A Way To Return Lost Stuff

My friend James and I both spent this past summer working at internships in Madrid, Spain. There were three different groups of USC students there. One was from the engineering school, one was from the language school, and we were with the business school. What all three groups of students had in common, aside from the fact that we were from California, loved the nightlife, and never wanted to leave Madrid, was the fact that over 50% of each respective group lost a valuable item during the adventure. Whether it was a camera, a wallet, or a iPod, it was GONE.

This sucked...and there was no hope to get any of it back, not even if the finder of the lost item WANTED to get it back to the rightful owner. This hit home for me late in the trip when my brother lost the camera that had pictures of us RUNNING WITH THE BULLS. I still haven't come close to forgiving him for that one.

However, it inspired me, and my friend James. While we were eating at what happened to be the oldest restaurant in the world, we came up with an idea for a service that would help people have their lost items returned to them. Essentially, we decided that a service that registered one's device to a database that rewards people for returning found objects might be of interest to people in this world. They would receive a sticker in the mail that went onto their device that would instruct the finder how they would receive a reward for returning it.

We talked about this a lot, came up with some really good marketing ideas for it, but then realized we don't know yet if people would even sign up for such a thing. We both are entering the marketing field, and know that marketing today is building a product around your consumer. Our Professor referred to this as being market driven (finding the needs of the consumer and creating a product to satisfy that need) instead of product driven (creating a product and creating a need for the product).

This lead us to create a survey. Using SurveyMonkey, we created what we think is a pretty effective survey that answers our questions. We would've like to have asked more questions, but since we don't have the upgraded account, it limited us to 10. If we get responses that are positive, we will create a more specific account that will tell us more about our potential costumer. I've already generated over 60 responses just by posting it as my Facebook status and messaging people asking them to spend a minute on it, and would be especially happy if you took it as well!: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/82DVRFR

Through 60 responses, there clearly is a lot of interest. The perceived value of this service has showed a wide range (some think it should be free, others think it should cost more than $7). It's about split in half right now.

I'll give a full analysis on here in a few days about what kind of results we received and what our next step might be.

Stay tuned!