Milestone 3 - Personas
After reviewing our affinity diagram and conducting additional research to learn more about thrift store customer demographics, we have created four personas for this milestone. Each persona is a possible thrift store shopper. We've rated each shopper on three aspects - "thriftiness", "time" and "environmental concern". These ratings help the team compare different shoppers motivations and goals.
- Green-ness - how much does "green" influence their shopping behavior
- Time - how much time is a concern
- Thriftiness - how much is low price a motivation
Daisy Higgins
'The Quirky Treasure Hunter'
"I always get excited when I go to Salvation Army because they have so many unique things!"
- (5)
- (3)
- (4)
Lisa Wharton
'The Donator and Mall Shopper'
"Thrift stores aren't really for me."
- (0)
- (2)
- (1)
Marla Jacobson
'The Low-income Shopper'
"I want to know what thrift stores have before I go because it's so hard for me to get there."
- (0)
- (4)
- (5)
Samantha Forsey
'The Young Corporate Worker'
"Where is the Banana Republic of consignment shops?"
- (1)
- (2)
- (3)
Greg Thompson
'The Thrift Store Volunteer'
"This is all great stuff, if we can get someone to take it."
Process
Phase I - We began our work for this milestone by having an overall discussion about what we learned from our interviews and affinity diagram. This included what we learned about who shops or doesn't shop at thrift stores and why, what their perspective is on thrift stores and second-hand merchandise, and how different types of thrift stores are operated. After the discussion, each of us chose two personas to write.
Phase II - After everyone finished their individual personas, we looked at all the personas everyone had written and consolidated similar ones into a single persona. In the end, we had 9 personas, which is a lot, but reflects what we believe to be all the major categories of shoppers and store employees. We checked these personas against our affinity notes to make sure we haven't missed any important personas, and did further brainstorming on the format of how to present our personas and what information to include.
Phase III - At our final meeting for this milestone, we did a final review of our personas and incorporated into them information from research we had found. This included both research and news articles found online about thrift store customer demographics, as well as information gained from talking with the Director of Operations from Salvation Army. From these sources, we learned that around 80% of thrift store customers are female, that their ages range from 25-60, and that thrift stores are seeing an increase in college-aged and upper-class customers in recent years. We used this information to update our personas and make them as accurate to real-life as possible.