Assignment 15A

In my interviews, I spoke to two more college students and a businesswoman. First I asked questions about their alternatives and how these potential customers might make their selections. The style seemed to be a relatively unimportant factor overall, mostly due to the bag simply serving as a travel function, and not really going to be carried during times when appearance is important. All of the people I interviewed said that price was an important factor, but the most crucial factor as the function of the bag, and its ability to adapt to multiple situations and needs. It seems that to them a bag is a bag, so it doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Their purchasing is evenly split between finding novelty ideas online because they were looking for a specific item, or they would just wander across it in a store, only to realize that they need it. It seemed physical location would be better for those who didn’t already know they wanted the item, and online was easier for those to find the item when they already knew they wanted it. When discussing the ‘rightness’ of a purchase like this, my interviewees all said that they evaluate based on how well the product worked for their needs when traveling. If the bag they’ve purchased turns out to work exactly as they needed it to or better, they consider their purchase a good one. They feel like a purchase is bad if they end up not being able to use it for the intended purpose, or if it doesn’t last as long as they had hoped.

This segment chooses alternatives based on how functional they believe it will be, while still keeping the price in mind. Customers in my segment seem to be willing to purchase once they are made aware of the product and how it could fulfill their needs. Finally, they decide if they’ve made a good decision based on their actual experiences using the products, and how well they suited the needs the item was purchased to fulfill.