Assignment 12A

The segment I chose is people who bring their lunch to work most days. The first person I interviewed was my mom, the second was one of my coworkers, and the third was one of my friends that works in Sarasota right now.

All three of these people said that they don’t really like having to microwave their food because of various reasons including altering the taste and coming out too hot or not hot enough. Their need for a different way to heat their lunch really only happens at lunch time and it doesn’t happen every day because sometimes the microwave works just fine. After they realized their need and I asked them what they think would be a possible solution, two of them thought of toaster ovens and one didn’t really have an answer. Coming to the conclusion of a toaster is what I wanted because that acts more like what my idea is. Since they weren’t next to a computer at the time to look for answers, they asked me what I thought and I told them my idea. Then they asked what it would cost and other details which I didn’t have concrete answers for. My mom is older fashioned and was the only interviewee to shoot my idea down in a way.

Through these interviews, I found that it does bother people as much as it bothers me to have food that is too hot or doesn’t taste like it should after coming out of the microwave. I also found out that people are open to a solution to this problem but their willingness to buy it is heavily determined by cost and ease of use. Overall, I think that this segment would be a target segment because they all experience the need and two out of the three interviewees were receptive of my idea. The problem doesn’t bother them enough to actively search for a solution though, so advertising and marketing would be a huge aspect of how sellable my product really is.