Customer Personas Help Companies Find a Face in the Data |
Resource Interactive, Restoration Hardware, and Bath & Body Works Present "Customer Personas" at Ad:Tech San Francisco
COLUMBUS, OH April 23, 2005 "The Age of Engagement," characterized by today's potentially 24/7/365 interaction between brands and consumers, is the main focus of Ad:Tech San Francisco, one of the country's largest and most advanced digital marketing conferences, to be held April 25-27. Resource Interactive President Kelly Mooney, Restoration Hardware's VP of eCommerce Stephanie Garcia, and Bath & Body Works' Director of Internet Strategy Shannon Glass will present a research practice known as "persona creation" and the latest findings on their key customer types.
"We attribute the immense popularity of persona creation as a research tool for e-retailers to many things," said Mooney. "The Internet has enabled more customer intimacy than any other marketing medium in the history of creating customers for products and services. But this doesn't mean designers and developers can relate to dozens of reports on this demographic or that high-value customer segment. Personas, if done right, have a real-world immediacy and plausibility that can help designers, as we say, find a face in the data. The design team can then devise web site features or online campaigns for a customer whose shopping proclivities and decision-making processes they recognize from their own life experiences."
Resource Interactive developed three personas for Bath & Body Works that broadly reflect the product categories their customers buy. From interviews, it was determined that these product categories correlate, in turn, with specific customer motivations, behaviors, and attitudes (what Resource dubs "the customer's MBA"). If a customer type, for example, is motivated chiefly by seasonal promotions or highly personalized beauty product information, discrete paths to purchase can be constructed on the web site that accommodate these shopping orientations.
For Restoration Hardware, Resource Interactive developed five personas, two of which are couples, as the research indicated that furniture, as a high-consideration purchase (requiring time, planning, financial commitment), often involves more than one person. The five customer personas were arrayed along a five-step home designing process that concluded with a storytelling and enjoyment stage and ranged from piecemeal to premeditated, and from single product- to collection-focused.
About Resource Interactive
Resource Interactive is an Ad Age Top Forty-ranked interactive agency that helps the world's leading companies plan, create, build, assess, and optimize the digital experience of their customers and other constituencies. We've helped companies such as Victoria's Secret, Hewlett-Packard, Reebok, Bath & Body Works, Nationwide, Target, Apple, 1800Flowers, Limited Brands, Endo Pharmaceuticals, and Restoration Hardware use their online channels to drive sales, reduce costs, create community, and deepen brand loyalty. Resource Interactive's award-winning creativity was featured more than any other firm's in Communication Arts' ten-year Interactive Annual.
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CONTACT:
Dr. Nita Rollins
Executive Director, Marketing
nrollins@resource.com