Interview with Kerstin

Kerstin is 23 years old, is a registered nurse who just makes up for her abitur (university-entrance diploma) and considers studying tourism later.

Questions on daily life
Kerstin owns a cell phone as well as a computer with internet connectivity. She often goes online and but mainly in order to look up info about her courses and not to search after services which she could use in her daily life. She neither knows newsgroups or 'rating sites' like ciao.com. Although she knows ebay, she didn't buy or sell anything on it yet. She registered on ebay just a few days ago and is sure that she will use it in future. Her greatest concern regarding ebay is fraud issue. Until now she used ebay only to browse around and to look up prices of products she wanted to buy offline. She likes the way ebay is structured and plans to buy/sell items about four times a year. She often has a look at bulletin boards if she passes one and likes the principle of BBs. Although she never made use of services like car repairs that people offered on bulletin boards, she could imagine making use of it sometime. If she had more free time she probably would visit flea markets.

Reaction on our product idea
Regarding our product it is essential for her that the costs for using the service are low. If it would cost as much as normal telephony she would be comfortable with it. She would prefer a 'per transaction' based billing contrary to a flat rate. She likes the idea of instantly getting in contact with the 'vendor'/'buyer' but wants to stay anonymous in terms of not letting everyone see her personal data. Most probably she would use the system in the 'passive mode' but would use the 'browse mode' too if it wouldn't cost anything extra. Concerning the choice between 'template based' and 'free text based' descriptions she could not opt for one of them as she thinks that in some cases the first would fit better and in some cases the second.

See also Maarten's and Julian's interview