Bringing to Life Outdoor Segments

Challenge

Understanding the jobs of the outdoors among urban dwellers to inform an outdoor brand’s urban retail store design.

A major outdoor retailer, with a mission to instil a love for the outdoors, saw an opportunity to expand its customer base by targeting urban markets. But… their current retail format was designed with the needs, wants, and outdoor preferences of a more suburban crowd. To this end, the retailer needed to understand the broader outdoor landscape for urban dwellers, as well as the different “jobs” the outdoors plays for them, in order to inform the design of a new urban retail format.

Approach

In a two-fold approach, we developed a Jobs-To-Be-Done survey – segmenting outdoor occasions based on different motivations of getting outdoors. The survey was fielded among diverse urban locations in the US. Using the information, we were able to paint a picture of what the outdoors means to urban dwellers, as well as identify, size, and prioritize jobs of the outdoors.

Then, using 1-day digital diaries, we spoke to people who were routinely engaged in our prioritized jobs to see how the jobs come alive in their day-to-day experiences. We explored examples of the jobs, ideal scenarios and challenges, as well as the role of retail in solving them.

Outcome

The outdoor retailer was able to seize their opportunity in urban markets by utilizing job profiles that helped to inform in-house ideation sessions and design sprints among their team. Job profiles included: the spectrum of common activities urbanites engage in, the type of equipment purchased and degree of satisfaction in solving for the job – all which provided a road map for the client to deliver the ideal retail experience for urbanites.