Finding Out Buyer Behavior Part 2

For this assignment, I sought out to find one homeless person, one community member, and one existing organization leader. I chose these three people in order to gain a holistic insight into who would be affected and interested in my service.

While speaking with the homeless woman, I came to the conclusion that they don't have many alternatives. I explained my idea and asked what alternatives there were and which she thought would be the best. The woman, Shirley, explained that it's hard to find resources for the homeless due to the negative stigma that homelessness sees. The other factor that goes into the choices of homeless people is the longevity of programs available. Many resources as explained are short term and not sustainable. When programs are longer they tend to be more successful for those in the program from what I've gathered. For homeless people, the "post-purchase evaluation" is if the program they have gone through proves successful with getting them off the streets and in a good place in life.

I also chose to speak to a community member that could act as a potential customer of the program. Those in the community could hire the people we train in our program. I explained my idea and expressed some of the alternatives like workers in the different fields and doing things themselves and the woman I spoke to explained that while she would be willing to hire those in our program, she expressed that for many in our community they might not be as willing due to liability and quality of work. The way she explained it helped me put things into perspective. Those are some kinks that I think I could work out, I just have to think about it. I think the "post-purchase evaluation" for these customers would be the quality of work for the price. There are many factors that can go into this such as the amount of time it took for response to the call, the quality of work, and price.

The third and final person I spoke to was someone who runs an existing organization. After explaining my business idea, the man I spoke to gave me some insightful feedback. He said that the idea itself is great but that there are some things to be worked out like if I was going to work with the local government or work independently, how I planned to rehabilitate the people I take in, and how we can facilitate the employment of the people once they complete the program. He explained to me that I should be careful with people taking advantage of the resources I help provide. He also helped me think of alternatives and gave me the pros and cons of each.

 Final Conclusions: After this assignment, I think that now is the time to think of details. While the big idea did the job in previous assignments, now is the time that details are important because the details are what will divide my program from others and it's details that go into buyer decisions and evaluation.