In the category of small appliances, Company G wishes to operate with its purposefully defined categories of ‘Easy Kitchen’, ‘Easy Hair’ and ‘Easy Home’ appliances. Easy Kitchen will be more ‘everyday’ using items and will include microwave ovens, toasters, juicers, pasta makers, blenders, coffee makers, electric kettles, food processors and rice makers. Easy Hair will cater to general cosmetic or dressing up requirements of both men and women, and will include hair dryers, hair straighteners, electric shavers and hair plucking machines.
Easy Home will be designed for daily routine uses and will include portable fans, irons, vacuum cleaners and electric heaters. Mission Statement This mission statement is designed, keeping in mind the importance of customer’s money, value he/she gets for it (quality of product) and efficiency in terms of operations which will result into greater profitability. “Every penny spent by our customer should get worth for it, and every penny saved by us, is our profit. ” Target Market
With artistically designed, high quality, easy handling small appliances, we wish to target every home, apartment or office that has any need of instant food handling, quick cleaning and dressing on go. Marketing Objectives Product: Introduce new high quality, artistically designed easy handling products line. Distribution: Provide full range easy availability at every major outlet in the country, and major range availability at regular selling prepositions. Price: Charge customers the value of product they are getting along with a reasonable premium for convenient handling.
Promotion: Provoke the need of convenience in the kitchen, dressing and other parts of home. Competitive situation analysis Most of the products of new small appliance product line will fall under the category of shopping goods and specialty goods. As these items are not bought on regular basis, they can’t be categorized as convenient goods. In the presence of competition from companies like Groupe SEB, Electrolux, Toshiba, Sharp, OXO and many more, our new product line will come mostly in the shopping good category, as most items are not very expensive, but have a lot of substitutes available.
As a specialty good, we can only promote our products that are elegantly designed and multi featured, or involve more value for the customer. Company G would experience a lot of competition in the market, as already there are well established brands operating in the small appliance industry. Major way to tackle the competition is through consumer promotions, so that people should feel some incentive in buying our products against the competitors’ one. Bargaining power of the customer would not be visible in terms of shopping behavior, but due to intense competition, we need to keep an eye upon our pricing based on competitors’ pricing.
In terms of suppliers, as the company is eliciting with new suppliers, advantage gained in terms of production efficiency could be lost if relationships are not maintained. As we are ourselves entering newly into this line, survival is the basic threat to new entrant with such intense competition. SWOT Analysis Major Strengths of the company include: • Established base of electric appliances • Reliable supplier base • Production efficiency in terms of labor cost and production time resulting in less waste of material. Major Weaknesses of the company include:
• No experience in the small appliance industry • Some suppliers are new, and are not trustful as yet • Chances of failure exist as no pilot testing is conducted with customers. Opportunities for the company include: • Introduce their new product line as elegant and easy handling equipment • Potential is there to export products in developing countries • New products can be developed for other uses at home. Threats for the company include • Presence of intense competition • Economic crisis limiting the buying power of customers
• Suppliers can exploit the quality of product. Marketing strategies: Product, Distribution, Price and Promotion: Product: In order to introduce new small appliances as high quality, elegantly designed, easy handling products, following strategies are to be adopted. 1. Products should be designed as Regular (quality plus handling); and Elegant (quality plus handling plus elegance). 2. Elegant should target luxurious needs of customers; and Regular should target necessities. 3. Both the categories should be promoted with different appeals and target audience.
Distribution: In order to ensure on-time delivery of products and reduce inventory holding/backorder costs, company wishes to adopt three different strategies for three different ways of distribution. 1. Manufacturer – Retailer – Customer: Company will adopt this strategy for large grocery store chains operating in the country. 2. Manufacturer – Agent – Wholesaler – Retailer – Customer: Company will adopt this strategy for areas where there current distribution facilities does not exist. 3. Manufacturer – Wholesaler – Retailer – Customer: Company will adopt this strategy for distribution of products within its network.
Pricing: It is one of an important component of marketing mix for success of any new product. Pricing of small appliances will be as per the following policies. 1. Pricing will be competitive with other major brands. 2. Wherever possible, through consumer promotion, customer should be given more value for his money. 3. Price range should be as per product range, so as to attract both primary and elite customers. Promotion: The way you put product in the minds of people does stand a lot of significance, as before using the product, promotion makes its perception in the minds of customer. 1. “Picture speaks louder than words.
” Based on this fact, elegance of new product line will be displayed in glamorous way. 2. Above the line promotion of products highlighting high quality of products along with their “easy handling”. 3. Below the line promotion of Brand, in order to create a brand image. Tactics and Action Plan Product: Task 1: In terms of production, which features mimics quality or elegance or easy handling? Task 2: In order to define the features of “Elegant” and “Regular” range, a market study is required to find what people perceive as elegance, and what they expect from regular small appliances. Task 3: What symbols are perceived as elegance and quality?
Distribution: Task 4: Identify key grocery stores in the country Task 5: Identify markets other than current distribution network of the company Task 6: Identify major wholesales in the current distribution networks. Price: Task 7: Identify the prices of major competitors Task 8: Identify major Consumer Promotions usually provided in this category Task 9: Suggest ‘Elegant’ pricing and ‘Regular’ pricing Promotion: Task 10: Gather information on major promotional tactics in terms of elegance Task 11: Identify Major media icons Task 12: Arrange Exhibition to display new small appliances product range
