Post 1: Empathy Map

From my experience, the most important action any marketer can take to sell a product, service, or idea is to have a deep understanding of his or her primary audience or core consumers. One cannot simply create a product, service, or idea and expect to sell it or improve business without understanding what consumers want and need.

Our class discussions about the music industry are a perfect example of the concept that marketers must understand their consumers and look at consumer insights. The music industry, for example, is one that evolves rapidly as consumer needs change. When Apple discovered the insight that people wanted a portable music player that had a sleek design and allowed people to store digital individual song downloads, it designed the iPod and made history. If Apple and others had not been proactive in meeting consumer needs, the music industry may be in much worse shape today.

Therefore, it’s important that we understand consumers’ needs as we look to find insights to turn into innovation that sells. One tool we can use to do this is an empathy map. In this post, I want to use an empathy map to describe my sixteen-year-old cousin, Trevor. Effective marketers will be able to use this empathy map to form valuable insights to develop into practical products, services, and ideas that resonate with Trevor.

The first step in developing the empathy map for Trevor is to determine what he thinks and feels. Trevor definitely thinks he’s one of the “cool guys” at school, and it counts with him that he impresses his friends and the girls at school by being the center of attention. In addition, his desire to be good at golf counts with him. He’s on the golf team and is relying on that talent and his passion for the sport to help him get into college. He is preoccupied with practicing golf every day after school as well as on the weekends; he wants to qualify for the Georgia State Title. He is also preoccupied with school; in particular, he is having trouble in statistics class and wants to pass in order to continue playing on the golf team. Therefore he is preoccupied with studying and being prepared for his biweekly tutoring sessions. Finally, he is worried about asking the cute girl in his history class, Hannah, to the homecoming dance in addition to passing his statistics class and impressing all of his friends. He aspires to remain very well-liked at school, pass all of his classes, go to college, and become a high school golf coach.  

 

The next step is to determine what Trevor sees. His daily environment usually consists of his high school. He sees the inside of classrooms (though he spends most of his time in class daydreaming), the school cafeteria, the auditorium, and the student activities center. His favorite environment is the golf course, which he gets to visit after school when the weather is nice; finally, his environment is his house. His room is always messy, and his bed is never made, but it is home, and gives him a place to relax. He enjoys seeing his friends; he has a lot of them and likes to play pick-up basketball on the weekends at the neighborhood park. He also likes to go to parties and movies to try to impress girls. Currently, the market offers products to boost Trevor’s self-esteem. Products marketed to males in high school, a category consisting of everything from clothes to Axe Body Spray, are all about making these young males feel cool and emboldened.

Then, we determine that Trevor says or does. His attitude in public is very different from his attitude at home. In public, he tries to be impressive and laid-back. He has a crude sense of humor and uses this to joke with friends. His appearance mimics this attitude; he usually wears casual clothes and a backwards baseball cap, which he has to take off at school because of the school dress code. He also wears his varsity golf letter jacket as a status symbol and to show people that he is an athlete. He is of average height and has blonde hair. However, his, confident, laid-back appearance and attitude contribute to his behavior towards others, which is not always nice. Sometimes his jokes are at the expense of others in order to build his self-esteem, and he has faced trouble for his attitude in the past. However, overall he has a kind heart and just wants to continue being accepted by his peers.

 

This leads us to our next area to consider; what Trevor hears. He hears his friends talking and wants them to be talking about him in a positive way. He understands that students talk and rumors spread, so he constantly hears gossip. He also enjoys hearing his coach giving golfing pointers or complementing him on his game, and finally he hears his teachers telling him about American History, Spanish, Chemistry, and Statistics. Even though he isn’t great at listening to them, he understands that he has to try to listen and wants to learn in order to increase his chances of getting into a good college.

 

The fifth topic covered by the empathy map is pain points. Trevor fears being rejected by his peers or losing his social standing. He fears being embarrassed by his struggle in learning statistics and tries to keep this quiet. He also fears losing his golf skills and having to give up his spot on the varsity team, and that he won’t be good enough to get into college. However, he also has frustrations. He gets frustrated with his parents when they don’t understand his problems, when they don’t allow him to stay out past his curfew, or when they embarrass him in front of his friends. He gets frustrated with his little sister when she purposefully annoys him, but also frustrated with people that try to hurt her; he wants to protect her. Finally, he faces many obstacles in accomplishing his goals; he has to work very hard to make mediocre grades but still wants to go to college and be successful. Although he is very talented at golf, some of his peers are very talented as well and could take his spot if he doesn’t practice; they are potential obstacles to his success.

 

Finally, to complete the empathy map we should consider what Trevor hopes to gain. As previously discussed, he wants to go to college. He wants to gain access to a good school where he can play golf; in this ideal world, he would be doing what he loves while receiving a good education. He also wants to gain, or rather increase, his respect among his peers. He wants them to constantly be impressed with him and to be the leader of his friends. He also wants Hannah to say “yes” when he asks her to the homecoming dance, which will also impress his friends. His measures of success are simply to make it through high school, improve his golf game, and make as many friends as possible.

 

Empathizing with a consumer like Trevor, a typical male high school student, can help marketers determine the needs of teenage males. In reaching into his mindset and analyzing his personality, goals, and environment, we can develop valuable insights into what products, services, and ideas would be most marketable to this consumer group. Once we look a bit deeper and find these insights (completing the “empathize” and “define” steps of design thinking), ideally we can use these to ideate, prototype, and test in order to develop something truly groundbreaking for this consumer group.

All images are from various Internet sites and found via Google Images.