Main phases of consumer discovery

The customer discovery consists of four phases which include state your hypotheses, test the problem, test the solution, and pivot or proceed. In the hypotheses step, people should consider the target market, value propositions, customer segments and customer types. The objective of the customer discovery is to identify our first customer which first we have to make assumptions on who our customers are, what is the problem that we are solving for our customers and how our customer will purchase from us. The second steps are a bottom-up estimated; this estimation is considered more realistic for start-ups. There are three distinct concepts of value propositions which are product vision, product features and benefits, and minimum viable product. Product vision is all about what are we trying to achieve, why and how we think we can achieve it, and what does the future look like. Product features and benefits are all about to make a list of the expected product features and construct a list of the benefits of these product features from customers’ point of view. Then, we should develop a minimum viable product after we are figuring out the problems that need to be solved which is a technique which helps a website or new product to develop enough features to begin the progress of learning quickly.

The second phase of the customer discovery has tested the problem. There are five steps which including design experiments, prepare for customer contact, test customer understanding, gain the understanding of the customer, and capture knowledge. First step, design experiment is a process that consists of hypothesis, design experiment, test, and insight. The second step, prepare for customer contact is to decide who we are going to target, start with our network, develop a reference story and set up the appointment. Step three is to test customer understanding which asks open-ended questions such as “ what do like about…”. Step four and five are understanding and knowledge.

We use that information from our assumptions into our hypotheses which we will then use it to test; this is the first phase of the customer discovery. We must document the main important assumption of our target market, value propositions and customer segmentation. The target market is very important for us to estimate the initial market size hypothesis which also includes the estimation of the total addressable market, served an addressable market, and target market, these hypotheses customers will help to turn into facts. The first step is a top-down estimate; we can use the IBISWorld industry analysis reports or other market research report to target the size of the overall.

Also, we learned many details about customers. Such as consumer types, there are six types of customers; they are the saboteur, decision maker, economic buyer, recommender, influencer and end user. A business needs to consider all of them. For example, the idea of our group is to sell animal helmet to 3-6 years old kids, but kids cannot buy the helmet for themselves. So, kids just the end user, our advertising should attract the attention of the decision maker. Also, the economic buyer decided how much will decision maker spend on our product.