From Insights Platform to Implementation: A Personas Case Study with Caesarstone

you're a jerk yeah absolutely I'm I'm worried about my tech situation but hey we'll see how it goes okay well I think we're live we're good to go so Oh excellent well let's get started then I bet thank you everyone for joining us my name is Luke Williams and I'm a senior research director at accelerant research and I am here presenting with Courtney Babbitt who is a market research manager at Caesarstone and we are going to be sharing some results from some recent personas work that we partnered together to do a few things I think really interesting things that work anyway so so it should it should bring a lot of value to the table that you have done such work recently or are considering doing such work in the future it's a really nice case study on things that go well and piece of research that is really high impact in addition to sharing the results one of the things we're going to be walking through is the process we used there was a lot of upfront work that we feel very strongly contributed to the success of the research and its success when used by Caesar soon in the field so I will turn this over to Courtney and she will get us started and give a quick introduction to lots of her brand Caesarstone thank you so much Luke thanks everyone for joining us today I want to start just by giving some background information I I'm gonna take advantage of the situation and answer Bill's question and say I got started in research and a very roundabout way I thought I would be a marketing executive and then I decided I wanted to get my PhD in marketing and I went to the University of Oregon the PhD didn't so I'm a BD what I found out is that I didn't like teaching so much that's actually doing research and so I went into research and went back to the corporate world after academia so that's kind of my introduction I have a lot of knowledge a lot of schooling and who way too long in case you've never heard of Caesarstone we are a global manufacturer based in Israel of quartz countertops we are a b2b company we provide our countertops through three main channels which you see here and then these channels sell directly to our end consumers the homeowners and renovators that are putting in new countertops traditionally we've marketed to these channels and not to homeowners we use a push strategy to drive business but a few years ago we were wanting to incorporate po strategy to also start marketing directly to and consumers so our goal with this research was to segment and get personas to identify relevant segments of the home owners that are currently or planning to be kitchen remodelers I'm specifically looking to purchase new countertops and then market you know to them and so we engaged accelerant as our insights partner and I'm gonna pass to Luke who's gonna go through the entire research process and then I'll be back and tell you about how we implement it all this oh thank you so much Courtney as I was alluding to earlier I live in what is termed a historic district or historic neighborhood and I am afraid much to probably the annoyance of all y'all that the internet connection is a little unstable here with so many folks using it during the day today so I'm the first half please bear with me if you lose the audio just take a look at the slides Courtney who's going to be walking you through them and hopefully I won't be too much to a problem so personas work we were contacted by the Caesarstone team met some preliminary discussions about how we wanted to approach the project and tackle things and what they needed it to do the first thing it excelled on we really got the sense of was how impactful this work was going to be it was going to be used at many levels of the organization and there was really a lot of expectation for the work we wanted to make sure that we were building work on a really solid platform and that it would go forward and meet the needs of folks and really do what they needed it to do when they were kicking the tires on the back ends at accelerant we feel that planning for any successful journey begins with a map and we feel the same about market research so we sat down with Caesarstone we built them out for this you can see that line you can approach on the slide ski it's got a lot of steps it's divided into basically three phases there's groundwork phase logistical phase where we do the actual design and fielding and analysis and then an implementation phase where Caesarstone that is to say Courtney um takes the work back and really builds it into the DNA at the organization as far as the groundwork phase goes there are four steps I'm gonna put a lot of focus on these first one development of the insights platform second one we convened the Council of war thirdly we made sure that we had clearly defined the objectives I know this is something that that we get to in the scope of work it comes out with the RFP the request for a proposal but for something this big and this foundation we really felt it was important to get all the right folks in the room have an additional discussion about it so that we were building research that would really work for everyone and then we moved on to first draft in the survey so Courtney do you want to jump to the next slide okay so this is a little off-topic but I've always liked this chart and it's gonna help me make what a help is a very compelling point for for everyone is listening I want to talk a little bit about insights platforms and this is something that I was first exposed to more than 10 years ago by the corporate executive board insights condition and it always stuck with me because I think that as a framework being useful one and I do think that sometimes we sort of overlook it is it too so what you're seeing here on the chart is progression of innovations in humanists and these are technologies or inventions that have served as a later foundational stepping stone that future innovations were built on and a really interesting thing about this chart is how slowly we start off in the 40 40s so things are really moving along you got the printing press and got the telescope get up to the steam engine it's very flat and then something happens in the 1730's and starts get a little bit of traction then in the 1830s we start to get a little more momentum and then coming into 1890 you really see things are taking off now obviously there is a lot that is contributing here um you know increased lifespans the ability the population growing and the ability for folks to specialize in fields better education means more people are going into these types of fields now those are all things that we can't control if you want those to impact your insights organization you're going to need to talk to Human Resources but there is something going on here that we can control and that is the insights platform so this is something that was first introduced as a concept in 1731 by the Royal Society Edinboro and they published a collection of peer-reviewed medical articles so they're reviewed by peers they're of high quality they're getting published and distributed they the idea of publication of peer-reviewed information really started to come into practical practice in 1831 and then by 1894 going into the 1890s it was pretty much the standard this is a really important step forward in gaining steam for moving ahead when it comes to learning because really you are wasting time asking the same questions again and again you were able to take information that has already been discovered you are able to say good information that is accredited and found to be accurate you're not wasting the very limited time interacting with customers asking the same questions again and again an insights platform allows you to take what you already know summarized it and then move forward from there and in this particular project it was a really invaluable piece of Rhys a really invaluable foundation on which we subsequently built the study that we ended up fielding so this was something that the Caesarstone team did they had six really amazing high-impact studies that were done within the last 18 months they pulled those learnings together and they used it as a bracing tool for the team so that we had a lot of accurate information stimulating information and we could really ID a from there so some examples of that good work you see up on the slide here our satellite projects um when when folks do a countertop renovation they don't just for the most part they don't just replace the countertop they do satellite projects within the kitchen or within though sometimes that's a very simple thing for example they will pick a new color of paint that goes with the new countertop or the new design that they're looking for and sometimes that's very complex they will extend that renovation out into an outside space extend the kitchen into an entertaining cooking dining area that is outside the home very substantial and sometimes do other parts of the home getting an understanding of how that process worked that it wasn't just about the countertop and what some of those satellite projects that were informing how the countertop was shop for really really helpful next up Courtney one of the most interesting things I think about the countertop category is the way that brand works in a lot of ways it is really an unbranded category at present and the role that brand plays in the end selection it's it's not actually what you would expect in fact for a lot of countertop buyers the further you move down the purchase funnel the more important brand becomes so they will start the process with kind of an idea about materials or learning about materials that's very why they'll go and they'll pick out some looks that they like or some colours that they like you know then then when they get to the latter three-quarters of the funnel that's when they start making a list of brands during research on the brands and that's where brand comes most heavily into clay so there's the inversion part of that it's so interesting the project flow the consumers are working with really has an impact in a lot of things particularly how they set the budget and where they are in the renovation process by the time they start thinking about the countertop in some cases the countertop is the central part of the renovation they will pick the countertop first and then build the whole style around that in other project flows for example someone who has damaged water damaged kitchen cabinets they'll replace the cabinet's first the countertop flows from that then they move on to other things and as a huge impact in the way they set the budget and where they are in the design process when they actually start looking at countertops and then fourthly we have done some really interesting qualitative work on the purchase journey or the shopping journey that consumers used while they were picking out the countertops we had asked consumers to kind of lay out or write down the processes that they used and I've got to tell you I have never seen a category as complex as this one some of these purchase journeys were like deciphering The Da Vinci Code it was absolutely insane 20-plus steps there are iterative steps there are many influencers that come in this is not a linear process at all but being able to look at this information really help us understand what potential influencers were what resources were consulted when what information folks were looking to get from different resources as they were moving down the process these are all things that we're going to be able to bake into our survey instrument and use them while we're designing our personas next slide Cortney all right so the next step we convened a war room council this was a council of war and really our goal here was to bring in as many of the relevant end users of the personas work as we could get we had marketing insights from Caesarstone in the room we had the marketing strategy team in the room with the line of business folks in the room and there was a new creative agency that was being brought on board specifically for the project we had those folks in the room as well the insights platform was used to bring all these folks up to speed this was really important for the new partner it was the creative agency so they had the same grounding and then as part of this council of war when we did a couple of things the first thing that we did was we really sat down and talked about how the personas were going to be used and we made sure we were all on the same page with the objectives organizations use personas in different ways and the way that an organization uses a persona really informs how you are going to go about creating that work the survey instrument you're going to use even how you're going through your analysis if an organization wants to use personas just to get some color for their customers and use those as a reminder to their employees who their customers are who they're designing for we might take one approach if the personas are going to be used mainly to fuel creative campaigns or media buys we might use a different approach in this case we have a really wide set of objectives Cortney do you want to bring those up basically there were five key areas and this is quite a list the personas had to offer rich understanding of the customer their motivations and really the underlying stories of their renovations they had to have clearly definable and measurable characteristics that could be used for sales goals and other things they personas needed to provide insight into the relative value of different segments or persona clusters to allow to prioritize marketing efforts and product design and sales calls and a bunch of other things the personas needed to assist in broader strategic work and this was including but not limited to what sales channels folks were going after praten development of new products and marketing overall and then finally at the end and this came from this is your own research team succinct set of variables that could be defined in the data and used in subsequent research and profiling so we're looking to come out of this with typing tool so that we when we do future research we can understand who we're talking to what persona they fall into and just get bring in that really broad background story of the renovation that we simply don't have time to address and every piece of research that that is going out the door okay so next the next thing that we had the team help us with was development of the instrument and really what we wanted to do here we took a bit of a cookbook approach we wanted to get every possible hypothesis on the table and then start from there so this is really a place where the beauty of having the war council and all the folks in the same room really came together inside everyone brought something different to the table insights and strategy added product project initiators the research approach that folks were using and lots of great items that related to the shopping journey the line of business helped us flesh out that list of satellite projects that turned out to be so important for us they brought in attributes of materials that were evaluated how do folks choose between granite material and a quartz material what exactly are they looking for they also introduced the framework to evaluate the value of the customer there were items like budget and final amount paid for the countertop that really helped us prioritize those on the back ends and also they brought in renovation goals this is something that probably wouldn't occurred have occurred to us that accelerant so it was a really great conversation to have people renovate for really different reasons there are practical reasons there's damage or they want to be able to use their kitchen for a different type of cooking there are social goals for renovations they want the kitchen be a showplace to the home and really you know Wow guests who come in and use it to entertain and there are emotional goals as well you know they they want this space to be calm they want it to be relaxing they wanted to reflect their personal sense of style and really make the home feel like a cohesive design unit the creative agency brought stuff to the table a lot of inspiration elements inspiration influencers and sources style orientation was was a big piece that the creative agency brought to the table that might not have gotten into the tool otherwise you know and style orientation is a really interesting one it turned out to be very important there are folks that take a very practical lean for the kitchen they wanted to be able to do certain things more storage would be an example there are also folks who reflect their sense of self before they want the clean lines they they want to get something else from it next up we put all these together and we sort of mapped out how the survey instrument was going to flow we ended up dividing into a number of sections and these sections really mirrored the customer shopping journey firstly that was a good way to organize the survey so that we could keep track of what was in it and go through the revision process smoothly and secondly it really made sense from the perspective of someone who's taking the survey it sort of flowed along the way their project did there was a section on initiators what what made you move forward with this there was a section on inspiration and design all the way through to the end of the process when they actually made the purchase of the countertop and then finally something that another great piece that came from the council of war after the countertop was installed was there a promotional process that went on you know are these folks who bring in guests and show it off and talk about the brand hey here's the new kitchen these folks who take photographs of the countertop and are posting them on social media so we ended up with what we felt was a really comprehensive list of possible attributes and items that we could really dig into and would certainly be able to meet all the objectives we also ended up with a long list a very very long list actually a list that was impractical due to length so our next step here was to go back to the war council and go through a refinement process probably going to induce a little traumatic stress syndrome in some of those folks who are participating in this conference part of this process because it was a pretty lengthy one but there were several rounds where we consolidated we sort of flagged things that we thought were less important would be less practical to make strategic and marketing decisions things that were iterative and we started pairing those down we got about a 20% reduction we ended up with a survey that was about 20 minutes and it contained a hundred plus attitudinal attributes that we really all felt good about it so then we moved on to programming testing and fielding and we talked with a thousand folks who had renovated their kitchens and placed a countertop in the past year next slide please okay once once we got the data in hand we started the analysis and in this case our process is pretty involved we basically had a four step process if anyone has any really detailed questions on the way the segmentation and modeling is done I can set up some time for you to speak with dr. Paul Rubenstein who is our senior data scientists here at accelerants and I'm sure that you can walk you through the steps in detail I'm just gonna hit these at a high level four steps we started off with summarizing what we would call the principal components so we're starting off with one hundred-plus survey items and there are some things that were going to put aside demographics for example you know if we were doing a true segmentation we might feel a little differently but items like income budget where the actual countertops were bought we're seeing these as profiling elements among those that were left or ten-point scale attribute items we really want to Heil make sure we highlight the items that have the strongest correlations two behaviors of interest now this market plate so that we included them in the clustering work that was done so the marketplace as I mentioned and Courtney's going to get into in a bit this is a really really complex one also the personas have the task of not only looking at folks that ultimately purchase quartz countertops were purchased from Caesarstone but this weights about lament as well we also want to understand folks who made other decisions and if there are ways we can kind of speak to them or bring them over to consider parts or consider Caesarstone so for actual correlations there's no definitive dependent variable however we are going to look at some we're going to look at folks that did make the decision to purchase sports and we are going to look at folks who did make the decision right decision to buy a Caesar stone countertop we want to see what the strongest correlating items to those two activities are because we want to make sure that we're including them in the clustering set to see how they perform then we move on to clustering we use the k-means clustering alysus and really we're trying to identify potential clusters in the data and create topologies of individuals within that population next up third step we use discriminant function analysis to look at goodness of fit indices for these potential solutions and we're really trying to identify which of the survey items within each of the clusters that that were identifying best account for similarity and disparity across the groups from that we're going to pick some strong solutions and we're going to do some preliminary profiling to see what the stories of those solutions are Courtney next slide please okay so do you want to bring up Courtney the yeah there we go okay so a few things to keep in mind whenever we're talking about personas and profiling and the first one up is the data is agnostic unlike a US K means clustering alysus and discriminant function they don't need to market or strategize anything lucky then they will produce a lot of solutions that have really good fit and some of them just aren't practical you know we've we've talked with a thousand folks here and if we're ending up with five hundred and seven personas you know the analytics tell us that's a great model but it's really not practical for our purposes so we end up with a wide variety of solutions that the analytics are telling us are potentially good and we want to get that number down and focus on a smaller set that are going to work for us is marketer and marketing strategists so we're going to put a couple of rules in place right we're gonna put in the rules that hey we want three or more clusters or personas because if we have less than that we're really not getting as rich and understanding as we want I want to say that anything that has any solution that has more than ten personas it's just impractical we're not going to talk to that many people we need a higher level view you know we we do not have the marketing or the resource budget you know that maybe Amazon could bring to the table with its analytic model so we have kind of identified a subset of solutions that look pretty good to us from that perspective they are all able to to put about ninety five percent of the folks that we talk to into a cluster with confidence and they have a workable number of personas so we're gonna start looking at those models in detail and see within those models Oh back up kourtney's sorry I'm talking a lot I know yeah we're gonna look into those models and we're gonna we're gonna try and see what survey items are best accounting for a fit what what is driving the formation of those clusters because we want solution we want to evaluate solutions that are meaningful in practice and to give you an example of that we've got one money you can't see it I suppose we've got one cluster here it's 95 percent goodness fit great they're categorizing ninety-five percent of the people one of one of the biggest items that is sort of sorting people into clusters in that particular model is whether or not when they go to stores they pick up sales martial arts so you know what that is really interesting information that is really important information that is a really useful thing to know about this group and clearly that's going to be a really important channel for us as we're talking to them but is that usable from a broader perspective are we going to design new products around that are we going to create a new website experience from that are we going to use that as sort of the jumping-off point for a new creative campaign probably not but right next to it you've got another solution that that is just as good a fit also 95 percent folks being sorted in personas there and with this one one of the main attributes that is sort of grouping people is their their view of the kitchen as either something really functional it's a place where the family is going to gather and we are going to cook meals together versus their view of the kitchen is something that is aspirational it is something to show off to guess it is a reflection of my sense of style and I'm looking at at it really for purposes of entertaining now is that model more helpful from practical terms would we design a creative campaign around that absolutely we can see that happening would we design new products from that um certainly you know they have very different sets of attributes they may be looking at how well it holds up against heat versus you know the the look of the material when it is in the kitchen would we design a website experience from that absolutely that could be that could be a great jumping-off point for that we really like that solution better than the other one because it feels more useable to the end-user so we've identified a couple strong candidates and Cortney if you want to jump ahead to the next slide and there's one in particular that is really catching our eye it is a four cluster solution you see the clusters they are a through D it meets our 95% threshold it has a manageable number of clusters and one of the things we really like about it is that survey items the best accounting for fit similarity and disparity among how the clusters are coming together they are really meaningful from a usability standpoint so our next step here we're gonna kick the tires on this one a little bit we're gonna do some preliminary you know high-level profiling of these groups so we're gonna look at some of the non principal components that don't inform how the clusters come together and see if there's a really strong story it starts emerging about about these people and the persona that they belong to so at the top of the slide here one of these are three examples of things we looked at one of them was are they able to recall the brand of countertop that they purchased so we've got our four clusters here a through D and yeah we see some really interesting differences compare and contrast personas D and C if you will so indeed ninety percent of these people absolutely they can recall the brand brand is really important to these folks they probably shop by brand they recall the brand they are telling other people about how great brand is they compare that to cluster see you've got 57% of folks who are coming together in this cluster that know what branch they bought they're able to recall it but 43% they have no idea that's nearly half um clearly they were focused on other things during their shopping a material selection process really interesting secondly a second example here we have area of residence and again we're just seeing a really meaningful set of differences between these groups if you look at cluster B for example they are one two times likely than the average countertop buyer to have a rural place of residence and if you look at cluster a twenty three percent versus countertop buyers is in a hole i these are not City dwelling folks their suburban Otway interesting stuff we see similar things when we look at Missa tee compare again clusters a and B if you will cluster a we've got seventy nine percent of folks telling us their Caucasian cluster B it's really a lot more diverse we have a lot more folks to identify as Hispanic following into this group we continue going through this process doing the high level profiling with a lot of these other non principle variables and the question that we are asking ourselves do we understand the stories that this model is telling is it an understandable story is it a relatable story do we have a sense of who these folks in this personas are and is that information that the the business is going to be able to react you and our answer that is absolutely yes so next step we do a little more profiling and we bring this solution back to the council of war we walk through what we're seeing at a high level I'm talking about implications we want sure that everyone is on board with this solution versus other ones that we could have come up with the answer is yes we're feeling good about it intuitively it makes sense this is a really rich diving off so we continue the analysis process and we do extensive profiling on the clusters and we put together their stories and Cortney is now going to take point and walk you through the introduce you dr. Sommers Thank You Luke so these are our four very alliterative segments that we identified in the research the largest segment of suburban showcases are more than one-third of Kitchen renovators as the name suggests they are more likely to live in the suburbs they are that are focused on style and design and wanting to make their kitchen a better statement to guests the second largest segment is city sellers and they trend more urban again name suggests they tend to be younger have kids their focus on the kitchen renovation is preparation to sell so they're they're looking to renovate so they can sell their home and get more value out of it by by renovating the kitchen our third segment at 21% is our brand list budgeters B skew younger male and oh wait no sorry the brand was budgeters I'm getting ahead of myself focus on low cost so their primary goal here is to save money and they undertake their kitchen renovation just because they're sick of their old kitchen which I can completely understand the last segment is rural remodelers the smallest segment these are the ones that are younger and male and tend to over index on Hispanic they tend to undertake larger remodeling projects and are much more practical on their use of the kitchen as a place for meals so they have much more practical kind of focus their two statements in particular really stand out as matching our product and being targets for marketing and that would be city sellers and suburban showcase errs I'm gonna walk you through our main target which is suburban showcases and how we have through the last year and what we are currently implementing using this research so taking a look at are our main our main target here and look if you could mute because we can hear you typing I apologize the burnished okay sirs you can see these are the actual slides that accelerant provided to us at Caesarstone there is as you can see a lot of information to work with and this doesn't even these are the summary slides so there was a lot more analysis as well which is just provided a wealth of information for us to use so when accelerant presented this research to our teen I love this just because it made me laugh then it still makes me laugh they described this segment as low-hanging fruit for us that Caesarstone which is absolutely spot-on not only are they the largest segment which is obviously very attractive to us much better than having say 8% of the population fit there are natural attitudes their behaviors and their priorities make Caesarstone a good fit for them as well so our brand fits them they fit our brand so it's great they make up the heaviest use of our specialty kitchen ambassadors so one of our our main three channels with about 30% using it and much more than other segments and they're actually the lead purchasers of quartz with 31 percent purchasing quartz they're important factors for the countertop itself include durability and ease of cleaning and so quartz is a perfect fit there as well because it delivers on those qualities and one of the main reasons the thing especially enticing for us here at Caesarstone is their aspirational design priority as a brand we desire to innovate and combine stunning design with outstanding performance so we have a focus on design as well as high-performance long-lasting product and this allows the homeowner to bring their design imagination to life and our brand focus aligns then with the suburban show kickers okay sirs focus on style and beauty of beautiful design and creating a kitchen to showcase then and show off to their friends and family demographically as you can see this segment is middle aged which I can say yes I too a middle-aged Caucasian and female by the looks of it I'm right in there most have children living at home and about a third of the segments have previous renovation experience so they've done this before as the segment main denotes of course they're located in the suburbs about two-thirds of them and more than half have a renovation budget above ten thousand which again is a fit for us we are a higher end product most definitely so like all the segments you can see down at the bottom they shop at big box stores but they again are the most likely to shop at their local kind of specialty store among all the segments and they tend if you look right above that to shop for counter tops in one of two ways either they start by going to the store and looking around and see what they like and then researching or they research and then go and look so when Luke was talking about that purchase journey before it is a mixed bag hey our second in detail slide about suburban show pacers looking a little closer at their attitudes towards home because these are were very important to us and are important going forward with how we implement their home for them is a place to express their own personality their own style and to create memories their home in doing this and making it personal give them a great sense of accomplishment and it's very important for them for the kitchen to be an inviting gathering space so they really want that kitchen to stand out these attitudes all combined together into kind of what is the big project initiator for this group which is showing off to make a statement with their kitchen and being us they like to entertain and create memories in their home obviously the kitchen is gonna be an important place for these activities so this group they aim to have the stylish beautiful design that reflects who they are and their visual shoppers they want to see not just the countertop in detail and what it looks like they want to see the countertop Instituto they want to see it in a kitchen and they look in-store and in multiple places online they're looking for practical features as well like I mentioned with their ability being easy to clean but the look of the material fitting their own personal designs vision of the kitchen is the second most important thing next to durability for them so that can really outrank some other features and we need to obviously appeal to that for this group you can see that the brand has more of an impact at the end of the purchase journey rather than at the beginning which is you know obviously not too surprising after what Luke said in our previous research but they also have a very narrow window in which we have to engage them 40% over 40% of this group said that they started looking and actually chose a countertop within two weeks of starting the process so we have to engage them quickly and we need to do it very early in the process so some of the ways we have implemented this research since we've decided to incorporate a pull strategy and we want to brand directly to the end consumer we did implement some changes pretty much immediately upon receipt of this week I already had some ideas and this you know this coincided and so we focused really on the segment sources of inspiration and so far we've implemented strategies in three main areas with this research has foundation we've done social media print and digital media and physical locations is what we've looked at and the information of these segments you know one of the quickest and easiest to change was our our social media we have direct control of that of the channels so we could undertake it quickly and implement it and we've significantly since receiving this research we have increased our social footprint expanding in the Instagram being much more visual instead of wordy or technical on our social media and we've just want well so we've really tried to align with the segment's characteristics focusing on the beautiful design focusing on the countertop actually Institute like you can see behind me and presenting these inspirational and aspirational visuals for the consumer in print and digital media we use the targeted personas to determine which print and digital you know fit our our brand and our segments are chosen segments best we aligned aspects of the being obviously of the segments with the audiences that we see in different print digital media one of the campaigns that we implemented was with bone Appetit and that's actually included in their YouTube channel where they actually do cooking videos on YouTube which I actually enjoy since I cook and our countertops are showcased actually in those YouTube videos and branded in their cooking videos on YouTube so that was one of the things that we did and it directly is reaching those end consumers and then looking at where homeowners shocked and purchased the research shows that all personas look at and/or purchase at big-box stores and it's the lead person purchase channel 4 for all countertop purchasers 34 percent so over a third of people buy my countertops there and even if big box isn't where they purchase in total the consumers say that they're still going there and looking at big box retail orders that's one of the common places they're going just to evaluate the materials that they're selecting even before they're getting to Brandeis so this reinforces other research that we saw that said that but it also showed that our target even though we are going for aspirational design focused higher income higher budget consumers our target market still shops there and whether it's inspiration or purchase they're actually in big box and one of this one of the things this research really highlighted and made obvious to us is that by not being in that channel at big box that we were in effect losing consumers just because we weren't there so one of the things that we we did we worked with Home Depot and in January we started a nationwide rollout in all US Home Depot stores so you can actually now see and purchase these or stone in Home Depot the third another I should say the fourth thing that we're we've started and are currently working on so those we've already implemented and the most current project using the personas is the development of a new website so our old website really focused on our professional channels since you know b2b that's how we were marketing using that push campaign and it was not in consumer friendly to say the least and not inspirational and so being that we were focusing on the the consumer sources of inspiration a kind of the lead that's what started this project and looking at their attitudes and pray or we kind of use those to determine what features we were going to add to this new website and also to implement you know things on our current website before we you know because the development of the website is going to take a year or more so we started by just adding some features to the current website things that were simple for example for example the visual shopping kind of aspect and you know wanting that kitchen the countertop in situ and things like that so we focused on our you know the style and the design and expanded to a visual gallery so instead of just having product specs and close-ups of our slabs which is what things like designers and fabricators want we started including pictures of the full kitchen with the countertop to really be able to spark that imagination in the consumer we also have expanded on providing visuals with adding a visualizer to the website so the consumer can virtually design their kitchen and we have incorporated things like mood boards where you have our countertops with certain colors and themes that the homeowner can use for inspiration sadly the way the current website is designed it's it's not especially user-friendly some of these things can be hard to find which is of course why we are designing a new website with the end consumer in mind and developing that currently so in developing this new website we're using three main aspects I mentioned inspiration attitudes and priorities a few of the features that we are adding include ready-made themes a budget guide and some personalization with ready-made themes we want to make it so the consumer not just sees you know the kitchen in situ and has a great visual but that we are aligning those with design styles that they know so whether it's traditional farmhouse transitional eclectic industrial have examples of those themes with our countertops for them to explore for the budget guide one of the things for all all consumers is that they set a budget further for the renovation you know whether or not they actually use it they said it and it's of some importance at least at the start of the product project and gathers stays important or not depending on the segment and first specifically for our segment when we're looking at suburban showcase sirs there are ones that that you know start with the budget probably fully intend to use it kind of more serves as a loose guide because the style and design and the beauty and matching nurse that it matters so much to them which I can I can totally understand having a budget not sticking to it so we we decided that we wanted to lose something like a budget guide on there so we can really help them kind of see and kind of you know give knowledge on what a true kitchen renovation may cost and then with personalization we are adding features to our website that I cannot go into specific detail on but our goal is to make it a personal site since these people since you know our target segment really wants that personalization and personal sense of style and we want it to be a personal experience we really want to focus on being interactive and providing an experience for them so we are adding features to highlight that and the second element that we are looking at is you know they approach to counter felt countertop shopping so as I mentioned before you know it's pretty split most people look first then research but our very large majority of nearly half do research upfront and then go looking at a retail location so you know oftentimes the consumers are going through this process multiple times they go back and forth looking online researching going into the store looking going back online you know as Luqman it's an iterative process it's if they go through it and it can go on and go through it multiple times this is a very high involvement decision so a lot of thought and everything goes into it so we took that knowledge of how owner nor homeowner shop looked at the consumer journey this here is a very simplified journey for you to look at but it gets to the point where it is iterative it is not linear at all it can go back and forth and they can spend quite a bit of time in it with this journey where the consumer starts they're starting with an overall lack of knowledge and we kind of get this from previous research we saw it a little bit with this research but we want to make sure that our website hits on all these areas so you know they tend to be overwhelmed by options there's a ton of options out there we have material choice whether it's granite boards solid surface before I worked at Caesarstone I could not have named all the countertop choices there's there's the different colors and depending on the surface what colors can be available so if you want you know a lime-green countertop that's gonna narrow your material choice there's different brands the professionals you're going to use the entire process what comes first you have to install the cabinet's and then the countertop and all that stuff they have to know they're overwhelmed they just don't know and even if they've renovated a kitchen before and put in new countertops that probably was 10 to 20 years ago so there's different factors like affordability What's in style what they've been exposed to and so they're often restarting with no little knowledge even though they've done this before this time around so they also don't know who to trust again so many professionals who do you go to and it's hard to know who to use who to trust it's difficult to determine what our products gonna look like you know what the quality is outside of context so I think that's one of the reasons you know that that having that that visualization is so important because it is a product people want to see touching you want to see it as close as possible to what it would look like in your own kitchen there's time in budget restrictions so it's not just the time it takes for the person to decide but the entire installation process is long can take four to six months and everyone of course has a budget but they're also not realistic or don't know you know have a lack of knowledge surrounding the total time and cost of the kitchen renovation so they may think it will cost $5,000 and that's not even close or that it will just oh it'll take a months and again it can take up to half a year so there's a lot of uncertainty and stress in managing this entire process and really our goal is to be in the process from ideas and and pre-planning all the way through post into the post installation we want to be their constant companion it's kind of the idea so looking specifically at the iterative part of the consumer journey you know Luke I have alluded to it I've talked about it a little bit but the consumer isn't when they're shopping for a countertop they're really shopping two things they're shopping first the material of the countertop so do they want quartz or do they want granite do they want solid surface do they want laminate what is going to be most beneficial and fit within their budget and things like that for their for their renovation and only once they know the material then do they choose a brand so they're going through this process iteratively for the material and for the brand which just makes it go over and over and over again now looking at the how they're going into the purchase journey you know do they even know what kind of material they want material choice looking at that suburban showcase so as you can see it's pretty evenly split some go in knowing exactly what countertop material they they want for the project but most either go are pretty open they either have a short list or don't know it all about the material and so you can see because of that you know there is a benefit to being in in early and pre funnel with the engagement with the consumer and you know we want to pretty much on the website get them early and keep them our goal is to first sell the material and then sell the brand and to assist in the material choice the website needs to highlight the most important aspects of the consumer selection criteria so if you remember suburban showcase there's their first criteria with durability and then third and so on we're also other practical elements like being easy to clean I'm having a low up keep being heat-resistant old resistant mildew resistant all of which are benefits that quartz has over other materials but that we need to highlight on our website and then to appeal to suburban showcase errs second selection criteria of having that look material thick that's where our personalization of the website comes in as well right so for selling material than the brand this this specific graph shows that for suburban showcase errs again that the brand is most important or tends to be most important for them or factored in at the end of the purchase journey and this really emphasizes why the website must I mean absolutely has to address the consumers decision on material selection and highlight the benefits of quartz it has to really draw in our homeowners in the pre and early funnel you know really who that haven't decided on a material let alone a brand it's especially important for suburban shoppers because of that for we know more than forty percent two weeks or less it's quick and early we have to we have to draw them in or we're going to run the risk of not getting them at all and then after we've convinced renovators quartz then our focus would shift to hey season since the best quartz that's out there here's why you choose us so our goal is to grab the consumer with all these strategies heat them through the entire countertop purchase journey and these personas has really helped us to do just that it's been absolutely fantastic and we have many plans coming up in the future where we want to which sadly on hold being with everything that's going on right now but we're gonna use that typing tool and further you know for the question some of these renovators and things like and get more information but we have all kinds of ideas in the pipeline for future use for this as well so what we have found with this research you know it's been very successful I think everyone on my team in our organization you know that has seen this and have been part of using it will attest that you know there's definitely some keys to success first great partnership with accelerant I was lucky enough to have worked with them before I moved to Caesarstone at my previous corporations already had a relationship coming into this and coming in you know right in the beginning in this project and so I was delighted to keep working with them so that's been super beneficial to the success the insights platform was beneficial all that previous research meant we didn't have to relearn anything during the process the war council having all the stakeholders in the room face to face and have all those objectives set in stone before we got started perfect all the objectives were met the iterative design of the survey also led to success it took a lot of time going between us at Caesarstone and and the guys a seller and in the creative agency and you know all the different levels of seasoned sound since were global and all that fun it was a little painful we had over 20 drafts I believe but in the end for these we've gotten out of it definitely worth it that iterative analysis so we knew the right aspects of the survey were being used that the personas were coming out with this great story that was very usable for what we wanted to do it enabled the personas you know focusing on our objectives it met the high level demographic information we needed and giving that rich detailed story story and it's just led to I mean immediate implementation and then of course like I said still using it and plan on using it in in the future so that would be it thank you I think we yeah we definitely ran a little long look and I like to talk so but happy to take questions Lukie can unmute yourself now hey Courtney it's Bill so that was awesome and thank you so much because if we did run a little long which is totally fine so what we're gonna encourage you and Luke to do is jump into the chat maybe converse with some of the question askers and try to take it offline absolutely after bumping up against our next presentation which is cold stage that's what we're trying to do here all right well I'll stop sharing well thank you very much guys thanks for the applause all right and we've got our very next presenter just waiting in the wing