Marketing Game

Marketing is the discovery of what the consumer wants and be able to offer a product that satisfies their needs. We also need to be conscious of what they don't want and formulating strategies to avoid disappointment.

The thought of being the decision makers of a new to market product with little or no knowledge of what and how to achieve these goals was daunting indeed. Establishing a strategy in which to make this line a success was our biggest challenge.

Market Views, our consulting firm, prepared a report that gave us a concise yet objective view of our company and the market in which we compete. Based on their research we identified three homogeneous market segments in which to target our product.

The modern student accounted for 20% of VRD sales in the previous year. Economy was a major factor for this budget constraint student. It is a product that is proving very popular and this sub market has been identified to have growth in the coming years. The home user typically wanted a simple but efficient product. They too have limited interest in high-priced VRD's. They accounted for 15% of previous years sales. Our third segment, the concerned parent, wanted a simple and easy to use product that they could educate their siblings with in readiness to increased exposure to technology for future years. This segment represented 8% of sales from the previous year.

Using this research and the principles of the 4 p's we formulated our game plan to produce a product that was basic in features and that was at a price that reflected its benefits. Our target channel was to be the discount dealers and the promotion of this product was to be aggressive and direct advertising.

The early years proved to be a challenging time. We initially failed to keep up in increasing the features at the same rate as our competition therefore costing us valuable market share. While making a profit in these years our result was the least successful of the group. When using the available research, "value propositions offerings and value" we clearly identified that in our pursuit of the market leaders we had moved away dramatically from what our initial research and strategy had told us. We had clearly not stuck with our targeted market segmentsÐ'... in offering a basic easy to use, which was also reflected in its cost.

We had not channelled our workforce to reflect our strategy and market research. We had therefore not made a clear decision where we stood in the market and had tried to target both the discount and the full service dealer.

Based on the steps in "market segmentation, targeting an positioning" we had identified our achieved segmentation but clearly had some opportunities still in targeting and positioning.

The introduction of an additional product (DVR) to the market provided us with a renewed enthusiasm to learn from our initial errors and strive for increased market share and regain loss respect from our competitors. Our strategy was to target the same market as previously identified and to be the first to market. We launched a product that provided basic features at a competitive price and we were able to gain immediate success with 51% market share. We focused our financial resources into our new line and this proved to be our most profitable result yet. But yet overall our performance had not improved our standing in our industry.

Concern had set in and with that came strategic errors (again). We immediately improved our product (DVR) in features,