Week Twelve Reflection

This past Tuesday in HONB 200-02, the students did not have to attend class at its regular time. Instead, each SMARTProject group was required to meet individually with Professor Spotts to go over the progress that we had made on our customer discovery memos at that point in the week. Upon meeting with Professor Spotts, we began by showing him the most important statistics that we had gathered from our 27 distributed consumer surveys. Such relevant information included:

• 14 survey respondents are heavy sleepers, 13 are light sleepers
• 20 survey respondents hit their snooze button multiple times
• 19 respondents, or 70.4%, would consider investing in the BedBug product

We relayed the highlights of our gathered information to Professor Spotts, who then provided us with some advice in terms of ways in which we can go about marketing the product to our future target market. Additionally, we were then questioned about the research that had been conducted thus far on the industry that our product falls categorized under. Such research was suggested to be done via the information databases found online, known as IBISWorld Industry Reports and MarketResearch.com. However, given that our product is unique in both its technological functions and its close relation to bedroom furniture, the BedBug does not belong in any one industry. Rather, the market research gathered for it can be found under a combination of multiple industry reports, including mattresses, bedroom furniture, and furniture wholesaling in the United States. 

As I was in charge of conducting research using the IBISWorld Reports, I began to heavily research all of the above stated industries on the website immediately following our group meeting. I was able to find multiple reports containing adequate information valuable to the BedBug's market research, such as the industries' performance over past recent years. This variance in the performance levels allowed me to assess the potential that BedBug would have to be successful in future years, based off of the industries that it could belong in. From this, I was able to write my one page summary on the IBISWorld Industry Reports for my group's customer discovery memo. 

On Thursday, the business students had their first combined class with the engineers in weeks. While the engineers of each group have been tirelessly working on developing the product to turn the SMART ideas into realities, the business students were able to use this class time to discuss and inform the engineers on everything that we've been working on thus far in terms of the discovery of our products' target customers. During this time, each group was assigned the task of developing a customer process in which we predicted the anticipated before, during, and after reactions of our consumers upon addressing the painpoint that the BedBug is designed to fix. 

My group determined that the before phase of the painpoint involves the consumer sleeping. The during phase refers to the awakening of the sleepy consumer, upon which they realize that they have overslept/missed their alarm for whatever reasons, and are therefore late for any important engagements that they had planned for that day. Finally, the after phase revolves around the stressed consumer rushing late to their class, job, interview, etc, and dealing with whatever consequences result from their delayed arrival. The groups then drew up charts on the whiteboards that consisted of sections: quotes and ideas, thoughts and feelings, and actions and behavior. Each of the sections were written in based on survey results. 

Upon the completion of this, the groups were then instructed to devise a value proposition for each product, which is a headline that is supposed to summarize a product in a short catchphrase. Our group was content with the final decision on the BedBug's headline. "Shake up your wake up!". Overall, this past week was very productive in the advancement of our product, and we hope to continue this advancing throughout this upcoming week and beyond.