12A - Finding Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

Segment: 30-45 males and females driving a new or used car worth $25,000 or more

Interview 1: Amy – Amy is in the target market and drives an SUV. She lives in Florida and believes the need is most salient when the temperature is 90 degrees of higher. She also notices that when she does not park in the shade it is even worse. She currently has sun shades you pull up on the side windows that do not work very well to keep the heat out. However, she has no front window sunshade because she has not gotten around to buying one. She indicated she had not used Google to search for one but has looked at them in Walmart and had owned one in the past.

Interview 2: John – John was younger than my target market but drove a car right around the threshold. John indicated he was younger and enjoyed having all the windows on his car tinted very heavily (except the front one). However, he said he would buy a single automatic sunshade for his front windshield. He said he probably would not look this up on Google because it is something he only thinks of when it is really hot. He mentioned it would be nice if the car came with it.

Interview 3: Gordon – Gordon is my friend up North and gave me insight into the cold weather issues. He said having some sort of heating shade inside of the car that melted ice before getting in the vehicle would be a great idea. He mentioned he didn’t know if it would actually work but that he has looked up products in the past that don’t seem to work that well from the reviews.

The findings: It seems that most people are valuing the front sunshade because they may have tinted windows or side shades. The first two were not adamant in searching for a sunshade but said they were still interested. John mentioned that it would be nice if it came stock on the car. Gordon said the idea was fantastic for the cold weather but it might be hard to convince people it works.

The conclusion: Overall the idea has worth but might require a lot of marketing expense. Ultimately, it would be best to work with high end car manufacturers that can afford to install these for $500 or so on new cars. This would allow the consumer to buy a luxury vehicle without having to convince them of its worth because they would see how it works when buying. It could also be a good selling point.