Hasbro Singapore User Testing (SMU Project, 2020)
This was an inter-disciplinary capstone project done in a team of 7 for an external client (Hasbro Singapore Pte Ltd). I led the user research efforts by independently designing the user research guide, and conducting 5 in-depth interviews. I then synthesized the results for communication with the rest of the team. The insights generated were incorporated into the design proposal for Hasbro's marketing plan on Shopee for FY2021.
The Problem
My team was presented with the following challenge from our client:
How do we turbo-charge Hasbro's growth in 2021 on the Shopee marketplace?
In order to scope this challenge into a more manageable problem to tackle, our team conducted secondary research and an initial market sizing exercise. In view of industry trends and Hasbro's current product assortment for the Singapore market, we identified two main customer segments as profitable ones to focus on:
1. Parents with kids aged 3-6 years
2. Parents with kids aged 7-12 years
Methodology
To better understand parents' needs and T&G (Toys and Games) shopping behaviors, I chose to conduct primary research. Given the exploratory nature of our investigation, qualitative research methods were more suitable for our purposes. Specifically, I felt in-depth interviews would be most appropriate in exploring multiple perspectives while ensuring independence of responses. Hence, I designed a question guide to use as a reference during our interviews.
In selecting participants to interview, I utilized purposive sampling to ensure that respondents were of our desired profile, with characteristics best suited to answering our research questions. In particular, I ensured homogeneity for relevant variables by selecting participants who:
1) had at least 1 child between the ages of 3-12 years
2) had experience purchasing items on Shopee
3) purchased at least 1 item on Shopee within the last 3 months
I also ensured heterogeneity for a variety of opinions, by selecting participants of various age ranges, fields of work and genders.
The participant selection was done using a screener questionnaire, which was posted on public forums, and sent out to Singapore parent facebook groups and personal contacts.
Findings
After conducting 5 user interviews with a fellow team member as a scribe, I went through the verbatims captured and represented common themes which emerged using an adapted rainbow sheet format. This was done to communicate my findings with the rest of my team in a clear and visual manner.
From the user interviews, I uncovered important insights regarding users' goals, key decision factors, behaviors and pain points. An interesting distinction was the difference in key decision factors between our two parent segments.
Where parents of children aged 7-12 years mainly factored in entertainment value when deciding which T&G purchases to make, parents of children aged 3-6 years considered aspects of safety and educational value when making their decisions.
Further, the research revealed three key purchase motivations adopted by parents in Singapore for T&G products:
1. Bonding with their children
2. Gifting T&G products to other children
3. "Edutaining" their children
I felt this would be a good basis to use when differentiating customers, as it would help my team formulate targeted strategies focusing on positioning Hasbro as a suitable partner for these 3 parent needs.
Hence using these 3 purchase motivations, I went on to develop 3 key user personas, together with corresponding user journey maps. These formed the basis of my team's solution ideation later on, and were presented to our client as part of our problem substantiation.
