In this post you can read about what we have done in this week´s assignment, discovering the second phase of the double diamond design process

User Personas

We created user personas in different warehouses and in different cities, listed below is a collection of user personas. User personas are written individually and they follow with the collaborative part of the assignment.

Sokos (Salo):

We were in the shopping mall on Monday afternoon. There were not so many people at this time.

Man who knows what he wants

Mikko he is 24 years old he lives in Salo. He wants to buy a present for his dad’s birthday. He knows exactly what he wants. He walks in the warehouse he walks to the perfume. He takes a Hugo Boss perfume and checks the price. He decides to buy it so he walks to the cashier. He was happy with the perfume that he had bought for his dad. He bought his perfume between 5 and 10 minutes. He likes to speak with us.

Women who don’t know what she want

It is a woman 54+ years old and her name is Anni. Anni needs new clothes. She doesn’t know what she wants so it was very difficult to find something. She was looking and looking. Every time she pick something and watch to the clothes and than she hang it back. We don’t know of the price was too expensive because she hate it that we talk in English to her. After a long time in the shop she walk always without anything and her face looks not so happy. The woman was walking for more than 30 minutes in the shop and she doesn’t buy anything.

Women with a child

The woman was 33 years old and her child was yelling the whole time. The woman didn´t have much time because she needed to give her attention for her child. She walks directly to the child clothes department. She wants to buy something for her child. It was a girl and she was searching for nice clothes. When she found something she showed it to the girl. If she says “yeah I like it”, then her mom gave it to her and she tried the clothes. After trying a lot of clothes she came back and made the decision of which clothes to buy. After deciding which clothes to buy, they payed them and left the shop.

A girl found a top too expensive and she didn’t buy it.

Jenni, 30 years old, one child with her, she lives outside of Salo and needs a car to do her shopping. Jenni was in a clothing store and wanted to find a top but not just a top. Indeed, she had a precise idea about it: she wanted a classy top but she could put it every day. She took each top one by one until she finds one she likes. But when she saw the price, it was too expensive for her, so she couldn’t buy it. So, she continued to seek her top in each shelves. She was lost and she didn’t find anything that corresponds on her needs. Finally she went out without clothes.

A girl buys that she needed at the beginning and find other clothes.

19 years old she needs shoes for a party. The girl was in a clothing store and it showed she already knew this store. She directly went at the bottom to find a pair of shoes. Then she had looking for her template and her size and tried them. Before to paid, she made a ride in the store to see the others products. After few minutes, she wanted to try a pant and a skirt. Finally she bought all these products. It takes around 25 minutes in total.

Wiklund:

Monday 19pm, it was really quiet, I could see like 20 customers in the whole building, didn’t know its this quiet! Maybe because it was Monday evening and quiet time just before Christmas shopping time?

Tommi 31 year old.  Lives in the center, single. Comes to Wiklund to buy a kitchen machine. He comes to Wiklund because he lives close, or maybe he just wants to have some certain label kitchen machine you can only find from Wiklund.  (Wiklund has maybe more high end products, that costs more.) Just needs something from the store, gets only that and leaves.

Sanna&Susanna, 25&25 years old, friends coming over for coffee (downstairs cafeteria). Wants to spend time over coffee somewhere else than home.  Needs to have a nice place to talk and have something sweet to have with coffee:)

Kyllikki: pensioner coming over for coffee (downstairs cafeteria), dressed well, maybe she is lonely, just wants to come over for a coffee to have a reason to dress nicely put make-aup and hair and see people.  Maybe she just came from the hairdressers salon and wants to go out, because her hair has done. Needs to see people, maybe would like some company also.

Couple Harri&Henna 52&55 years old. Wears brand clothes, and you cant find those in supermarkets. Their hobby is sailing, they are finnish-swedish maybe:D :D They need clothes. Teenager girls are testing make-up, they don’t necessarily have money, but they want to test on everything. They need to have a place to hang out.

Hansa:

Tanja 42 years old with two kids, teenager and little younger. Shopping clothes for kids from Stadium.  Single mom, they don’t have a car, its easier to come to centrum with buss. Needs clothes for kids.

There is many people around  the market place, maybe just coming from work and changing a buss in the market place. Potential customers.

Mostly people using the groceries in the centrum are people living close or people who work near. Department stores people who want smth certain you cant get anywhere else.

Mylly:

I observed what kind of customers visit Mylly during different days. The major outcome of the observations is that families seem to be the biggest group of customers. It is also noteable that elderly people visit the shopping center especially in the morning while regular people are probably still working. 

The difference between a regular weekday and for example a saturday afternoon is significant cause Mylly organizes all kinds of events from miniconcerts to talkshows with the local ice-hockey team Turun Palloseura. It looks like these events atract even more customers and especially families. After reading the brief financial report of Kauppakeskus Mylly Oy it can be confermed that the shopping center is doing well attracting customers and generally businesswisely. Mylly is investing more money this year in the shopping center by expanding the maul so that it can fit about 50 stores more. This will even more strenghten its situation on the market in comparison to stores in the citycenter of Turku who are struggling with high rents and the lack of customers. In my opinion customers are starting to prefer to take their own car and drive door to door doing their shopping. Shopping centers also have the advantage to attract families to do all their shopping in one place because of the large number of stores.

During the brainstorming phase we concluded:

We recognized that on a normal afternoon in the department stores there isn´t many customers. This is mainly due to the shopping centers and retail stores which are located in the outskirts of the city, which are much more favourable for people with cars since they don´t need to pay for parking or get stuck in the traffic. You don´t see families as much as in the retail stores outside the center, but it seems that it´s middle aged people who work in the city that visits the store before returning back home. It seems that young adults are also one of the main customer segments for department stores, probably because a lot of students live in the center of the city and the distances are short. At their clothing department most of the people are middle aged people and families but not that many young adults. This is probably because of the increasing popularity of internet stores, which are very popular among the newer generations. Wiklund recently released a smartphone app, in the aim of reaching their customers also through mobile devices. They have put more effort on internet services since they´ve realised that due to the new trends combined with the the rough economic situation, the retail sales has dropped and they are expecting that it isn´t increasing in the near future.

Design brief

The problem in the department stores is clearly the amount of customers. Even according to the annual report of Sokos corporation the retail sales has dropped since 2012.

We think all the department stores in the center should have more campaigns and promotions that attract consumers. Of course it is also important that they offer internet stores also, but the competition in that market is already rough and there is already strong dominating companies, which makes it hard for others to penetrate the market. That´s why we think that it may be a mistake for them to put too much effort on the internet stores, but instead find a way to keep their retail stores alive by getting more visibility in the internet (social media). Wiklund had done this by providing the smartphone app that informs the customers of special offers etc.

We think that the retail stores located in the center of Turku should take more advantage of their great location in the center of the city, we are also concerned that the lack of events in the city center affects the popularity of the department stores. Maybe this could be made to an asset though, as they are located in the center they could create events in the stores, attracting people during the weekends (when most of the consumers have time to visit the store) They should imitate Mylly and Skanssi, the department stores located outside the city center, and they have a lots of events going on.

 /Innobirds

references:
https://www.asiakastieto.fi/yritykset/kauppakeskus-mylly-oy/16290444/taloustiedot
https://www.s-kanava.fi/documents/15238/207023/Vuosikertomus+2014+ENG+web.pdf/ece4d195-9725-4a16-b702-fd191e0f1acf