Customer Shadowing
I did a lot of customer shadowing during the course. Customer shadowing is the basic ingredient of lean innovation, i.e. really understanding what the customer wants, needs and how he/she behaves. Shadowing includes deep following of the consumer, spectating and understanding the consumers, as already mentioned. This was really important during the course to be able to evaluate what the main problems are, what needs to be done to improve the service etc. I did shadowing many times in Wiklund, by the city center, in café´s and other department stores. I was basically spectating the people around me, choosing a person and then follow them where ever they went, and I was able to build some understanding on the interests and fashion perceptions etc. of different kinds of customers. I made a shadowing strategy when we had decided to concentrate on the tribe called `young trendy adults´ , I went to places where I new I could find these customers and followed them until there was no need to do it anymore. As stated, this got me a better understanding on that segment, and thought me that on segment has many perceptions and they are present in many specific niche markets as well. The places where they could be found, retail stores and cafés, I realised that they were role models, departments, that we wanted to include in the department store. This led to a solution that was too expensive to accomplish, i.e. reutilisation of the store and lounge cafés.

/Tomas