19A - Idea Napkin No. 2

Me

I am a 4th-year Finance and Statistics major from Naples, FL. I have always been good at understanding the big picture of things as well as being able to look at problems from a quantitative perspective. I have served on the executive board of the Student Finance Group for several semesters as well as Community Service Chairman for my fraternity. I interned as a Risk Consultant with RSM this past summer. I want to bring my idea to life to make people's lives easier and to hopefully allow it to grow to help people all over the country/world.

What I am offering to Customers

I am offering an app-based service that would allow people to locate open parking spaces in the Gainesville area specifically on the UF campus and the surrounding area. It will crowdsource data from other users who will be able to report open spots, similar to the way the traffic app Waze works.

Who I am offering it to

I am offering it to students and faculty of UF, as well as anyone with a car who lives in the area immediately surrounding the UF campus. These people all would be using either UF or city parking i.e. they do not have a reserved parking space. They also would be frequent users of their cars and also have busy lives that make spending significant time searching for a parking space illogical. I believe these characteristics fit many of the people here.

Why do they care?

They care and would pay for this service because time is money, and this service would save significant time the more it is used. Therefore if a user frequently uses their car, the time it would save would add up quickly. It would also lessen the frustration that occurs when you have to drive around for a while searching for a parking space. Improved attitude and ease of life is also something I believe customers would be willing to pay for.

What are your core competencies?

I believe that I am a natural leader and would be able to find people to help bring this idea to life and sell them on my vision. By getting the right people on board to develop this app/service, I would be able to ensure that it works to my standards and actually provides people the services that I want it to be providing. By giving users a working easy to use service, I believe my idea will be a success.

Reflection

I only received a single positive comment on my last post. I believe my idea napkin was overall very comprehensive and that there was not much to change. I think I have a good grasp of myself and my idea.

18A - Create a Customer Avatar

My typical customer is a college student affluent enough to own a car and lives close to campus. They are between the ages of 18-22. They enjoy hanging out with friends, partying, playing sports, working out, etc. They drive any sort of car but it maybe something like a ford or a jeep. They like watching TV shows like the office, it's always sunny in Philadelphia, Rick and Morty, and game of thrones. They don't have any kids but they may have brothers and sisters. They probably tend to be liberal because they are college-aged. They don't really read that many books. They feel like they are older and more mature than they actually are.

I am in the same age range as the customer avatar and as such share a lot of things in common with this hypothetical customer. I do not think this is a coincidence as I based it off of the current culture of this age range of people so it stands to reason that I would have many things in common with them.

15A- Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

I interviewed 3 more UF students with cars living off-campus, without a reserved parking space. Since the only other "service" that really acts as a solution to this problem is having a reserved space, the metric that most comes into play in making a decision is price followed by location/convenience factor. Based on my discussions with these three students I have gathered that the main alternatives are: city parking, reserved spot, and not having a car at all. While not having a car is the cheapest it also sacrifices a lot of utility. City parking is the cheapest parking decal but sacrifices location and convenience, which is why my service would be useful.

For a product like mine, the purchase would occur on their phone as it would be an app. Also, in my interviews, I learned that all three students have no qualms with online shopping. They are more likely to use cash/credit card to make purchases.

They evaluate their purchases based on either how much the service improves their lives, how much they enjoy using the product, and whether or not they think they got a fair deal for whatever the product/service is. They would think the purchase was a bad idea if the utility they receive from the product/service is not as great as they anticipated.

Based on these interviews, I've learned that my segment values price quite a bit but also would be willing to pay more if they feel the utility they get from the service is significant. They enjoy purchasing online as they are mostly younger people who believe that it is more efficient.