Practical Replication of Any Business Start-Up - Case Study Example

The major problem with the marketing strategy to be used in selling and distributing the product was the main concern. Georghiou felt that it was going to be difficult to convince the educators about the product without trial; they needed to see and try the product before making decisions. The market price of the product was; however, going to vary depending on the country and the user. Further to this, they identified various distribution channels that would handle the distribution and advertising duties (Lionais et al. 24).

Although the product sale was successful, the solutions came with various advantages and disadvantages. The use of an educational catalog enabled the selling of several products to educational institutions through online catalogs and publications; however, they would not sell Go Venture Entrepreneur in North America through any other channel because he had reached the teachers he had wished to reach. The use of software distribution as an indirect distribution channel was going to give the product a high profile than the textbooks and catalogs; however, the software distribution channel was highly fragmented with no companies operating in both the U.S. and Canadian markets. The choice of MarkED was disadvantaged because it lacked a sales force that would complement the catalog. Furthermore, Georghiou was not sure if it was going to reach the teachers. On the other hand, IBM was technology-based and was already making distributions to schools (Lionais et al. 26). They then agreed on a distribution that would last two years.

He also had the choice of using an in-house distribution channel. He was going to hire sales representatives in the two countries to conduct sales, email campaigns, CD demos, public speaking, direct mail, seminars, and catalog sales. Here, he would make a much higher margin out of every unit they sold because there would be no reseller discount. Its shortcoming was that conducting trade shows were expensive; thus, the necessity to sell Go Venture Entrepreneur was going to distract Media Spark from the development of its new product (Lionais et al. 27).

The distribution decision was still a headache for the company. It was undecided whether to go with the software distributor or all of them. Georghiou had to have confidence in the distributor that he was going to choose. However, his worry was about the product being one among the many in the market. Though the best solution was not settled, Georghiou preferred going for distributors who had brand awareness and had the market reach to sell a large number of units. Software distribution was for that reason preferred with IBM getting a two-year exclusive deal.