University Assignment Work Completed 2021 - Group work completed in a pair
Brief: Develop a service design proposal for a disruptive and innovative user centered business solution. Key deliverables including harmony between user needs and organisation goals, disruptive problem solving, service design offering informed by research and testing.
Rationale: Looking across the pet care industry we found that the major players on the scene are on almost equal footing in terms of target audience perception and awareness, with brand loyalty mostly stemming from habit or convenience primarily or a single positive or negative interaction with a single store. This gave us an amazing opportunity to create a proposal to pull Petbarn ahead of the competition.
We chose to provide more to shoppers - what do pet and animal lovers want most from their store? We asked them and they said “Help making sure I’m doing the right thing by my pet” and “Commitment to Animal Welfare.”
By pivoting Petbarn away from mass-market retail supplier to thought leaders and service providers the business can evolve as a community driven, empathetic organisation able to walk the talk on pet care.
The App
Developed to provide people with fast and easy access to all of Petbarn’s products and services in a highly personalised way the app uses profiles of your real pets to tailor content that is purely relevant to you. It also creates connections between pet owners, professionals, and organisations to empower them to provide the best possible care.
The key experience principles that we aimed to uphold in the app were to: provide people with all the tools and information needed as capable bet owners, develop a community centered around Petbarn stores, create lasting and valuable partnerships in animal care, steer away from product and sales focus of retail.
Campaign
In order to promote the new service offering we leveraged the already award winning branding and visual identity of Petbarn and produced a series of POS posters, wobblers, banners and print media to be displayed in store in relevant areas. The campaign centers around common questions that pet owners may have, providing tips and assistance that people browsing the store told us they might need.
Benefits
We took inspiration from the beauty and cosmetics industry to produce a concept of loyalty rewards for app members. Unlike the cosmetics industry these packages would not require purchases for the accumulation of points to earn, but be an infrequent gift provided to members of the app tailored to their specific pet profiles.
The function of the Care Pack is twofold in encouraging users to use the app, as well as building brand loyalty by making people happy.