12A

1.     The segment I have chosen will be owners of relatively smaller nightclubs in small towns like college towns or smaller suburb areas. More so college towns because based on prior interviews with workers and managers, they find a lot of things that are lost, and the main clientele for those places were college students.

2.     The first person I interviewed was a young lady in the library. I politely came up to her and asked if I could ask her a few questions about her experience going out here in Gainesville. The second person I interviewed is a night club owner in Scarborough, Ontario. And the last person I interviewed is also a club manager in Oshawa, Ontario; conveniently enough, both of these clubs are located within a 5 mile radius of two community colleges.

3.     First interview: I decided to be bold and go approach a young lady sitting next to me at the library and ask her what she thought about my idea. I explained the whole concept to her and she very enthusiastically agreed that there was in fact a need for this, and she herself was a victim several times of either losing something important or even worse getting something stolen. She was very pleased with my simple concept of the 4-digit code, as well as having that reassurance that her items will be kept safe.

Second Interview: This man is a nightclub owner in a suburb in Toronto, Canada. I decided to branch out a little more, since this is an idea I would possibly be willing to pitch to places outside of the U.S., and thankfully this is where connections and knowing several languages really play a role. I pitched my idea to him, and he was quite impressed. He expressed to me that although this is such a basic unit and concept, it is unique that I rather implemented it into such a “different” area as he put it. Normally you wouldn’t expect a night club or venue to have these sorts of things for consumers because nobody really cares if you lose something or get it stolen. But at the end of the day, when those things do in fact happen to people, it reflects poorly on the establishment and customer experience as a whole.

Third Interview: This last interview I would say the owner was pretty hesitant mostly because he was worried of how much space  a particular unit would take up in his establishment. He stressed to me that although he does see potential in my product, and the need is in fact there, he didn’t think it would particularly work for him and his club mostly because of the issue of space. He told me that because of the square footage of his venue being not too big, regular nights are already crowded enough and this would just make the situation even worse.

4.     From my interviews, I came to the fact that this was an issue most owners did not really look into solving because it simply did not involve them personally. They do not really care if someone loses something unless it is brought up in a complaint or in some online reviews.

5.     I learned that even though this need does exist, most club owners and managers did not really consider it an issue to be solved until I brought it up to them. It is something that can in fact be avoided or simply even just reduced, and the customer will have a much greater experience. Not to mention, because of the locations and statuses of interviewees, college students were much more prominent in this segment.

6.     I believe the segment I chose for this issue was in fact aware of it because of the fact that they were centered around college areas.