Need:

An online marketplace research team knew that their audience for sellers and shoppers skewed towards white, college-educated women. However, to meet the company’s goals to increase representation, they needed to understand needs and barriers from under-represented groups to sell and shop on their platform.

The research team approached me to help them understand the Hispanic/LatinX needs and barriers to sell on this marketplace and to provide product and go-to-market branding and communication recommendations.

Solution:

The goal of the research included:

• Explore emotional drivers, goals, and current behaviors and attitudes around shopping/selling for handmade products, craft supplies, and vintage products, either online or offline.
• Create a compelling communication plan to reach the Hispanic Audience in an authentic way.
• Identify barriers for using the marketplace as a product amongst buyers and sellers.
• Learn key cultural nuances that can could impact growth.

Results:

• Product improvements:
  • User can now choose language of preference to navigate site
  • Help center is now in Spanish
  • Search feature allows for bilingual searches
  • Categories include a good mix of terms for this audience to match expectations by acculturation level: “Hispanic inspired”, “Latino/Latina”, “Latinx”, etc.

• Comms and Marketing:
  • Articles highlighting Hispanic entrepreneurs selling using this e-commerce platform
  • Ads and comms launched a campaign using Hispanic values to connect with the audience – “Give more than a Gift”

Reflexions:

• Change is not immediate – it is a process: This research was the first of its kind for the company, so the stakes were high. The deliverables became key baselines for relevant conversations around Diversity and Inclusion metrics cross-functionally.
• Cross-functional work and collaboration is key for success: Connecting further and deeper with stakeholder teams (product and marketing & comms) to identify current work pipeline and priorities could have helped the research team have a greater impact on outcomes.
• Understand that one research question cannot solve all of the problems: Limit the breadth and length of studies to help reach better actionable insights