Application Examples
The caravan purchase
Interview data
Interview topic
Purchase of a caravan
Interviewee
Mother of family of five
Duration of the interview
30 min.
Desire for progress hypothesis
Finding a better type of vacation accomodation
Idetified desire for progress hypothesis
Improved lifestyle under more difficult circumstances
Key-insights
What seemed to be a „normal“ purchase of a „mobile home“ turned out to be the desire to improve the family’s lifestyle. Both parents are avid kite surfer. However, finding the right kind of vacation accomodation after the birth of the third child is expetected to become more difficult and expensive. The parents don’t want to give up on their lifestyle. Quite the opposite: their goal is to even improve it.
At the start of the customer journey, the mom was interested in purchasing a RV. However, the caravan turned out to be the most suitable solution. During the research opportunities for improving the caravan experienced have been discovered as well as unexpetected pains and gains.
The solar heating purchase
Interview data
Interview topic
Purchase of a solar thermal panel
Interviewees
Greater 15 people who inquired about solar thermal panel installation offers for warm water generation in 2006 or had panels installed.
Duration of the interviews
20 – 40 min.
Desire for progress hypothesis
Find a solar thermal panel that is suitable for making new home or re-model compliant with the new law.
Idetified desire for progress hypothesis
Raise social staus
Key-insights
Close to nobody was willing to invest several thousands of Euros in a new solar thermal panel without the prospect of a positive ROI; in spite of a mandatory regulation. This let to „creative workarounds“ or technically poor and cheap solutions. However, a some of the interviewees were willing to significantly invest more money than necessary because they oviously were able to realize extravagant gains and raise their social status. It turned out that non-customers and financially less sound customers tried to obtain these gains as well.
Obviously, there had been a surpising willingness to invest if there was a payback in sight and the social status could be improved. These insights had a direct impact on the entiere business model design and value proposition, that subsequently got optimized.