Nordstrom Project Afterthoughts

1.                  The act of gathering and evaluating insights was something that was of particular interest to me, both from class discussion as well as applying what we learned to the project.  Going through the process of designing the research, gathering the insights, and then attempting to evaluate the information was extremely challenging.  While we talked about the process in class, it is difficult to get a true understanding of the complexity of the process without actually doing it.  I found that it is essential to have the research design thoroughly thought out – you must REALLY know beforehand what it is you are trying to understand from participants. The amount of time and effort involved in actually finding participants and administering the “tests” makes poorly constructed research tools very costly to the process.  As we got into the research phase, we realized that some of our tools were valuable, whereas others were not and if we had the time, should have done differently.  These are issues that you need to be aware of before you start interviewing.  I think this is something that you learn and get better at over time, but the research process was a particularly good learning experience for me and will keep in mind the challenges going forward.  Additionally, really understanding the research and what it means on a deeper level to get to the “insight” was challenging.  In retrospect, I wish we had spent more time asking why they want what they want rather than just what they want.

2.                  Having to generate the below business model for Nordstrom was a valuable exercise in understanding how all of the important elements, that ultimately drive profit, interact.  As Professor Wells has stated numerous times, unless you are planning to sell your business to Facebook for $1billion, businesses must make money.  As MBA’s we must understand how and have a strategic, well thought-out plan to do so.  Often times it is difficult to quantify the monetary benefits of implementing the type of project we worked on for Nordstrom.  Additional resources such as personnel and infrastructure would be necessary to make our suggestions work, however, how do we REALLY quantify the additional sales this new feature and customer service options would drive?  Would people actually make additional product purchases or just shift the channel in which they are shopping in?  Stepping back and being forced to look at the value proposition, key resources, key activities, and key partnership helped us to understand where the weaknesses were within the business model and to start thinking about ways that we could address these weaknesses.

3.                  I am not sure how much I gained from the prototyping exercises unrelated to our project.  I think it would have been more valuable to spend time thinking about prototyping our own project as opposed to something unrelated.  This feeling was also amplified by the fact that I felt the end of our project was slightly rushed.  It would have been really helpful to have a working session going over the research results and digging into what they really meant and how that translates into solutions for the customer.  There is probably value in doing the prototyping outside of the Nordstrom project, but considering the time constraints, I thought the time would have been better spent thinking about it in the context of our problem. 

4.         My emotional reactions throughout this project ranged from great excitement, confusion, frustration, ambivalence, and accomplishment.  I was REALLY excited after hearing what our project would be about, who we would be working with, and the extent to which Nordstrom was going to be involved. During the project, there were times when I felt frustrated by the lack of clarity, but I think this is very realistic of how projects will be in the real world. 

The opportunity to think about retail in a digital, ecommerce space is not only a personal interest of mine, but also one that is particularly relevant today.  With so many brands trying to understand how to connect with customers through the digital channel, this project will be something that I can talk about in interviews and apply to my internship and fulltime job. 

In terms of working with a group, a thought it was a very valuable experience.  We all had different ideas and it was a great opportunity to learn from each other and build on each of our personal ideas to make them better.  Throughout the group, each person had strengths and weaknesses.  I thought we did a good job of balancing each other out and setting and meeting goals.  Because this type of work is fairly ambiguous, it was nice to have a group to bounce things off of and flesh out ideas with.