DESIGN THINKING THE IDEO WAY
According to IDEO’s Tom Brown (2006), the human-centered process of inspiration, ideation, and implementation all cross over into fields of anthropology and psychology. Whereas his lecture mainly pertains to product design, these three main “central buckets” could also be applied to an art and cultural product or services that investigates “how people experience the world emotionally and cognitively,” rather than using the common path of analytics and pure user experience (Brown 2006, 8:45, 15:30).
As startups operate with too much uncertainty, it is important to start with value-added customer learning to uncover the truth about my vision (Ries 2011, p. 12). Tom Brown describes the best way to bring forth innovation is with intense collaboration between designers [entrepreneur] and its users [customers], but with an empathic — almost to the point of experiential — approach to peoples needs and experiences, through the “lens of people.” These customer conversations lead to an important source of co-designing the ideation, which leads to a kind of validating learning which is “more concrete, more accurate, and faster than market forecasting or classical business planning” (Ries 2011, p. 24).
Credit @plays-in-business.com
Brown (2006, 22:50) also recommends collecting insights from extreme users in order to step into the world of the user. As a starting point, I selected both affluent tourists [long-term visitors] and expatriates for initial customer segmentation for my art and culture enterprise idea. As an Iranian-American New Yorker who spent most of her formative years in Munich and now currently resides in Spain, I am starting at “the adjacent possible”, at the edge of what I know personally as a refugee, foreigner, and expatriate as well as my former work with the luxury travel market (Sturrock, 2022, p. 13). For this reason, I chose to dwell deeper into the social, cultural, cognitive and emotional realm of the expat and affluent tourist customer segment as it relates to art and culture. The challenge will be to set aside all my own assumptions during the customer conversations and observations in order to gain new insight. I hope to learn more about the luxury tourism and expat consumer in Mallorca as I try to figure out the job-to-be-done.
SUB-SECTION GROUPS FOR CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION
The following list and descriptions are a sub-section of tourists/expats who I believe have the same interest in art and culture, either as art collectors on the island or as part of the creative industry. When creating this list, I tried to focus more on motivations and goals, rather than demographics or customer characteristics. Because I will start my conversations with different types of culturally aware and affluent tourists/expats, my specific criteria is that all of these potential customers have the same circumstance – they tend to value experience over product.
MASS AFFLUENT TOURIST / INDEPENDENT TOURIST / AFFLUENT EXPAT
The Mass Affluent Tourist/Expat is a wide-ranging group who doesn’t necessarily consider themselves affluent.
The Independent Affluent is usually single, travels with a tight-knit circle of friends, or are couples without children, such as empty-nesters, so there is a great deal of flexibility (Miele, 2017) . They value experiences, want to treat themselves and often seek out like-minded travelers along their journey, such as spiritual or yoga retreats (ibid.).
According to Deanna Canedo, Vice President of Acceptance for MasterCard’s GeoCentral division, affluent tourist consumers are driven by new and unique experiences, both where they live as in the destinations that they visit. As a result, the company has identified six key passion points through which it provides added value to its cardholders: dining, shopping, sports, travel, music, and culture (The Affluent Segment: Key to Propel the Tourism Industry, 2014).
JETSETTERS / TASTE OF FIRST CLASS / EXPERIENCED EXPLORERS
The wealthiest segment with the highest household income, Jetsetters are highly engaged in the travel category as frequent business and vacation travelers with a particular interest in foreign destinations (Baer 2019).
“In July, Mallorca saw a total of 2,685 private jets arrivals and departures – a 60-per-cent increase on the same month in 2019, while according to Essentially Mallorca, room occupancy at luxury hotels has consistently hovered around the 90-per-cent mark so far this year. Overall, by the end of the 2021 summer season the island had made some 1 billion euros (1.14 billion dollars) from luxury tourism” (Assahifa, 2021).
“Skewing younger, those in the Taste of First Class segment seek quality over quantity with a tendency to splurge on upgrades, as they are willing to pay extra for comfort and service. With the second highest household income, Experienced Explorers have both the time and resources to travel internationally on a larger scale to learn about cultures” (Baer 2019).
CASH RICH / TIME POOR
“These people are in demand. They have responsibilities and commitments that often leave them on the wrong side of a work-life balance. So, when they do force themselves to carve out some precious me or family time, they want to make the most of it with highly personalized, very private experiences. They are willing to use professionals to plan their lives and value flexibility in case they have to reschedule at the last minute” (Miele, 2017).
SPECIAL OCCASION
These visitors require a transformational experience for a special occasion such as weddings, birthdays and anniversaries (Miele, 2017).
INSTAGRAMMERS AND INFLUENCERS
Dropped in the “Always Opulent” group of affluent tourists/expat, these are people who have enviable instagram feeds bursting with content about living the good life. Everything has to be jaw-droppingly posh and culturally bold to impress their friends and followers (Miele, 2017).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Assahifa (2021) Is Spain’s Mallorca turning into a new haven for the super-rich? November 28. Available at: https://www.assahifa.com/english/tourism/is-spains-mallorca-turning-into-a-new-haven-for-the-super-rich/
Baer, M. (2019) Segmenting US affluent travelers. Ipsos. August 21. Available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/segmenting-us-affluent-travelers
Miele, C. (2017) Luxury Travel Market Segmentation. December 14. Dana Communications. Available at: https://www.danacommunications.com/luxury-travel-market-segmentation/
MIT (2006) Innovation through design thinking. MIT Video. Available at: http://video.mit.edu/watch/innovation-through-design-thinking-9138/.
Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. New York: Crown Business.
Sturrock, P. (2022) Week 2: The Adjacent Possible & Capabilities [PowerPoint presentation]. Available at: file:///Users/me/Downloads/Week%202.pdf.
The Affluent Segment: Key to Propel the Tourism Industry (2014) https://newsroom.mastercard.com/latin-america/press-releases/the-affluent-segment-key-to-propel-the-tourism-industry/