During the first Marketing Incubation Workshop by Prof. Dr. Jan H. Schumann and his research assistant Sebastian Schubach, the DTE teams gained knowledge about how to check whether their product or service really meets the explicit or implicit needs of customers.
Each group created a specific profile of its target groups, the so-called personas, who they want to address in the future. The teams should empathize with their personas in order to get a clear picture of the needs of their customers. For this purpose, the "Value Proposition Canvas" served as an aid. The DTE teams used the canvas to visualize the functional, social and emotional/personal "jobs" of their potential customers and described the "gains" and "pains" that go along with fulfilling these jobs. Also, potential competitors who meet the same customer needs were identified using the canvas. The teams should thus develop a customer-oriented business model from the very beginning and draw the first important conclusions for their own business idea and the subsequent prototype. First joint discussions among each other and with the lecturers already provided the teams with valuable feedback on their assumptions.
As part of the Marketing Incubation module, the teams will validate and further develop their assumptions about customer needs through practical market research based on customer interviews over the next few weeks. At the end of the workshop, the corresponding methods were presented to the students.