Customer Profile - Finding Customer Gains

The last and final piece of the Customer Profile is the expectations or “Gains” that consumers have when they use online shopping platforms. Some of these may be labeled as required gains where consumers find they are a necessity i.e. ‘Must-have’, whilst others may be expected gains where they would feel more like ‘nice-to-haves’.

Figure 4.4.1 - Third Component of Customer Profile

For this section, we really wanted to find out what were the expectations when shopping online, and how they would benefit from stated features or functions.

Y: “Mmmm, Filters - Price filters or other types of filters. Categories! Items must be well categorized. This will help me to find what I want easily and quickly. Also must be clear in the details of delivery, for example Momoshop will state the expected time you have to wait to receive the item.”

C: “Search must be accurate, recommended items after the search must be related or items that I might be interested to purchase too. Search results must show some basic details so I can decide if I am interested, instead of making me click an item to see even the most basic details. If I don’t have to click into each item to view the basic details, I can already do comparisons while viewing the search results displayed. Filtering or sorting functions are important too.”

Again it was noted that the some interviewees highlighted more points related to the search and comparison phase of the shopping. For them, online shopping is focused on finding items easily, comparing details and prices and at the end finding the most value for money option.

Other comments were more comprehensive of the entire user journey while shopping for an item. From browsing, to search and recommendations, viewing item details, reading up on the item reviews and finally to registering an account, the checkout and payment process.

L: "Make browsing simpler, categorizing must be very accurate & the overall user experience must be comfortable. Reviews & comments must be allowed so I know the quality of the product I’m buying. Registering for the platform must be easy, and paying for items must be quick and simple.”

Even so, one major point was brought up in all our conversations - Trust. With numerous cases of credit card fraud or people stealing information, security and safety becomes a major consideration for online shoppers. Our interviewees had two major

causes of concerns (1) Do you trust the quality of the product and (2) do you trust the security of the payment?

Y: “Trust - sometimes I don’t trust the quality of products on a platform - for instance Taobao, some products are imitations and poor quality.”

C: “Reviews on seller or products and rating systems are important - so that I know who to trust. The product quality must be good.”

H: “Reviews & ratings - very important for trust. Safety for payment.”

Besides the issue of trust, the general consensus garnered from all our interviewees was that they wanted to buy quality products through more accurate search and reviews, be assured of a strong payment security and have an overall easier task navigating while shopping.

Though these functions aren’t revolutionary in today’s digital age, it is reflective of how we are often bombarded by so much information sometimes there is an overload of news, offers and promotions. Consumers that feel there are too many options and there is an information overload would seek solutions that allowed them to filter and sort through the different sources of information easily.

The resulting expectations are mapped along side parts of the user journey where they belong and can be summarized in Figure 4.4.2 below. Here the user journey also represents some of the tasks or “Jobs” consumers were trying to achieve when they choose to do online shopping and we can see how the expectations or “Gains” match up to them.

Figure 4.4.2 – User Journey & Expectations

Each step of the user journey shows some of the expectations that they have, and it helps us to see how users feel about each part of the journey. At the same time, we then put together the list of “Gains” according to the level of priority or ranking that our respondents indicated.

Figure 4.4.3 – Ranked Customer Gains Section

According to the interviewees, the quality of the products available or being assured of trustworthy sellers tops the chart. Nobody wants to be browsing and searching online to

keep running into scams and fake goods. The requests for product review and seller ratings are but tools with which the users are able to discern for themselves if the items they are keen on purchasing are really what they see on photos.

The second ranked item was the security of their personal information or secure transactions. Even though this item was only mentioned by interviewees after they talked about products and browsing, they explained that this was just a really basic requirement that they didn’t think about at the start.

H: “If you can’t trust the site to keep your information safe, why would you even want to shop there? They all need better payment security and protection for consumers against fraud etc. many older folks are being tricked etc.”

Coincidentally the next couple of items ranked highly by our interviewees also corresponded to the first two phases of the user journey – the search and browse, followed by the comparison stage. They expected the search logarithms to return accurate results and recommendations, speeding up the time needed to find items with clever filtering functions, and also the ability to make comparisons easily – perhaps something that no app or site has managed to nail so far, but we will look into this in the following section.

The way products are categorized will also determine how a user has to navigate through the pages, and users hope to benefit with an easier time using the platform. This is followed by the simplicity in the way information is displayed and also the ease at which users can make a purchase.

Some of the “nice-to-haves” include a simple sign up process if needed, as some platforms require you to have an account to use it. Although this is not so much of a hassle these days as many allow 3^rd-party integration such as signing up using your Facebook account or your Google account. Our interviewees also mentioned good customer service that is available when you want it, and reward points as possibly some great new benefits online platforms can provide for consumers.

Y: “Customer chat? I think some websites have it and even though I may not use it too often but I think it will be a nice to have when you really need to ask something you don't have to write emails and wait for replies.”

L: “VIP or Birthday Reward Points that could be used across various sites - such a user experience would be cool.”

All in all, we wouldn’t say this list of expectations are too much, customers are really looking for features, functions that would lead to benefits in terms of Usefulness and Ease of Use. Both studies from Childers and O’Cass have touched upon these 2 building blocks to ascertain technology adoption by consumers; here we have just taken a different approach in finding out what are the bits and pieces that matter to consumers.

Having taken you through Customer Jobs, Pain Points as well as Customer Gains, we now can proceed to place all three components of the Customer Profile on the same page. In the figure below is a clearer picture of how it all fits together.

Figure 4.4.4 – Completed Customer Profile for Online Shopping

A consumer’s objectives and expectations are derived from their desire to utilize online shopping to purchase goods, thus we are considering them to be identical for both platforms. However, here we have chosen to present both sets of frustrations - those while using apps and those while carrying out online shopping via websites, so as to make it easier for you to see how the Pain points can be attributed to the platform in question. Here we also note how some Pains occur in both sides but in varying degrees.

In Mobile Apps, users felt they were unable to carry out any comparisons, whilst in Websites they felt it was difficult to do them.

In the next section, we will examine the value that each platform is able to bring to the market and subsequently when matching Value Map to Customer Profile we will also consider each platform independently.