Indicia Consulting
Personas-based Utility Market Segmentation Study

Project Description

Personas are fictional renderings of specific customer types that have enough detail (gathered through research) to enable program designers to understand what kinds of features would appeal to consumers, generating leads and higher rates of participation. They are a bottom-up approach to understanding specific consumers and their needs, based on the behaviors, attitudes, and goals of the people interviewed during the research phase. Personas have names, personalities, pictures, personal backgrounds, families, and, most important, goals; they are not average users but specific characters. A persona is a stand-in for a unique group of people who share common goals; at the same time, persona characteristics encompass people in widely different demographic groups who may have similar goals.

A persona takes the perceived and unperceived factors involved with a certain behavior or problem, to create a working avatar to factor into a model or intervention. The insights derived from personas can be used for the potential benefits of programs and projects (Dickinson et al., 2013). While the use of market segmentation grows in the utility industry, it is by no means universal. Many organizations are finding that market segmentation alone is something of a blunt instrument, and often is not helpful in terms of product development. We believe that a truly ethnographic approach to developing personas would be helpful to utilities seeking the next generation program design innovation.

We are actively seeking funding for this project, call us to discuss!

Link: http://www.slideshare.net/not-so-easy-accessing-energy-efficiency...