What about French people?

What about french people?

For this kind of work in the french university, we use to go on the street and ask questions to unknown people. Here unfortunately we can't do that (because we want to reach frenh people), so to make this work easier, I asked person I already knew. I did a Skype with my uncle and I asked two persons closed to me in France the same question :

When you go to the grocery shop, would you love to let your children in a child park or in a baby sitting spot?

Answers and views were different, but most of people were agree to this idea.
If the feeling with the baby sitter is good when you meet her for the first time, you trust her and you can let your child. Moreover, it's better for you because you can do your purchase more fast, you don't lose time speaking or answering at your child.

Furthermore, I think it could be really interesting for the company to do this practice because it could be a fidelity advantage. For instance, if your child loves the activities in the baby sitting spot, he will ask more often if he can go, and his mother will go more often to the grocery shop, and she will buy more.

For me it's a win-win strategy and in France, it would be really interesting for the customers and the company as well.
According to my project-mates works, I think it would be difficult to launch this idea in Finland, because people are too prudent and cautious.

	For	Against
Woman who is 21 Years old   One child: - 2 Years old	- Maybe I will win time.	-       We don’t know the person, no trust. -       Stressful during my purchase -       I will hasty so maybe I will forget to buy something
Man who is 28 Years old 2 Children: -7 Years old -4 Years old	-       Sometimes I want to be alone, I would like to let my children at house but I don’t want let them alone -       If I meet the babysitter in the grocery store, it would be perfect.	-       He can enjoy seeing products and chooses what he wants. -       It’s a good family moment, we can talk together
Woman who is 51 Years old 3 Children: -16 Years old -11 Years old -5 Years old	-       If we know the babysitter it’s ok -       Thanks to that, I will win time to do my purchases because I don’t have to wait my children	-       I know that my little child doesn’t want to leave me. If I let him alone he will cry a lot, but if the babysitter take care of him it would be perfect.
Man who is 28 Years old One child: - 4 YO	-       A babysitter free during my shopping?? Perfect -       I prefer be alone (or with my wife) to be more fast and concentrated	-       I don’t see negative point!!

Thomas.

French market

As said Saki, there are many differences between the French and Finnish culture and especially on child care, as we have seen for our project. Indeed, when I asked my friends who are mothers or members of my family, there is no hesitation in placing children with people we do not know.
After all these people work, they were incurred thus evaluate, it's no different than leaving them at home with the nanny, me does one answer. Indeed, parents prefer when they can not take the kids to shop or some shopping, since with them ultimately they do not have time to do what they wanted.

Emeline

Cultural differencies

Dear All,

It is fascinating how different countries have different attitudes towards child care and those services.
As spoken with Thomas, in France there is more demand and people are more accustomed to leave their children under attendance, but it Finland it's not so common yet, people seem to think it non-familiar and kind of not common practice in our closed social environment especially, I mean that we Finns are not so open, social and willing to leave our closest ones, children, to those who we don't trust and know. Responsibility matters a lot, I ques. But in France, if people have confidence and trust to someone, this service is very welcomed. Is it good reputation? I don't know. There are cultural differences and they are interesting! This day and afternoon gives us all something to chew, individually and as a team, that is in it's way in forming itself..

Let's study and try to think now the next week's issues:
-department stores
-inner city shopping in general
-retail business in France, Finland and where ever :)
-shopping, customer behaviour and changes that are happening in those globally
Documentation of our doings is needed according to our coaches, so let's put something to blog or other web based system and let's try to share ideas.
As our coaches said, Turku city center shop Wiklund, part of S-group. It's a bit like Printemps in Paris, not Galerie Lafayette (which is upper level store like Stockmann) but smaller of course than in Paris, will be our example and part of our studies next week.. Looking forward to next week.
Have a good and enjoyable weekend!
Saki

About child care idea, answers and examples to that

Here some results:
It seems to be awkward for us Finnish to leave our children to unknown, to the persons we don't really know. Only if necessary and there are no other alternatives, we leave them to child park alone, without parents nearby.
For example grandparents can take care of children while parents go shopping.
My wife said that children are kind of like dogs, they are with us all the time in their early childhood (we don't have children) and we take them with us, with the parents, wherever we/they go.
But some people find idea is intriguing and ok, for example those who are busy in general, need to do shopping things quickly and need time for themselves for a while.
Example: there are kids clubs in travel destinations organized by hotels and travel agancys, where parents leave their children attended. So, this idea is not new to all, but only some people use these services. So, this idea can reach some interest, but not to all parents. My estimation that interest is around 20 %. Good idea anyway in my opinion and need some further, deeper and more thinking. Depends on the country and social environment I quess also..
See you all later :)
Saki

Baby sitting in grocery stores

I asked two friends of mine who have a soon 3 year old child and a 6 months old baby what they thought about the idea of having a place where you could leave your child/children while doing groceries.  They both said they would feel uncomfortable leaving their children with strangers and that they don't mind having their children with them while shopping. One of them said she would rather leave the baby with the father or a baby sitter they know from before.

My conclusion is that our idea isn't very popular among parents and I don't think a baby sitting corner would work very well.

/Mary

The 1st and 2nd pitches

Hi there! I've now done the first pitches about our idea, the baby sitting spot/child park in larger grocery stores, to make the shopping easier. The response was not that positive, so for my part om this "investigation" it is not a real customer need. I asked two women with children if they would use this to make their shoppingtrip more easy, and they both asnwered that they would not. Here are some reasons for their answers:

-it feels unsafe to leave their children behind

-practical issues, like too much children at once, if they need to use the bathroom etc.

-they have relatively calm children so they can easily come to the store without "disturbing"

-it's good to take the children with you to the store so they learn how to behave in a store (practical things like saying hello, putting the groceries up and paying)

So they takeout from this is that it is not something that is worth working on further. We will see what the rest of the group has found out during their small investigation.

//Sarina

Just an opening question idea..

Could we help You to increase sales with a practical way that makes your family customers shopping much easier?

- What would that be?

Kids club in your shop! Babysitting service for the customers who come in with children. Sounds great and it's great! It makes parents shopping much easier when they can let their valuable and lovable kids play. Supervised and in good care of course.

(- How much that cost question comes naturally quite soon then from the audience, it can come even immediately.. So, numbers and cost estimation with benefits are needed quite soon also, but not yet)

Quite simple opening in my opinion, but easy to understand and not too complicated or long..

Feel free to give comments, adjust, develop, use and make those question examples and first openings better :)

Saki

Intro to team

Good morning to all!

Walk with a dog (what a fresh weather it is today!) and intensive gym session done for the early morning, now good time to write to this blog for the second time (writing a blog is totally new to me, but I usually use Facebook as a kind of bloggish style I quess, share there thoughts and opinions that news and articles arouse, so writing a blog should come somehow natural and I generally find writing relieving and relaxing, I don't think too much what to write and how to say things grammatically right, especially in social media, but try to write what I think and awake ideas). Soon to help my friend with his new home project. Then early and big, most probably meaty lunch somewhere. So something physical and active to start Tuesday before German language lessons.

Active discussions lately in our Facebook group LeanInno 2014 to sort ideas, throw ideas, share thoughts and hoping to find focus, to concentrate to some project. I believe according to our conversations and discussions that we are quite clear now that it's a grocery store, that we will concentrate. We will get ahead, step by step, even with sidesteps and maybe especially with that style, trying and playing, I believe that it does not cost much, but can give a lot, sharing a mean. Let's see and figure what we can produce. We are all different, we surely value things differently and we have own ways how we think and styles how we go ahead with this project. All this is good and we can very well benefit from our differencies, experiences and from different ways to approach things.
ESTJ, Dominant: Extraverted Thinking according to the test tells something about me. I believe in openness and sharing thoughts, but enjoy also working by myself. I believe in easygoing thinking

Now to the project, without mentioning the exact Title yet as things are still in the air and forming.

Babysitting area / play area for the children to go while parents as a customers go shopping.
Buyer, Audience and decission maker to this project would be naturally shopkeeper, shop manager and business owner, I think. Also whole management team in some corporate could be audience.
Here two commercial style pitches that moved me most from those few that came to my mind yesterday late evening. We decided to make everybody 2 pitches per person in order to start this.

1.
Ok Pitch: Sales jump while babies sit! Do you want to know how?
This feels to me kind of is short but easy and energetic 
To make this better is necessary though, I'll think about the idea more deeply.

2.
Other one could be like:

Parental advice to shop keepers: Let children play and parents enjoy shopping! We can help! Take baby sitter to jump your sales now!
Also this needs something more.. Hm.

Other 4 openings that I wrote were too plain and boring in my own opinion, I shared them in Facebook which is our main forum still in this phase. Those pitches included figures, sales number and cost estimations, I think that it's not necessary to go that far yet, but to keep things simple, not the go so deep into details. But figure and find out customer need is essential, figures and numbers help me in finding those...



Enjoy the day and let's be in touch :)

Saki

Back in Turku and Needs are on my mind

Good week to everyone!

Weekend went nicely in West Naantali, some fishing, enjoying, outdoor life and relaxing in the Archipelago.

Mobile phone gave possibility to participate easily with group and share ideas quickly and effortlesly.

We had good start in Facebook group during last days about our our ideas and where to concentrate, where to focus. We though about cafe shops and can I think that it's possible to include also that in bigger Crocery focus, as many bigger shops have already cafe services inside or in immediate vicinity of their shopping area.

Personally I started this mission with needs in general and let my mind wander around Needs, what are the ones that are essential to us all and what impact those needs have, what are kind of problem points. Problems might lead mid to benefits and open news ideas and roads. I quess we agree after several postings that grocery store, medium to big size stores, not just small ones, that are kind of becoming quite rare also, could be the target of development.

So, Grocery needs what are they? I believe that at least it's very important to keep clients kind of flowing in, regularily. Personnel/staff should be fullfilling their mission and cash flow need to be constant and regular. There are other needs also and many needs are linked to each other, in the big picture, all is networked and connected. In shopkeeping business all operations should support each other, eventhough they sometimes look to be acting independently and on their own. Benefits, at least how they look now, they are natural and kind of easily noticable, like attractive grocery store increases positive memory that will increasy customer loyalty. We talked about positive mood in the class room and summarized that it's important to make such positive memory impact to customers mind, kind of succeed in hearts and mind operation, to make customer our ambassador from business owners view. And as Sarina told, it is made from specific and many things, is formed from many things. There is several puzzles, larger and smaller ones in the big picture. All makes a success together. It's positive, it gives energy and helps personnel in general to work well and happily, when they know that they are part of something bigger.. Happy personnel and staff can serve better and produces more and better customer service. Enough success and cash flow enables business to operate and increases investment possibilities. All these together increases trust in general.
It's good to let mind flow and be aware of all ideas. Let's think and see you all in team and LeanInno group on Thursday :)

Saki

A new blog design

Just thought I had to make some adjusments to the boring blog design and here is the result for now! A little more appealing and inspiring with some bright colors :). The idea for the customer need we will be focusing on during next week is also slowly starting to get formulated, stay tuned...

Have a nice weekend y'all! //Sarina

Think you've heard this one before?
Hopefully this is what we will have achieved after the course is done!

The first blog post!

Okay, so I thought I would be brave enough to write the first post to our innovative blog, YAY! :)

My name is Sarina, and I am one of the six students in our group during the LeanInno course in Turku. I am 21 years old (soon to be 22) and I am originally from the most southern town in Finland, Hanko (also called Finland's Miami, haha). There I grew up with my mom, her partner, my 3 older sisters and my twin brother. My family is very dear to me and I try to visit them as often as I can! Besides that I also have a really lovely boyfriend, lucky me :). I just started my fourth year as a marketing student at Handelshögskolan (Åbo Akademi) and I already got my Bachelor's degree in International marketing this June. I am aiming to get my Master's degree in 2016, whereafter my plans are still open. As a person I am ofter described as happy, loyal, positive and kind. So, that's a short story about me, enough about that!

Our first task as a group is to come up with a customer need, and then pitch about this idea 9 times with real customers. The idea is to get to know if this idea really is a customer need and if this idea really would create customer value. We have still to decide the specific need, but I suppose it all will clear out in the near days!

For now, have a lovely Friday evening and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Hi, this is me! :)