Introduction
Many marketers use the technique of persona development in marketing that involves the creation of customer personas or personality profiles and the specific triggers for them during the buyinh decision process. The current paper involves the creation of a customer persona for Nike shoes on the basis of an observation that involved an interaction between a customer and a customer sales representative at a multi-brand retail stores.
Persona Development
The persona development for customers involves the identification of customer roles, listing the needs or problems of the customers and creating message objectives for persona to address the needs of the customers.
A three step persona development cycle proposed by Michelle Golden includes the following:
- Identification of Persona Roles and listing all relevant personas by role .
- Listing the needs and situational triggers from the perspective of personas and definition of problems, concerns and symptoms .
- Creating message objectives for each persona needs that have been selected to address .
A customer scenario persona consists of a customer scenario and customer insights that lead to a solution to the problem for the brand . This document provides a customer scenario persona for a Nike shoes customer with an imaginary profile for the ease of the study. The insights help brands to understand the customer problems and the solutions to those problems.
In the current case, the problem of the customer is to find a comfortable and light shoe with good quality. Nike solves this problem by providing the customer with comfortable shoes.
Nike brand has been a pioneer in the production of light weight and comfortable sports sjoes that have been specifically designed for the athletes. Nike shoes have been specifically designed for athletes and provide comfortable and light shoes for sports atheletes . The customer insights about the requirement of Nike customers help the company in designing shoes for the customers.
Customer Persona for Nike Shoes
Target Audience
An important step in the area of persona development is the identification of the target sudeince for the products and services. The target audience includes the customers that are preferred for the sales of the company products and services and those who are likely to buy the company products and services on the basis of various factors such as demography, psychographics, geography, product usage and benefits. The target audience for the current example is based on demographic segmentation variables of age and sex, psychographic variables that are related to the personality traits of the individual.
Sam is an 18 year old boy who is physically fit, interested in sports, participates in sports events, prefers quality, ethics and cares for the environment.
Steps in Persona Development for Nike Shoes
Step 1: Identification of the target customer or persona roles
The customer persona identified for the current case is a boy who is enthusiastic in sports and needs a comfortable and light weight shoe to help him in his sports activities.
Step 2: Problem Identification
A problem or need that was identified by Nike for the target group that consists of athletes or people who are actively engaged in sports includes the need for comfortable and a light weight and good quality shoe that helps them during the sports activities to participate in the sports activity with ease.
Step 3: Solution to Problem
Nike launched light weight and comfortable shoes that are available at major retail stores and can be bought by the customers.
Customer Scenario Persona for Nike Shoes
Customer Scenario Persona for Nike Shoes (Deeper Insights)
Customer Scenario Persona for Nike Shoes
Customer insights and customer scenario persona for Nike shoes reveal that Nike has a high brand value and high brand recognition among the target customers. The brand is well known for its superior quality products and Nike shoes are popular for their light weight and comfortable nature. From the given case scenario, it is clear that both Sam and the customer service executive at the retail store were well aware about the Nike brand and the benefits and characteristics of the Nike shoes.
The marketers aim to position a brand correctly among the minds of the customers. The positioning of a product or a brand is considered successful when the target audience identifies the brand and takes the decision to buy the product. The customer scenario persona helps Nike brand in understanding the needs of the customers for a light and comfortable shoe and thus the company has designed such shoes especially for its target audience.
Changes in Customer Persona
In a real scenario, the customers with a similar profile tend not to be easily convinced by the customer service representative and also consider product price as an important criteria before making the product purchase. In the hypothetical persona, the competitor products were virtually ignored, but in reality the competitor products and their prices also play an important role in the buying decision.
Real Customer Scenario Persona for Nike Shoes (Deeper Insights)
Conclusion
Nike shoes are well positioned in the minds of the target customers. The popularity of the shoes are clear from the given example. Nike is a trusted brand among the athletes and sportsperson and its products suit the needs of the target audience. From the given case study, it is clear that customer personas are created by marketers to better understand the consumer behavior and to identify the various triggers that motivate the customers to buy the products. The triggers for the customers may be the solutions to their problems, high quality, high brand value, or correct brand positioning in the minds of the target consumers. The marketers may create hypothetical or real customer personas so as to create and interpret customer insights in-depth and understand the possible reasons behind the certain behavior of the customers. Brands that are successful in studying customer insights can devise strategy so as to address the needs of the customers by simple strategies. For example, customer insights about the longer payment time taken at large retail stores such as Walmart has led to the development of automatic payment checkout system that allows customers to quickly make payments at the retail stores and facilitate customer convenience by saving time. Retail stores are successful in addressing the needs of the customers by providing a viable solution in the form of automatic checkout system. Similar insights have been successfully used by Nike and many other companies to improve their products and services and thus enhance customer satisfaction.
References
Barker, M., Barker, D. I., Bormann, N., & Neher, K. (2012). Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. Cengage Learning.
Cobban, D. (2012, March 13). Nike Better World. Retrieved from Sustainablebrands.com: http://www.sustainablebrands.com/digital_learning/event-video/nike-better-world
Theinnographer. (2013, September 17). Customer Use Scenario tutorial. Retrieved from Youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTrE9sYPdIg
