Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

Segment: The segment I chose was adults who have elderly parents that need assistance with everyday tasks.

Interview 1: My first interview was with a 51-year-old woman who needs to hire help for her parents who live almost 24 hours away in her hometown. She has family that lives in the area, but they live about 90 minutes from her parents. Previously, her brother was able to help her parents with a lot of their day-to-day needs, but he has recently changed jobs and does not have the same amount of time to help her parents. Her parents’ needs have been steadily increasing as they continue to physically deteriorate and develop more health issues. Currently, her mother is on oxygen and her father is very weakened by a heart condition. She says that they need help in their house with cooking and cleaning, as well as running basic errands. She also said it would be nice to have someone take them to their medical appointments so her siblings didn’t lose half of a workday to help them. The interviewee said that she would probably ask her siblings to help her find a service through local word of mouth, and that they would probably ask members of their church for references.

Interview 2: My second interview was with a middle-aged man. He needs help with dealing with his elderly mother, who is nearly 90. He said that the need for help is an ongoing issue that he noticed years ago. He actually hired a similar service several years ago when his mother broke her back, but only on a temporary basis. When asked how that need differed from his current need, he said that he was looking for qualified medical personnel when she broke her back because she needed nursing care at the time. Now, she is back to being independent and does not need the same level of intensive care. He would like to have someone come into her home several times a week to help her drive to the grocery and to her medical appointments. He also would like the assistant to spend several hours sitting and talking with her, because presently she is even more isolated than normal due to the pandemic. He said he would ask his friends and family for recommendations before searching online to find help.

Interview 3: My last interview was with a 50-year-old woman who lives away from her parents. She said that she currently has the need because her father was recently diagnosed with edema in both legs, which makes it impossible for him to drive. She mainly needs a service that would help her mother run errands, as her mother can’t drive at all and is instead relying on friends to help her get to the store. She expected to only hire the service once or twice a week for a few hours at a time. She said that she intended to only hire the service temporarily, as the doctor expected her dad’s condition to resolve within three to six months, enabling him to drive again. When asked how she would find a business to provide this service, the interviewee said that she would look online since she has no local references. She said she would probably use the phrases “caregiver” or “personal assistant” in her search, and that she would also look at online reviews about the service prior to hiring it.

Conclusion: Based on my interviews, it seems like the customer segment becomes acutely aware of the need when there is an unexpected change in circumstance. Although this is a type of need that tends to grow slowly, the customers typically compensate for the change in need (without really noticing it) until it reaches a tipping point. These tipping points are often caused by sudden changes in health status. Once the customers have identified that they need help, the proposed service could step in and provide assistance with both the crisis that made them aware of the need and with the many underlying issues that pushed the need to its tipping point. The other insight I gained from these interviews were how heavily the customer segment relied on word of mouth when looking for a service for assistance. All three of my interviewees said that they would prefer to ask friends and family for references or referrals to services before searching online.