Understanding Consumer behaviour for start-ups

A startup isn’t just about the product, it is also about those using the product – ‘Consumer’!Startup Saturday, July 2018 was about “Understanding Consumer behaviour for start-ups”.


As veterans threw light on the topic, here are some key insights:

Anand Saboo
Founder, Sahyog Design Way Pvt.Ltd.

  • Design the right research questions
  • Surveys could be taken in not only textual formats but can be made fun with visuals
  • Research outside your company
  • Hustle to find your perfect focus group
  • Iterate the design process
  • Get down to a through competitive study
  • Categorize services while designing feedback surveys
  • Social Networking Mapping enhances the potential and the success possibility

Abhishek Desai
Founder- CricHeroes, Co-founder – DigiCorp

  • Start off with a few questions and ponder on it with your own product in mind.
  • Why aren’t we using certain products frequently?
  • Why certain products fail and why certain products excel?
  • What features in some apps get us instantly ‘hooked’ whereas features which fail to move us in the 2nd attempt.
  • ‎Mr. Abhishek elaborated fogg’s behaviour model which states “what causes behaviour change?”
  • Fogg’s behaviour model states that: ” Three elements must converge at the same moment for a behaviour to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When behaviour does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.”
  • For any trigger (like a push notification for opening the app) to succeed there has to be the right amount of motivation and ability at that particular moment.
  • If motivation is low, the triggered activity should be extremely easy to do.
  • If motivation is high, nothing prevents the user from doing the triggered activity.
  • It is always better to build products that people are highly motivated to use, even if UX is not that great than building easy-to-use products that people are rarely motivated to use.
  • “Not because you can then get away with clunky user experience but because that kind of product will work in a longer-run; it will have a better word-of-mouth effect and it will create a high barrier to entry for your competition.”
  • “Products with low intrinsic value can easily be copied; acquiring users for them is extremely hard and it is even harder to keep them loyal.”
  • “So, whatever you are building right now — think really hard.

Neel Shah
Founder, Hobbycook

  • Consumer behaviour experiences a constant change with the influence of marketing
  • A lot of start-ups come up seeing the gap
  • But only those survive who hit the right notes
  • An organization is about the entire feel that we deliver to the customer
  • The logo, the colours associated with the brand, the website experience, it is all about finding out what suits you the best.
  • Do not be tempted to grow fast, rather grow organic
  • The market is huge, conduct surveys and hit the right people to discover your right market fit.

“So, whatever you are building right now — think really hard. Unless
you are making something very compelling for a large enough audience (market size), it will be very hard to acquire users and keep them loyal.”