12A- Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

       The segment that I am picking is those in the age group of 17-25 who are struggling to adjust to new schedules or new points in their lives.
       What I found in my interviews: I interviewed those who were in this segment of their lives. Most of the people within this age group are either developing to a new school, new job, or both. These changes normally come with a change in schedule, and for that, normally a new time to wake up in the morning. The first person that I interviewed just started grad school at UF. She said that over the course of her college career she was able to pick her classes to be later in the day so that way she would avoid the struggle of having to wake up in the morning. However, now that she is in grad school she is finding that she doesn't have as much flexibility with her scheduling and has to start waking up early for some classes. She said that she has always struggled with waking up on time because when she sets her alarm it goes off, but then she just keeps hitting snooze. I asked her about an idea like my product that has vibrations and wouldn't stop trying to wake up you up until you got up out of bed. She said she would probably hate that in the morning and not being able to stop the alarm system without getting up, but she said it would be very effective on her. She said she would probably invest in it to see if it would help her wake up better, even if there is no snooze option, since, that is the cause of all of her problems in the first place. I also interviewed someone who just got a job at Starbucks. He said that the shifts can be incredibly early in the morning and he has never had to wake up that early before. He said that he has already slept through his alarm clock a couple of times just in the short time he has had the job. He thinks that a product like mine would be an ideal situation for someone like him who probably would never get out of bed unless the alarm mechanism absolutely made him. He believes that the vibrations paired with the sensor would be really useful in helping him wake up in the morning. The third person I interviewed just started undergrad in college and said that she is used to waking up early for high school, but that doesn' mean she doesn't struggle to do so. She thinks that without her parents with her at college to help make sure she gets up for school on time, that she will not have the proper motivation to wake up for classes in the morning. She said the vibration mechanism may be the perfect kick-start that she would need because it would basically shake her to wake up and wouldn't stop until she did similar to what her mom did. She also said that this product would also be useful because the vibrations and motion wouldn't necessarily disturb her roommate since it is only going to be shaking her bed so it would be useful in a dorm. When I talked to all three of these people about what they did when this problem was presented to them, they all had very similar answers.
       All 3 of them told me that they have told other people to call them and wake them up before. Which of course comes with a fault, because if that person forgets to wake you up or doesn't wake up themselves, then that option is gone. One of them told me that she has used multiple alarms before and sometimes that works but it is a lot of trouble to have to set more than one alarm before bed. The guy who just got the job says that he has tried to go to sleep earlier but it's just too early and to large of a schedule adjustment to make and he has been unable to solve the problem. They said that they have all googled for better alarm clocks, the grad student even googled tactics to wake up in the morning, but nothing like this product had ever come up and if it had they all would've at very least considered it.
       I think that this segment is clearly in need of this product, as I had predicted, and is probably the leading segment to need this product. I think that this segment's awareness of the problem is very real and known to most of them and if the product was used by people in this segment, I think that it could become very popular very quickly. This segment would probably be my target group to focus because I believe their need awareness is high and it would be easy to spread the information of this product quickly and effectively throughout this segment.