ShopSimon™ Personas Project

The Problem

ShopSimon recognized the need to better understand their diverse customer base beyond basic demographics to personalize marketing, optimize product development, and tailor the customer experience. While they possessed a wealth of transactional data, they were eager to gain richer insights into who their customers were beyond demographics. 

Key questions remained unanswered, including:

• What motivated customers to shop at ShopSimon.com over our main competitors? 

• What were their primary needs and key frustrations when shopping for apparel online? 

• How do they value and prioritize important factors such as fashion, convenience, and price when deciding what to buy?

A comprehensive research study to identify and define customer personas would help ShopSimon improve their digital shopping experience to better serve a diverse and rapidly growing user base.

Process

• Reviewed historical quarterly customer experience data repository for initial themes and topics 

• Exploratory survey (~840 respondents)

• 12x one-on-one customer interviews

• Integrated quantitative persona questions into the Q4 2024 customer experience survey (~6,000 respondents) to allow for customer self-identification and detailed demographic analysis to further enrich persona profiles

 A snippet of the analytical work performed behind the scenes to identify and tag common themes and insights.

Findings

With robust data, I was able to identify four key personas for the ShopSimon consumer. These help understand the behaviors, motivations, and values of key shopper demographics. Some unique findings include... 

• The share of male shoppers was higher than originally assumed

• Consumers highly prioritize perceived value, and are motivated by deals and discounts

• While some consumers are trend-driven, many seek out personalized styles that reflect their individual preferences

• Consumers face challenges related to product fit, quality assessment, and the overall online shopping experience

• Shoppers are increasingly discerning, balancing the need for quality products with budget constraints

Results

• The personas were released October 2024, between a major rebrand (from Shop Premium Outlets to ShopSimon) and the holiday season. I provided webinars detailing the process, the findings, and how to interpret and use product personas on a wider platform. The persona findings will influence 2025's product feature prioritization as well as marketing and branding messages. 

• The personas have also been shared with the Simon Mall and Premium Outlets teams responsible for the brick and mortar user experience for their consideration as well.

• In addition, a series of questions were inserted into the Q4 2024 customer experience survey. The questions allowed customers to self-identify with the persona they best relate to, while providing ShopSimon with a more detailed demographic analysis based on their other survey responses that will further enrich our persona profiles. 

• Based on these findings, I will be targeting several other non-persona cohorts with additional research in 2025, namely luxury good shoppers and Simon Mall in-person shoppers. While they currently comprise a minority share of ShopSimon's overall customer base and thus could not be justified as primary personas, their shopping behaviors and attitudes diverge significantly enough to require additional study. 

My Role

I was the sole lead researcher for this initiative and managed all aspects of this project, in collaboration with the ShopSimon product team.