15A- Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

The segment that I selected to interview for this project and from past assignments is the portion of the population that works in or lives in multi-level buildings.

The three interviews that I conducted were with residents of my building that I know personally and live on my floor, the ninth floor. This requires them to use an elevator to get to and from classes, work, and activities beyond their home. Two females and a male, all 20-21 years of age, in school, with the male working part-time at UF.

Alternative Evaluation:

Among the alternatives to a statistically optimal programming, there is alternatives of lobby prioritization, price-based prioritization, and amenities prioritization. They choose between among these alternatives based on a preconceived notion of the best possible solution. If a person is selfish or greedy, they may want it to be based on what floor pushes the button first. If they are used to finer things and pay more than other tenants or make more than other businesses in the building, they may prefer that it is a price-based priority for programming. Price is not in the hands of the consumer, but the customer, so it does not matter to the consumer. The customer is the real-estate companies or elevator industry and its leaders. To them, price would be insignificant. If the product is as in demand as it should be, they would be willing to pay above market price for any of the programs or all of them. Quality, of course, matters above all else. The fact that this elevator programming is of higher quality than other codes is what makes the product unique. Choosing between the alternatives is purely up to the customer however, and the consumer is only affected by what they do not know about the product. No one ever stops to think about how well run an elevator is unless the machine is functioning improperly. Style only matters in the sense that variation between different prioritizations is distinctive. There are more than one important factor for alternative evaluation, but above all, quality is most important while price takes a backseat.

How/where do they buy?

Is my segment more likely to buy online or in a store? The purchase would likely be a contractual deal with the real estate/elevator companies, so not exactly a brick-and-mortar purchase.

Are they more likely to use cash or will they finance the purchase? Financing for this deal would be the way to go. If I were to make this happen, the work put into the programming and the value of the product would be too much too sell for petty cash. The interviews with the consumers revealed that those involved in the purchase would not be the consumers, and they are content with this fact.

Post-Purchase Evaluation:

When actively talking about the product in the interviews, the consumers believe that they would appreciate the properly functioning elevators, but in reality, the consumer would not realize the product was working until they encountered an elevator that was slow or impractically programmed. Only then would they believe that their use of (and their real estate developer’s) choice was right.

The quality mentioned before is what would make the consumer believe that they had made the right decision. The incremental amounts of time saved determine how well the products work. If my programs do not work, then there will be dissension.

From my interviews, I now know that because of the nature of the product that I am distributing, people do not notice the efficiency until there is an issue. Like traffic and lines at restaurants, these are inconveniences that can be fixed with streamlining and optimization.

Conclusion:

People have different preferences when given the choice, but the clearest cut “best” solution is still the factually optimized one for saving incremental amounts of time. While consumers are not the direct customers of this product, they are okay with this fact as that they do not feel the emotional pain of spending the money on elevators, even though it is included in rent and purchase payments. The post-purchase decision only works negatively for me, the seller, if and because the elevators might not function properly based on the programming, which is something to work out and test before distributing.