Blog 3 - Paper Topic - Due 24-Feb

This next blog is an opportunity for you to explore your paper topic. This is not a final contract on your topic - you can certainly change your topic after you right this. The whole point of this blog is to explore the topic enough so that you and I feel comfortable about your ability to create a full paper out of it. Here is what I would like to see included:

- Idea for the topic, fleshed out as much as possible - this can also include all the questions you have about the topic at this point. Use the blog as a brainstorming session for yourself to get your ideas out there and make this a first attempt at organizing your thoughts around the topic.

- Why is this topic interesting to you? Remember: this is a big goal for the assignment!

- What is the connection to the gathering and identification of customer insights and/or the design of valuable customer experiences? (at least, as you see it right now)

- Cite and briefly describe at least one article that is related to your topic (this can be either an academic article or trade article, at this point). Do your best to find an article that might be a central source or guidepost for your paper.

Do not forget the minimum length guidelines. Also, try NOT to write in sentence fragments, although a list here and there is fine.

I will be reading all of these posts so that I can provide feedback on what you have thus far.

Have fun with it!

Blog 2 - Qualitative Research of Online Social Behavior - Due 15-Feb

Well, this one might be a challenge, but I'm really curious to see what you do with this and I hope you have fun with it.

One of the big areas of insights right now for marketers is the whole social media scene.  We will try to spend some time in class talking about and checking into some of the quantitative data that can be pulled.  So, I'd like you to think about you might get at interesting insights about social media use (or interesting insights about people that you extract from their social media use, if that distinction makes sense), using a more qualitative approach.

What information would you try to elicit?

How would you get at that information in a way that would be most accurate and telling?

You can do this for yourself as the targeted research participant, the person you created a persona for on your blog, or the persona for your Nordstrom project.

I know this is vague and lacks direction, but that is kind of the point on this one.  I'll try to talk about this a little more on Monday, but I want you to the thinking about it before then, if you can.

Again, remember the guidelines for blogs (which you can find towards the top of this site) and have fun with it.  Really push yourself to think and write as much as you can on this one.

Blog 1 - Creating a Persona - Due Feb. 6

Well, here it is... your first blog topic. Think about the kind of information that a marketer would need to create a detailed and rich persona of someone you know fairly well, but who does not fit within your segmentation profile (skeleton).  The goal is to play with a tool that is intended to help you begin to gain empathy for someone who has a background and/or experiences that are different from yours.  With that in mind, choose someone who is more than 5 years younger or older, not your gender, and is not in the MBA or MPA program (or just finished or about to enter).  Beyond that, I'll let you figure out if the person is dissimilar enough from you to benefit from the exercise (so there is no need to clear your choice with me or Joanna).  

Keep in mind that this is public blog and that it is probably best not to use real names, so consider using an alias for the person. I'd be curious to know your relationship with this person, but if you have any concerns that they might read this and be upset, you can certainly choose not to tell me that.

With that in mind, create a persona for this person in a way that would be very valuable for marketers. Remember, what we are looking for here are detailed and nuanced descriptions about them that would lead a marketer to discover or identify key insights.  Of course, what you provide may just be the first nugget and the researcher might have to dig deeper to uncover the real insight, but the information you provide should be a great start.

To give you structure, I would like you to use the Empathy Map in the creation of your persona (which is on our class slides, the Business Model Generation book, and I also describe it below without the visual canvas).  I will also encourage you to use this in your project. The Empathy Map has 6 sections (numbered) and sub questions (bulleted) for you to consider:

1. What does he or she think and feel?

-- what really counts?

-- major preoccupations?

-- worries & aspirations?

2. What does he or she see?

-- environment?

-- friends?

-- what the market offers?

3. What does he or she say and do?

-- attitude in public?

-- appearance?

-- behavior towards others?

4. What does he or she hear?

-- what friends say?

-- what bosses say?

-- what influencers say?

5. What are his or her pain points?

-- Fears?

-- Frustrations?

-- Obstacles?

6. What does he or she hope to gain?

-- Wants/needs?

-- Measures of success?

-- Obstacles?

Please remember the length requirements for blogs as well as the grading criteria (all of which are available in the syllabus and on this class blog home page). Have fun with it!