BUYER PERSONAS: ITS USE AND LIMITATIONS IN ONLINE MARKETING

Despite the growing popularity of buyer personas as a tool in marketing content creation, very little empirical research has been conducted in the area. The lack of precise methodology or empirical evidence on effectivity of such a method should raise concerns or at least encourage cautious use. Originally used in software development, the clear analogy has been made for use in marketing without proper critical evaluation. Current lack of research consensus about the use of buyer personas in marketing provide room for careless, abstract and conjectural blogs and "howtos" articles. These could potentially mislead the community of marketers and produce substandard campaign results or even worse false assumptions for product development. The aim of this study is to analyse online information sources for buyer persona in marketing communication context and provide coherent view of eventual limitations of a presented method. Content analysis was used to inspect qualitative and quantitative data from most popular webpages with buyer personas instructions. Results shows ultimate disconnection from the original use in software development, very little methodological guidance and lack of reasoning for the use of this possibly dispensable step in marketing content creation process.