Market research about new service ideas
Project backgroundFurrySitter has been looking into various ideas for improving pet parents’ (customers) confidence in pet-care services and opening them to more choices. The known problems from pet parents included:They are unsure about the quality of pet-care services.They found that quality pet-care professionals are always fully booked.On top of the qualification and experience of pet-care professionals, we are considering adding technology elements to raise transparency during pet-care services, hoping to raise pet parents’ confidence and open them to more choices.What do we need to know through this project?Whether adding technology elements to pet-care services can make a difference and bring extra relief to customersWhat if technology elements are not helping much, what else are they looking for to help them find an appropriate pet-care professional faster and easier?Which is the group of customers interested in trying the new services (early adopters)
Social and digital content creation
FurrySitter would like to enhance our social presence in line with the company's development. We intend to develop a range of social content and materials. These will be uploaded to our social media accounts and shared on relevant forums.The students will leverage their creativity and social media knowledge to create engaging texts and visuals that appeal to our primary target - the Millenial pet parents.
Pet sitter / Vendor sourcing
With the soft-launching of the service, FurrySitter needs to validate the traction model. Before concluding, sufficient pet sitters will need to serve FurrySitter's customers. And it is the background of this project. Internship support will be essential for the success of the trial run of the business.ObjectivesWe hope to achieve the following targets by the end of the project:Build up a lead list with 100+ pet sitters/ pet-care professionalsGetting 30%+ pet-care professionals onboarding to FurrySitter
Vendor management strategy planning
As a platform connecting pet parents with trusted pet sitters, pet sitters played an indispensable role at FurrySitter. With their quality and trustworthy service, FurrySitter will be able to attract new and returning customers. Therefore, we need to keep the pet sitters warm and engaged so that they will stay with doing business on FurrySitter instead of on other platform.We would like students to help us with our email marketing plan by preparing communication materials to pet sitters (our major vendor) at different stages from pre-enrolling for FurrySitter, on-boarding to post-sales follow up.DeliverablesTo achieve the plan, students are expected to:Draft and send out invitations to pet sitters to join FurrySitter. Hoping to recruit 30 pet sitters to join FurrySitter.Prepare email communications at different points of communications throughout pet sitters’ on-boarding journey to build bonds with our brand.Prepare post-sales follow up communications with survey to improve FurrySitter’s service and keep pet sitters engaged with the brandBusiness students looking for B2B (busines-to-business) experience with good communication skills would be ideal for this project.
Product launch strategic planning
FurrySitter is getting ready to launch by Q1 2022. Hence, we would like to have student internships helping in our Go-to-market plan. Students who are looking for practical experience in Digital marketing and/ or Social media will be benefited from taking part in this project.ObjectivesWe hope to achieve the following targets through our “Go-to-market” plan:Drive 100 pet parent leads through social media promotionObtain 5 early adaptorsDeliverablesStudents will have chances to work on:Email marketing Develop social media strategy (for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) based on company visual, value and missionContent planning/ Prepare content calendar for pre-launch stage and early launch (3-month duration)Prepare social contents (text, visual, hashtag) that drive brand awareness and leadsBusiness or Marketing students with excellent writing and social media visual creation skills would be ideal for this project.
Web development: Pet sitter searching and booking
The project backgroundWith lots of researches and validation, core features and attributes of the platform are identified. We are now looking into launching to the market by Q1 2022. Hence, we are looking into building our first minimum viable product (MVP) to acquire our first group of customers. Without a partner with IT and technical knowledge, building a MVP is not an easy task.The project detailsThis project is not only about coding and web pages development. Participants of the project are expected to gain hands-on experience not only on website development, but also user journey design, user experience, web design, web analytics and digital marketing.The core items to be delivered in this project included:Pet sitter search functionPet sitter profile templateBooking forms for new and returning customersPet sitter registration formsAs the website of FurrySitter is already in place on WordPress, these new functions and pages will be “add-on” to the existing website.These newly set up pages are also expected to follow best website practices by having web analytic coding ready, responsive to the mobile screen and search engine friendly.Project expectationThe website is expected to be ready for launch by Mar 2022 at the latest.For students who are not familiar with website design, you can team up with your friends and schoolmates to cover up each other.
Market acceptance of new pet-care service experience
About usIn today’s world, it is nearly impossible to assess the quality of current pet sitting services. There have been cases of pet abuse or even missing pets. Evaluating the credibility and quality of pet sitters is, therefore, a major challenge for pet owners. The missing trust leaves owners with uncertainty and sometimes even guilt when hiring people to take care of their pets. Therefore, most pet owners are heavily reliant on peers' recommendations when choosing pet sitters, pet hotels, or daycare.FurrySitter aims to close this gap with a safe, reliable and trustworthy marketplace. The Airbnb of pet sitting. FurrySitter combines traditional pet care business (professional trainers) and technology (online personalized services) to bring pet parents a new pet care experience. We have the vision to bring happiness to the life of pets even though their parents might not be with them always.Our challengesPet care marketplace is not a brand new idea with several market players in Canada already. With a high market potential, and without a dominating market leaders, we decided to go into the market, by placing ourselves in a different position in the market. A customer discovery research was conducted for an initial understanding of customer key concerns about pet caring. However, uncertainties like contradicting customer feedbacks or customers unable to visualize the business value, hold the startup back from proceeding with MVP development. The project, therefore, focuses on market research to achieve product-market fit for the business. Our objectivesWe would like to use a design thinking approach will be used to step by step develop a product that resonates with customers.Through one-on-one interviews, surveys, competitor analysis, identifying customer segments and archetypes, we hope to learn, clarify, and validate the following:Validate market acceptance of the proposed product features of FurrySitter with customers and sellers (i.e. solution fit)Understand the priority of product features from the view of customers and sellersAnalyze and measure the attractiveness of the points of differentiation compared to the competitorsDefine customers’ and sellers’ market segments and chalk out their respective archetypesValidate market acceptance of value proposition and messaging for each defined segment/ personaIn this way, FurrySitter has sufficient information for the building of MVP, defining a clear messaging strategy and value proposition with the ultimate goal to develop the “Go-to-market” strategy with the least amount of friction based on the analysis above.Our approach and expectationWe hope to adopt a mixed method approach for market acceptance and product feature deep-dive, with the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to come up with the deliverables below:Quantitative surveySWOT analysisPerceptual mappingMarket sizingAnalyze of competitors’ online activitiesCustomer archetypes and unique value proposition developmentA/B testing on messaging strategy
Solution-fit research for a marketplace platform
We are a very new startup in the solution-fit stage and setting up our digital presence. We would like to have students with business or marketing background to help us with the solution-fit research. Our company is setting up a marketplace platform which is like airbnb, but it's for pets. With non-dominating existing players in the market, we have initially defined some key concerns of the pet owners, but we would like to bring it all together, visualize them and to test the market acceptance of the ideas.Key focus of the projectMarket research – Students will have a chance to go through the whole research process from research design, data collection to formulating research findings with statistical significanceDefine product features – Finding out the essential features on an eCommerce platform which can successfully win the heart of pet owners and pet carers but let us stand out in the marketIdentify key target market – Finding out the demographic of those prospects who are more likely to convertOur goalWe hope to learn about the following by June:What are the must have features (and their priority) for the marketplace platform from pet owners (customers) and pet carers (sellers) perspectiveThe level of interest of pet owners and pet carers to the marketplaceWhich group is more interested in using this platform from pet owners and pet carers perspective, with such to find out the early adopters Students who are interested in eCommerce platform, pet industries and love to take challenges are welcome.