Personas

Personas Giving customers a face

Published on 06.08.2019 by Ricarda Raemy, Customer Insights Specialist, Post CH Ltd

Businesses can give different customer types a face using “personas”. Such models are used to deepen understanding of customer requirements. They form the basis for deriving marketing measures. The LimbicCODE®System developed by Dr. Hans-Georg Häusel is based on findings from psychology, brain research, evolutionary biology and consumer research and offers the opportunity to enrich these personas.

Personas provide us with a clearer image of the target customers. They help to identify and understand customer requirements. Products and services can be specifically designed or further developed using the focussed personas. This ensures that the customer experience can be shaped successfully and sustainably.

Emotions complement pure data

Various possibilities exist for creating personas or profiles, for example by segmenting target groups or demographic clusters. Customer groups can also be grouped according to the area in which they live, their age, gender, country of origin and income. But this is not enough.

Target group segmentation can be unspecific and superficial. Here’s a well known example: From a socio-demographic point of view, Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne can be put in the same target group, as they are the same age, they are both British, married, have two children and are high-income earners. Therefore not just data is needed, but also emotions.

In contrast to traditional segmentation, the LimbicCODE®System personas offer psychographic (personality description) and behavioural (behaviour based) characteristics with which personality characteristics, values and motivational and emotional structure can be allocated to individual users.

The LimbiCODE®Typology works with six consumer types, who are guided by various emotions and values: Performer, Disciplined, Traditionalist, Open-Minded, Hedonist and Adventurer.

Even if they start out at the same place, these Limbic types make completely different (purchasing) decisions and each type has to be addressed with different marketing measures. In the Swiss population and in the online community, the distributions of the Limbic types are almost identical and Traditionalists are the most represented group. 

Different ways of appealing to customers

When it comes to communication requirements concerning digitization, the Limbic types can be split into two groups: “Traditionalist”, “Disciplined” and “Open-Minded” belong to the Limbic types in need of security when using the Internet. This is why it is important to proactively communicate safety-enhancing measures to these personas, for example the security orientated way personal data is handled or a particularly simple online experience.

On the other hand, the Limbic types “Performer”, “Adventurer” and “Hedonist” liked to be stimulated by Internet usage. Make these personas proactively aware of the latest digital products, services and trends. Online videos should be primarily directed at the “Performer”, as most “Performer” types already use these particularly intensively.

As with any discipline and science, you should use various methods and test the procedures against each other to develop an overall picture. Each method or procedure has specific advantages and disadvantages. This is why it is recommended to compile a mixture of analyses.

Ricarda Raemy, Customer Insights Specialist, Post CH Ltd

Ricarda Raemy is a market researcher, design thinker and customer experience manager at Swiss Post.

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