Final Reflection

Empathy in marketing is not just feeling compassion for your consumer, but really understanding the world from their perspective. Prior to this course I understood the idea of having compassion for the customer, but did not realize the extent to which I projected my own understanding of the world onto them. During our project, as we developed our persona, a first generation American named Natasha, I started to understand why this persona was so conflicted between the world of her parents and a more generic American life. Personally, my parents have usually understood clearly my lifestyle and I have rarely felt this conflict between my parents and myself. As our group began to explore Natasha’s life, and match real subjects to the persona, I found myself wanting to help ease Natasha’s conflict. I finally understood what it meant to develop empathy for the consumer. It wasn’t about trying to relate my own feelings to the customer, it was more like getting to know a friend who I felt compassion for. I felt this compassion not because I had been there myself, but because I had seen her pain through her eyes as she explained it to me.

Prior to this class I understood that social media is an important marker of our generation and is now the primary method through which most of my generation gathers their data. My generation’s daily lives are soaked through with the use social media and the internet, but I was completely unaware of how much data is gathered from us as we squander countless hours on the web. Reading the articles in preparation for class surprised me, but I was even more shocked when we were shown the map in class of Dr. Walls few websites that he visited and the subsequent parties that then collected information on him. The number of groups that comprised that list was astonishing, and even more perturbing was the volume of names that I did not recognized. To balance out my newly sparked fear was the article Bionic Mannequins Spy on Shoppers to Boost Luxury Sales paired with our discussion on data collection. While the gathering of personal information is troubling it also has the potential to bring forth a more personalized and convenient shopping experience, something most Americans seem to be craving. The class discussion and articles exposed me to the great magnitude of internet data collection, and how, like innovations before it, there are both potential dangers and gains to be introduced by this extreme data collection.

I hesitate to say that any part of the project was completely unhelpful because I feel that was gathered a lot of experience throughout the whole project. However, of all of the steps we worked on, I feel we gained the least from generating our own prototype. I understand the idea of wanting to generate a solution to a problem we strived to understand throughout the semester, but this phase felt rushed and scattered. We gained a lot of insights from our research, but after its compiling there were still a lot of questions that felt unanswered. This time limitation kept us from following up with our subjects and forced us to produce a solution from what we felt was insufficient research. I felt because of this our prototype did not appropriately reflect the imagination and intelligence of our team, which lead to a disappointing conclusion of our project. I would have liked more time to generate our prototype and a pre-scheduled opportunity to follow up with our subjects after our initial compiling of our data.

In the beginning phases of our project I think our team was very excited. I thought our persona was unique and intriguing. As someone who considers themselves as a visual thinker I was excited to portray the information in such a pictorial manner. The fact that the lectures lined up with what we were experiencing in our project made me feel that I was really understanding the material and learning valuable lessons that could be applied later on in my career. As the semester carried on the project became a little more stressful. Being a part of a grouped helped us generate the best ideas and learn from each other, but our schedules clashed causing many of or meetings to begin after 8pm, a time where I felt many possible ideas were squashed by exhaustion. As our project became about consolidating ideas, rather than mass generation of creativity, the lack of guidance and work time became frustrating. I felt conflicted between the idea that we were supposed to struggle, but then that there might also be a right answer we weren’t understanding. This conflict became more frustrating as we felt ever increasing pressure of time limitations. In the end, I understand that the project wasn’t going to be perfect and that the struggles lead us to learn in way we might not have otherwise, but in a school where we are constantly held to such a high standard it is agitating to feel so blind to what is the right path. We cared about our persona and producing good work, but were often uneasy of whether we were going the right direction. Now that the project is complete I still wish we had been given more time for the finishing stages and am a little disappointed by our prototype, but feel that the project gave me very valuable insight, that I can carry forward, on how to understand the customer.