The process of requesting a sample
How contextual interviews uncovered the five key moments in district administrators’ purchasing decisions.
Employer
McGraw Hill
Year
2024
Project background
The project aimed to better understand the challenges and opportunities customers face when requesting product samples.
The business wanted to improve its digital sampling experience while reducing the cost of physical materials. Before making that shift, the team needed to understand how physical samples actually influenced customers' purchasing decisions.
Kickoff
I reviewed existing documentation related to the sampling experience. This included previous interviews, surveys, and marketing data.
I also met with members of the marketing team to understand the current sampling process. This gave me a strong understanding of the current sampling process and helped close key knowledge gaps before primary research began.
Workshop & previous research board
Participant detailing their usage of different parts of the sample
Contextual Interviews
I conducted 15 90-minute contextual interviews with customers who had recently requested product samples. The goal was to map the end-to-end product sampling journey.
Key objectives included:
Uncover key decision points throughout the sampling process.
Understand which purchasing decisions were influenced by physical samples and which were not.
Identify pain points within the sampling experience.
Survey
The interviews revealed several recurring patterns in the sampling journey. I then launched a survey to quantify those findings and better understand how common they were across customers..
Key objectives included:
Understand how much time customers had available to review samples or full products.
Understand how many samples customers reviewed and who was involved in the review process.
Determine whether the review process involved multiple stages.
Slides from the follow-up survey
Deliverables, Impact, and Insight
I created and presented a comprehensive deck detailing the sampling journey to the marketing team and its leadership. The deck included an in-depth walkthrough of the channels, touchpoints, and customer workarounds across the sampling journey.
The research identified five key moments in the sampling journey where the team could have the greatest impact, revealed the important role certain print samples played in purchasing decisions, and uncovered opportunities to strengthen the digital sampling strategy.
