Working out who would buy a new home-working product

The question

A consumer technology company had designed a new home-working product around a particular kind of person, and was preparing to bring it to two markets, the UK and Australia.

Marketing wanted its plans in each market to start from whoever would actually buy it: who that was, what would persuade them, where to reach them, and how interest would hold up once people saw the price.

Our approach

A product’s design target is rarely its only buyer, so within each market we identified the people who matched it and compared them with everyone else who might buy.

Interest was asked twice, first with no price and then at a stated price, and for part of the target, passive data on how people actually use social media sat beside what they told us about channels.

What the team came away with

For each market, marketing had a profile of the likeliest buyers, set against the person the product was designed for, so its plans could start from the people most likely to buy.

With it came what would persuade them, how stated interest moved once a price was shown, and where to reach them: the channels, interests and kinds of partner that fit each market.

The read of media came partly from what people actually do online, so the team could plan targeting from behavior as well as from what people say about themselves.

Both markets were read on the same terms, from the same questions, so the team could compare them directly when it set each market’s plan.