My Customer's Avatar

So based on the demographics of my customer interviews, I talked to mostly female students and some male students. I figured I would give my customer avatar a name, so I’ll refer to the avatar as Sophia. That seems like a common name. Anyways, on to the customer details:

Sophia is a 19 year old college student from Tampa, Florida. She lives off-campus in an apartment complex with a roommate who’s also a student at the university. Her mode of transportation includes her fuel efficient car for long distance trips, shopping, or if she has to remain on campus for extracurricular reasons. She recently started working as a student assistant for the university. She usually rides the bus in order to get to campus if she just goes to class then back to her apartment. She lived in a suburban area near downtown Tampa before attending college. She exercises when she can and usually does aerobic or cardio exercises. As for her digital life, she’s just like most other people in her age group: Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. For television, she watches whatever captures her interest on Netflix or Hulu.

Sophia likes to prepare and cook her own food when she can, but her schedule sometimes thinks otherwise. On busy days when she doesn’t have time to go and shop for groceries, she’ll settle for something that can be prepared quickly or she’ll go out to eat with friends. However, she wants to stay healthy and doesn’t want a busy schedule to start affecting her health. Whenever she looks for new recipes on things like Facebook where her friends share videos of quickly prepared tasty recipes, she saves the ones she thinks will be affordable and healthy. Sophia has mostly done her grocery shopping at Publix. Since coming to university, she decided to try out places that sold organic food. After buying some organic ingredients to cook the new recipe she saved, she found that the ingredients did indeed taste good, but they were rather costly. She liked the idea of organic, fresh foods, but she didn’t like its effect on her budget.

Sophia does not have much experience with gardening herself, although her parents maintained a small garden back in Tampa when she lived there. It was something she didn’t really pay attention to. As for the environment, she does recycle and takes a moderate approach to sustainability.

What do I have in common with the customer avatar?

I am in a similar age group, and I’m also a college student. I currently do use my car as a mode of transportation, but that’s only for the summer. In the fall and spring semesters, I usually took the bus in order to get to campus. For social media, I do have those three things. 

(Follow me on Instagram @roy.dlc just sayin’, shameless plug) 

On Mondays through Fridays, I usually cook dinner 3/5 days and eat somewhere else 2/5. Coming from a small town, I didn’t know exactly what made college students like places such as Trader Joe’s or Earth Fare. It was mostly Publix or Winn-Dixie for me. I also went to oriental markets for groceries. I see my friends share videos of recipes on Facebook, and I think to myself, “Wow, that looks pretty tasty. Maybe I’ll try cooking that sometime.”

The common characteristics I share with the avatar are not much of a coincidence because when I thought of the venture, I also thought about myself as a potential customer before talking to others about it. Because of that, I think those aspects influenced the venture’s structure to some extent. The parts that I didn’t have in common with the avatar were influenced by talking to other potential customers and some assumptions about a normal college student.

Wait - wrong Avatar. I don't think my customer is the Master of the 4 Elements.

It's not that kind of Avatar either.

Ok this one's the right customer avatar.
I would also like to apologize for the Avatar jokes.