Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

Alternative Evaluation 

Segment:  The segment that I chose for this post has attention to UF Students who live on campus or in a Fraternity/Sorority house.

Interview #1 (Paula):  Paula is one of my close friends, and she is a 3rd student here at UF, living in a sorority house.  She said she gets up everyday at 8am to make it to her 8:30am class that she has Monday through Thursday.  After this class, she has another class that meets everyday from 11:45am-12:35pm, and then she eats lunch at 1pm.  When I asked how her phone battery was by the end of her lunch, she told me it is below 20% before 2pm everyday.  When I offered the idea to her about this phone cable idea, she told me it would be very useful to her because she has all of her classes with one of her good friends, and that one friend always has high phone battery through the day.  She thinks that if she gets a new phone soon, with stronger battery life, she would not need my phone jumper cables anymore, so she said to look out for that potential issue.  Paula usually buys all of her electronic gadgets from amazon because it is the quickest and most reliable source of purchase in her opinion.  She also likes using Amazon because it is easy to send something back if she finds the product to be inadequate.  

Interview #2 (Jake):  Jake is another good friend of mine that I met freshman year here at UF.  He's in the MSF program, and is on track to do investment banking in NYC.  He said that many of his grad classes allow him to use his phone for academic purposes while he's in class.  This slowly drains his phone battery throughout his class, and he struggles to make it through the day without having to sit by a wall socket to charge his phone.  One thing that he said could hurt sales is the fact that a lot of his classmates plug their phones into their computers during class in order to charge them.  He said "I think this could impact the potential market of people who are sitting in class all day, but there are still many people on-the-go with their friends/co-workers who could need this product."  Jake also uses Amazon to buy his electronics because he doesn't have a car to go to a store.  He also enjoys the easiness of their return process if he doesn't like the procduct.

Interview #3 (Robert):  Robert is a 2nd year engineering student here at UF, and lives in an on-campus fraternity house.  Robert told me that he works everyday during the week in a research lab here at UF as an assistant to one of his professors.  He states that on these days when he works with his professor, he does not really use his phone that often.  After about 3pm is when he starts to dip into the below 50% range.  He said that from 3pm to 6pm is when he finds himself using his phone the most because he's catching up on all of the things he missed during work.  Right after dinner is when he usually finds himself below 20%, and in need of a charge, but he has another class.  He said he would find this product quite useful during the time he's sitting in class with his two friends.  Between the two of them, one of them is always on high battery, so he knows one of them would help them out.  Robert uses places like the Apple store in Tampa when it comes to him buying all of his electronics.  Robert is very committed to Apple, and he does not like to stray away from any non-Apple products.  This means that I would have to try and get Apple to be on board with my product.

Conclusion:  After conducting these interviews, I sat around thinking of what some of the problems were that could be addressed.  The biggest problem I think I'll run into on college campuses is that students are now charging their phones through the usb port on their computer while they're in class.  The only issue with this is that this drains people's computers faster than they expect, so they end up running out of computer battery.  The phone jumper cables will not have this issue, and it is a much more condensed form of charging than use of a computer.  I also think that the one of the most important ways for my product to expand would be to eventually make it available on Amazon.  So many people use Amazon nowadays, that it would be the quickest and easiest way to grow.