Aqualisa Quartz

The Aqualisa Quartz shower should continue to be targeted at plumbers through an aggressive marketing campaign. Rather than shifting marketing strategies to directly target consumers, Do-It-Yourselfers or developers, Aqualisa should continue to focus on the segment of the market that dominates the U.K shower market. 54% of all showers are installed by plumbers in the U.K. (Exhibit 5) and during those installations only 27% of the time does the consumer select the type and brand of shower (Exhibit 4).

The U.K. plumbers have several problems that the Quartz can remedy. First, a typical shower installation takes two days, and the plumbers can only install 40-50 showers per year. Additionally, plumbers encounter additional costs for materials and excavation that have to be passed on to the consumers. Quartz alleviates both of these problems with simple installs (requiring only a quarter of the time for installation) and requires no excavation or additional materials. Yet plumbers are reluctant to try new products out of fear of costly re-servicing.

To overcome this barrier Aqualisa should provide 10% of the U.K. master plumbers with an Aqualisa Quartz shower system as a promotional marketing strategy. The cost of the Quartz Pumped Shower is Ђ230, and 10% of the U.K. master plumbers would amount to 1,000 shower systems being given away for free. This would result in a direct cost of Ђ230,000 to Aqualisa, an increase of 8.5% in marketing costs (Exhibit 7). Furthermore, Aqualisa will guarantee to cover any repair costs that occur within the two years after installation.

The idea behind this strategy is that once the plumbers install the Quartz (free from worry about costly repairs) they will convert and recommend the product to their future customers. With the half-day installation time and elimination of additional materials, plumbers could easily double the number of installations they perform over the course of the year. Plumbers currently charge Ђ40-80 per hour for installation and installations take 16 hours. This costs the customer, on average, nearly Ђ1,000 for an installation. Additionally, shower markups only provide minimal revenue for plumbers (Exhibit 8) leaving the bulk of the revenue earned through labor. The Quartz installations