Friday, March 27, 2020

19A – Idea Napkin No. 2

1) Me: Brandon McKay, skilled with organizing large amounts of information, and delegating workloads based on assessed individual talents. My related experiences include working as a shift leader at two food-oriented jobs during my time in college and creating an automatic watering system for plants in a class project. I also conducted research in the UF space plants lab where I practice planting seeds in culture


2) Service: My service is going to provide green, local, sustainable food crops to processors, grocery stores and independent businesses by hydroponically growing foods like corn and soy in temperature-controlled skyscrapers. We will begin with businesses, and then after establishing a strong base, may branch out into individual sales. 

3) Who: My service will be similar in clientele to a farm, servicing markets that will sell the product raw and food processing plants that will use it as an ingredient.

4) Why Care: The value of my service is sustainability and propriety. We don't wear out the soil by growing horizontally, nor do we outsource the transportation of crops since it will be sold locally

5) What the others don't have: Other vertical agribusinesses don't have proprietary transportation that will allow for a quicker and easier process to get food from the building to the consumer.

I believe these elements will work together well most specifically my organization skills with what makes the business stand out since it will require an efficient organized system to assure that transportation of crops is both accurate and prompt. Also, the clientele will contribute to success since its a constant and well-established group of people who will require my services.

I didn't receive any feedback on the first napkin, so I updated it with some skills I gained recently like working in a lab and changes in clientele. 

Friday, March 20, 2020

18A – Create a Customer Avatar

Because my product is food-based, I will have a varied customer pool but my most common direct customer will be food store managers, so mostly men and women of middle age.

 Direct Customer:
This is the avatar I created for my direct customer. I made him look like a Publix manager which would be exactly the type of people we would be hoping to sell to. Established supermarket corporations could give a great boost to the new and budding product I'd create. This is Steve, he is 38 years old, drives a silver 2014 Honda Civic, and has two kids. His favorite show is Cops, since he is a virtuous and by-the-book person, which is what led to him getting a job as a manager in the first place. He doesn't tend to follow politics particularly closely aside from the presidential elections every 4 years, but he tries to vote with who he most believes represents him. He does tend to follow sports, where he is a big fan of the home-teams, and even started a "Jersey Jam" where once a season, he allows employees to wear a jersey of their choice under their Publix vest.

I think the main thing I have in common with this customer archetype would be my virtuosity and by-the-book nature. This would help me in appealing to my customer base by approaching them in an organized and uniform fashion that will make transactions between their corporation and mine smooth and painless. I don't think this is a coincidence. Although entrepreneurs are viewed in a spontaneous light, it takes a great deal of organization not just to form a company from an idea, but to also lead a company that has already been established.

17A – Elevator Pitch No. 2



Reflection:
-not many comments were given on the last other than more tangible explanation which I tried to do better this time.

Friday, March 13, 2020

15A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

Segment: Buyers for personal need


1. Harrison Steele (UF student)

Sabrina Martinez (Santa Fe Student)

Austin Clark (Nursing Student) 

2. Alternative evaluation:
Price point was certainly a factor that couldn't be ignored across all 3 interviews, even though it was no the most important to all 3 interviewees. Sabrina admitted that price, of course, plays a part, but she mainly buys produce based on word of mouth and familiarity since she knows how to cook a set amount of dishes from what she ate growing up. So particular brands already have a foothold on her purchase, and it would likely take her trying the new product and knowing it was solid before switching. Harrison cared most about price since he is going to school mostly on loans and tries to limit where he spends as much as he can to allow himself to pay off some of the loans from his job while still paying living expenses. Austin cared about price to an extent but cares about quantity and quality equally since he prefers to buy in bulk, and of course, wants his food to taste good above all else.

3. How and where do you buy?
All three do most of their shopping at local supermarkets like Publix, super Walmart and Sam's club. Austin said he occasionally buys pre-proportioned meals online that come with the raw materials needed to prepare it. The other two said they were open to other types of purchasing but normal retail is most natural to them. 

4. Harrison considers his purchase solid if he got a good value on the produce, i.e. he used all of the food but still had plenty of money left over to afford the rest of his groceries. Sabrina and Austin cared most about taste, where if the food they made tasted great and they didn't break the bank in the process, they were satisfied.

5. It definitely is evident from these interviews that price matters and it matters a lot since all three mentioned it, and most customers often compare prices when deciding between two similar products.
However, the method was eye-opening for me because I wasn't aware of the pre-proportioned meal process, and definitely think it would be a good idea to capitalize on it. 

6. Conclusions: This segment is a strong hybrid of price and quality. Based on these interviews I should evaluate the price point of hydroponics. Since at face value it will likely be more expensive I will have to accommodate for this likely either through value campaigning of the difference it makes for the environment, or alternative forms of purchasing like partnering with pre-proportioned meal makers, or selling directly to customers in bulk, which is cheaper than retail sale.