Research

02 Competitive Analysis

We went to Best Buy and talked to a store clerk about music players for the elderly. Here are some things we learned:

• He gives advice based on questions he asks them, normally about what technology they are looking for.

• Often a customer is looking for something to play an old format like tapes.

• He generally points them towards something simple with few features and larger buttons.

• He thinks they want small systems without fancy features. For example he thinks this age group doesn’t want “slow forward” or “fancy song skipping options”.

• Sometimes they want what they don’t understand, like an iPod they saw on TV but don’t have a computer or understand how it works.

• He believes that companies don’t target this group at all and only design products for the 20 something audience. He also believes “that’s the way society is going”.

• He claims they “don’t know what they want”.

• From our observations they didn’t have much that looked like people over 65 would want it. Everything was very “high tech” looking. There was a nostalgic stereo system that looked like a record player from the mid 20th century that I supposed was targeted at the elderly, but that’s laughable.