Airbnb: A New Marketplace to Experience Home Goods by Airbnb
Overview
Airbnb is well known as a disruptive innovator in hospitality industry, focusing on guests' experience on staying during travel. What would be next opportunity area that helps Airbnb to generate additional revenue?
This project focus on methods on how to define new products and how to validate a concept by running MVP(minimum viable product).
Outcome
We proposed the service concept that creates unique home goods shopping experience service by leveraging the Airbnb existing infrastructure.
Team: Cheng- Hsiang Yang, Haebeen Choi, Xiaojun Du
Client: A leading Food Corporation
Duration: 6 months
My role
Researcher & Strategist
Communication Designer for Pitch Deck
Interaction designer for MVP
Deliverable
Pitch deck
Experience video
Opportunity Exploration
Understanding Business & Context
“Our business isn’t the house, Our business is the entire trip.” - Brian Chesky(Airbnb CEO)
The framework as DVF(Desirability, Viability, Feasibility) and 3C(Consumers, Companies, Competition), SWOT(Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) directed us on research focusing on business context, Airbnb strategy, understanding hosts/guests.
Problem Statement
Concept Review on White Board
Our Service is intended to help Airbnb guests to achieve authentic local shopping experience. We've observed that current Airbnb local guide only provides general information, does not give the guidance on local neighborhood shopping experience, either not personalized to their taste. How might Airbnb incentivize hosts to curate local shopping experience, and create meaningful product engagements with guests during their stay?
With this HMW, we created couple different concepts and choose the most promising one we'd like to test based on feedback from Airbnb guests, hosts and design experts.
Solution - AirCurate
Value Proposition
AirCurate provides a marketplace for guests to experience products in hosts' houses. Guests can directly purchase the products through their Airbnb accounts
How it works
Airbnb works with home furnishing manufacturers, and help hosts to setup their own on-line catalogue. Guests can enjoy the long-time, free products trial, and have the easy way to access products information, and even buy. By this concept, Airbnb can create a new platform which can satisfy the multi-lateral stakeholders: manufacturers, hosts and guests.
Revenue Model
Aircurate uses the commission model. It charges an 18% commission fee on manufacturers, which is a big saving in comparison to the brick and mortar store. It is also a competitive service compared to the 15% - 20% charge by Amazon based on products. Aircurate will keep 8% as revenue, and allocate 10% to hosts. Airbnb’s 1.5M hosts and guests provide a good market size. Aircurate can expand the service to more areas, involving more types of partners to keep the fast growth.
Explanatory Video
Concept Validation by Micro pilot
Define Hypothesis
Based on Analysis through Lean Canvas, we defined three High Risky/ High Uncertainty Hypothesis as below. We use MVP(Minimum Viable Products) to test the hypothesis, and learn users' feedback on the concept.
- Hosts are willing to give their space for air-curate.
- Guests who try products are inclined to purchase them.
- Guests are willing to purchase through air-curate directly.
Concept Validation Methods
Hypothesis 1: Hosts are willing to give their space for product trial to earn commission.
Methods: Send email invitation randomly to selected Airbnb hosts for test collaboration.
Measurement: How many people will respond to the invitation.
Result: Within 20 emails to selected hosts who have good reviews and nicely decorated homes, we got 3 email responses. It is proven their interest in knowing more about the concept.
Hypothesis 2: Guests are interested in buying products they've experienced during they stay.
Methods: Set up a false door by simulating AirCurate experience including a welcome later, a paper catalogue for introduction, set up specific website for individual host as www.aircurate.com/troy, www.aircurate.com/oliver
Measurement: How many people left the signature or check products on paper catalogue, or how many people noticed the welcome letter and ask more info with collaborated hosts.
Hypothesis 3: Guests are willing to purchase trial products through Air Curate.
Methods & Measurement: Set google analytics on tracking review number of home page, number of people who submitted email to know more
What I would do differently next time
We spent so much time on refining design artifacts as product tag, welcome letter, catalogue, website and product photography. We only ran 1 round test with very limited participant: During the 5 weeks, totally 18 guests, 2 hosts joined the test. Because of the small sample size, we could not make any solid conclusion on hypothesis we made. Next time, we would spend more time on finding participant to expand the sample size, use the simplest artifacts to make the test.