After a whole lot of approvals from the management team I started with the ethnographic research project along with a team of two. The main goal of this research was to understand the behavioral patterns exhibited by Indians while buying and selling of used goods. Below is a snapshot of the process followed -
To keep the research focused, we decided to concentrate on just C2C sellers based on the hypothesis that B2C and C2C sellers can differ considerably when it comes to their selling behaviours and motivations.
We conducted stakeholder interviews at the starting, which helped us identify the top C2C categories like mobile phones, clothing, kids products, home & furniture, etc to focus on during the research phase. Four cities were identified for conducting the research based on business focus, geographical locations, cultural differences and other criterias like migrant population, etc. This phase also helped us to understand their expectations from the research and how it can benefit their respective domains.
Field Study
Undoubtedly the most interesting part of the research was this phase where we got to interact with the actual users (C2C sellers). Interesting insights and patterns kept emerging everyday as we interacted with different kind of sellers belonging to various sections of society and geographies. Below is a short snippet of our interaction with Mr. Bhavesh from Ahmedabad -
Analysis of the interview data
Pattern Mapping
The most extensive phase where we identifed buying and selling patterns across income groups, geographical locations, various user engagement levels and categories.
Identifying gaps in the experiences by analyzing the seller journey maps
Below is the experience mapping of Mr. Bhavesh from Ahmedabad.
Persona building
Personas were identifed by doing an affinity mapping exercise of the behaviours, motivations and frustrations exhibited by all the research participants. The outcome was a highly detailed out 5 personas which represented the C2C sellers of OLX. These personas were further discussed, refined and priortized along with the stakeholders.
Below is one of the personas that were detailed during the research
Challenges and Opportunities
Many challenges and opportunities for OLX were identified from the research like -
- Inhibition of people in buying of used clothes, footwear or any such personal item
- Sellers don't think that deleting an Ad is required even after their products being sold off
- Many calls recieved at odd hours transforms the entire experience into a negetive one
.... and many more!
