $70 cleaning service. Although this service is technically competition, the whole specialty of my service Is that it is other student’s cleaning each other’s rooms so as to not create any issues with transportation. Additionally, these students will offer a cheaper alternative because students are willing to do cheaper work than the adult workers of Lazy dorm. One final thing I made sure to ask the potential customer about is if they used Lazy Dorm. The customer said no because they had friends that did and it was never on time with laundry or easy to pick up or drop off. I think the weakness in how Lazy dorm operates was enough for me to convince the potential customer to buy more into my service than Lazy dorm’s. Additionally, my lower price points and the fact that it is another student enticed the interviewee as well.

Interview 2: This customer was partially into the program. They more stayed silent as I explained the service. I did turn the interview more to them in the beginning to try and gain customer insight. I asked if the person had currently been doing anything to clean their room, which besides spraying aerosol they weren’t. They had attempted buying air fresheners which they felt helped a little but weren’t keeping to overall room clean. This gave me the idea of offering free air fresheners at the start of this business to try and entice customers. Anyway, after asking this customer, I concluded they weren’t really taking care of their own room. This allowed me to then butt in with my explanation of my program. The one concern this customer had was that they pay in debit and wanted to know if the service would support a debit card because that is how they got their weekly allowance. I assured them that it did and they were satisfied and offered me their number for further questions and information about the service.

Interview 3: This subject explained that they occasionally wiped down their floors and windowsill and dusted off their surfaces. They expressed that they rushed this process but that they tried keeping a clean room in case friends came over and also just for health. I thought this was understandable. The fact that this student cleaned their room had two aspects to it. One, it allowed me to offer my service because I know they like to keep a clean room. However, it also meant that they felt they may be able to do this for themselves. After I introduced my service idea they felt it was interesting, but I was picking up that the student was planning on doing their own cleaning from here on out.

2. The three most important factors to these customers were price, quality, and trust. I will break each down. The price statistic is one that is pretty common outside of high end luxury goods. This segment is one comprised of college students, causing them to often worry about budgeting since they are doing it for the first time. For this reason, price was the primary concern for these potential customers in this segment, allowing me to have an edge because since my service relies on student cleaners rather than professionals, it can allow for me to have a competing price point.

            Quality is meant in the sense of cleanliness. Since I am hoping to enter the cleaning business, this means that quality is how well the rooms are cleaned. I would have to offer a training course and keep reports on the quality of the student cleaners. Often like Uber, I would ask for a $1 discount at the end of each session where the student can rate how well the other cleaned. This discount will incentivize reporting on how well or poorly someone cleaned and allow me to keep up the quality of the service.

            The last measurement not mentioned but that I determined is trust. Since I am offering a service where one can come into your room and clean it for you, it is important that the student letting another into their room trusts that cleaner. This allows for them not to be anxious about them cleaning their room and even almost offers the possibility of the student whose room it is to leave and go do work while the cleaning is going on. Obviously I would have to devise a way to tell character in doing screening for employees and cleaners, but it is an important thing to note as many potential customers only desire to trust the cleaner above all else.

3. The client is more likely to call in for this service, book it online, or use an app. Since it is an online platform, cash won’t be accepted and credit card and debit card as well as PayPal are the only forms of payment. This service is B2C so that the customer is buying the service directly from the business website or app. Since it isn’t a product it won’t be sold in other areas and the service can control direct customer interaction.

4. The cleaner dorm room helps them feel more right about purchasing this service. Just like how happy one is with the convenience of Postmates or Uber, you realize you are paying a premium for something you can do but in this case it is a trained person doing it and it saves you time and does a better job than you would’ve done. The after shock of seeing how clean the room is and the state it’s in will help the customer feel more right about the purchase.

5. The interviews are summarized above in each interview. They were actually described more in depth and can be referred to as Interview 1, 2, or 3.

6. Alternative evaluation is taken to by word of mouth and the internet. Because of this segment living in dorms and on a college campus, a lot of news travels by mouth because of the high density population area of similar people of this segment. Additionally, because it is a younger generation, they are more readily using the internet to conduct research than other segments. Purchase decision is made based on price, quality, and trust in terms of this specific service but price definitely leads the way in terms of deciding what to purchase for this segment. Post purchase decision is based on if they feel their money is worth the job that was done to clean their room.