Marketing Plan for a Customized Mobile Phone - Research Paper Example

Topic: Marketing research plan for customized mobile phone Introduction to the product JF’s Electronics new product that would be launched very shortly on its stores and on the company website is customized cell phone. Cell phones of popular brands have limited features. Customers are fed up of the popular brands tactics of providing new technology features in latest range where something is always left to be desired and not fulfilled by the mobile phone companies. Only customized cell phones can be the solution to satisfy the customer needs. JF’s Electronics wants to expand its business in all the 50 states and an innovative product with dependable services can be the best available means to capture the market well in time when the idea is still new to capture the cell phone users’ attention by a successful company like JF Electronics. What is a customizable mobile phone? A customizable mobile phone is a built-to-order phone that comes with the feature of snapping the unwanted functionality or adding the functionality as per the customer demand. It could be a GSM phone to be customized or the other. The customer will decide whether the phone should be touch screen, bar, flip or smart phone; whether it has a keyboard or the customer prefers a mobile phone without a keyboard. The customized mobile phone to be introduced by JF’s Electronics will offer the customers the choice to select the operating system of their choice from Google Android, apple, OS X or Microsoft and others. It has been the JF’s Electronics unique selling point to offer custom-made computers of high quality in affordable price range, which has helped it expand throughout the US Northeast. The marketing research plan for the customized mobile is going to follow the same USP of providing a cost-effective mobile phone of high quality. Customers would have the freedom to choose their preferred service provider; no need to subscribe to a particular service provider. The custom-ordered mobile would be available with warranties, after-sale service and repair (Elgan, 2008). The research objective of “My Marketing Plan” The research objective of my marketing plan is to know the response of the customers if a customized mobile phone is offered for sale in the company’s store and on the company’s website. As the idea of a customized mobile phone has been not just in the offing, customers have been purchasing through online stores, so it means ours is not the only company; other companies are there for our company JF’s Electronics to compete with. Considering the current market situation at macro level, research needs to be made first of all at legal level to know whether there will be some hurdle created by mobile phone carriers, as marketing of a customized mobile phone would amount to entering their territory and using their database for contacting the customers for marketing purpose. Other macroeconomic concerns like technology and ecology need to be inquired to know whether any US related law comes in the way of promoting a new product (Kelly, 2010). It is important to research the current situation of the mobile phone market. Market analysis needs to be made by researching on the size of the market, competition and market share, strengths and weaknesses of the competitors and market trends, as a mobile phone is not just a utility product, and its choice depends on the taste factor of different users’ age group. An analysis of the expected consumers needs is to be made whether they would demand and rush to purchase a customized mobile phone or give a cold response to the arrival of a new product, which can be ordered according to customer preferences to be delivered. Company’s internal situation, its core competencies and resources need to be analyzed. Marketing research needs relevant information to be obtained either through company’s own efforts or by taking the services of a marketing research company. It depends on the expenditure. If affordable, a marketing research company’s services would be undertaken or we can carry out on our own efforts through our research instruments like questionnaires, psychological tools, and mechanical devices or by applying qualitative measures. Other means of marketing research may include sampling plan of surveying the respondents and contacting the prospects through different communication channels. Data Sources to be identified As the marketing research plan pertains to the launching of a new product i.e. customized mobile phones, it is very crucial to take a decision on the using of primary or secondary research on the basis of information regarding market segment, geographical area, or customer preferences. Customer preferences can play a significant role in popularizing the idea behind the new product of having a customized phone of customer choice. As JF’s Electronics wants to enter new areas with the introduction of this new product, secondary research can be crucial to the research plan. Sources of my secondary research are government agencies, chambers of commerce, trade associations and others to get relevant information from them. Other data sources could be World Wide Web, newspapers and business publications. We cannot totally depend on secondary research although it is less costly but could not be as authentic as primary research. We plan to conduct primary research on our product through focus groups, surveys through our website, get direct feedback from prospective customers to measure the market demand of the new product. Statistical methodology like sampling can provide a genuine indication of market trend (All Business, 2010). Research Instruments to be identified and used We will be making use of research instruments like questionnaires, psychological tools, mechanical devices, and qualitative measures for conducting primary research. Not all instruments will be used equally, as we expect the result on our product can be better evaluated through maximum usage of structured questionnaire. It would be followed by laddering technique under psychological tools, eye camera as mechanical device, and using videos for mapping qualitative response of the respondents (Marketing Research by United States 1961). Questionnaire: First of all, using structured questionnaire through online medium is the most straightway and instant response from the relevant audience that visits our website. Psychological Tools: Using all psychological tools would not be pertinent to the nature of our new product as in-depth interviews, Rorschach tests, and Zoltman Metaphoric Elicitation Technique (ZMET) are not suitable being complex in nature and respondents may not be willing too. Only laddering techniques can elicit prospects’ response to the new product, which is an electronics item to be carried always for multiple utilities. Considering the nature of the product that a carrier of mobile phone desires, laddering technique is easy to perform through all types of surveys. Mechanical Devices: Mechanical device like an eye-camera can be used as an instrument of marketing research to know the time taken by respondents in inspecting the product features. Other mechanical devices like audiometers, Galvanometers and Tachistoscope don’t suit the purpose behind our market research on customized mobile phone. Qualitative Measures: In qualitative measures, we can make use of videos to know whether respondents’ reaction matches with their answers to survey questions (Marketing Research by United States 1961). Identification and discussion of the sampling plan To conduct the marketing research plan in the right direction for positive results, it is very important to discuss the survey audience, number of people to be surveyed and selection of the respondents. Being a primary method of research, we can expect and measure the actual market trend through sampling. Our target audience should be people from 16 to 50 years of age-group doing shopping on the malls. We can expect to contact the decided number of audiences by contacting and requesting them to fill in answers to the survey questionnaire. The best alternative is to request our website visitors to take 1 minute and answer the survey questionnaire for helping in knowing the market trend on the new product -- our customized cell phone (Marketing Research by United States 1961). Sample size through online questionnaire is not a big deal. We can request our website visitors for one month to attempt the questionnaire until our target number is reached. Direct sampling can be conducted on weekends when there is big rush of customers and particularly those coming out of mobile phone stores so that target audience could be easily contacted. Number of respondents directly sampled could be below the 1% target audience to be sufficient to represent audience response. We can engage in this below-the Line (BTL) activity for some weeks until we capture the number of people to answer the questions asked. For sampling procedure we will select the respondents through non-probability sampling methodology as the cost and time for probability sampling could be high and unaffordable (Marketing Research by United States 1961). Identification and discussion on contact methods Contact methods include mail questionnaire, telephonic interviewing, personal interviewing, and online interviewing. Mail Questionnaire: Mail questionnaire is the ideal method of contacting respondents who have least interest in the option of personal interviews or whose response could otherwise be discriminatory or could be misinterpreted by the interviewers. Telephonic Interviewing: It is also the best alternate choice to directly contact the respondents. But this practice is getting out of fashion because of answering machines. People don’t have faith in the genuineness of the method. Personal Interviewing: As per the type of product, it won’t be conducive to interview the respondents; it is costly too. Online Interviewing: As stated above, this will be done by inviting visitors for taking the survey questionnaire online. Some sort of motivation would be offered to the visitors to answer the questionnaire. The best idea is to put a banner on most often visited sites to answer the questions and get a chance to win the prize. Online advertisement of the upcoming product is getting popularity in comparison to traditional marketing research methods (Marketing Research by United States 1961). After gathering the information, it will be analyzed to finally prepare a marketing research plan for customized cell phones. References All Business. (2010). Secondary v primary market research. Retrieved January 30, 2010 from http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/1310-1.html Elgan, Mike. (11 February 2008). Who wants a custom mobile phone? Retrieved January 30, 2010 from http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/205530/who_wants_custom_mobile_phone_/ Kelly, Nathan. (31 January 2010). Marketing plan format. Small Business Support Network. Retrieved January 30, 2010 from http://www.ozsmallbiz.net/marketing-plan-format/ United States. Agency for International Development. Communications Resources Division. (1961). National Government Publication. Training Manual No. 117.Washington, D. C. Retrieved January 30, 2010 from http://books.google.co.in/books?id=vpH_jzHN2noC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false Read More