Market Potential Indicators for Laptop Computers - Essay Example

The eight dimensions are based on the following indicators: urban population and electricity consumption; growth rates of primary energy use and GDP; GNI per capita estimates using PPP (USD) and private consumption as a percentage of GDP; percentage share of the middle class in consumption/income; the number of telephone lines, mobile phones, PCs, internet users, paved road density, population per retail outlet, and a number of households with a television; Economic and Political Freedom Indexes; per capita imports from US and trade as a percentage of GDP; the country risk rating, respectively (globalEDGE, 2011).

While all of these indicators provide clues to the countries listed as emerging markets, some of these indicators are more critical to laptop marketing than others. We want to know population and electricity consumption because we need to ascertain that there is a sufficient number of potential consumers and that those consumers are likely to have the needed electricity required to charge and operate our laptops. In a country where there is low electricity consumption, we can assume that people are without refrigerators and other power-intense kitchen appliances, and do not use air conditioning.

  We want to know how active the middle class is in earning money and spending it, and what percentage of the total they earn and spend because we need to tailor our product design and marketing accordingly. Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we must assume that poverty-stricken households are unlikely to buy our laptops because food and shelter and safety drive motivation for those who do not have these areas of necessity satisfied (Chapman, 2010). Only when physiological needs, safety needs, and social relationship needs are met, will a person become a laptop consumer.

Most of our laptops will be marketed to the middle classes. Our company produces custom-designed, highly technical, high-end laptops for wealthy executives and people of leisure, and naturally, they command a higher price, but the middle class is our company’s bread and butter. The number of telephone lines used to be a critical factor in the days when modems were not wireless, but now the world is being “dongle-ized”. The number of mobile phones could be important as most people seem to acquire them before buying a laptop, and the use of a mobile phone would suggest some degree of mobility, which is the basic attribute of a laptop.