Marketing assignment - Essay Example

Questions 2) Has Martha identified the best market for Trap-Ease? What other market segments might the firm target? I don’t think Martha was able totarget the best market for Trap-Ease. While she may be partially right to assume that women is a good market for her product, it only hit part of the target market. Because not all women stays at home to nurse the children and in fact, this market is already diminishing as more and more women are already working who are as equally busy as men. She may be right on her assumption that the product caters to those who wants to protect the infants and toddlers from poisoning by other rodent control methods, it does not necessarily have to be the mother to solely do it.

We are now in an age where taking care of children is already a shared responsibility and as such, she should widen her segmentation to include the husband as well. Instead of just women, she should target both the mother and father who shares the parenting responsibility. Such, the best market for Trap-Ease are parents and not solely women. Martha should also capitalized on the non-poison aspect of controlling the mouse problem. Such, she should also target the environmentalist who are concerned with the use of poison in controlling the rodents as it contributes to global warming.

Companies and industrial sites should also be targeted as they too have a pest issue to contend. The specification of Trap-Ease suits them as the product is well-designed that its aesthetics will fit the corporate and industrial setting. 4) Describe the current marketing mix for Trap-Ease. Do you see any problems with this mix? For the marketing mix of introducing her product to its target market, Martha has Trap-Ease as a product. Her pricing seems to be okay because there is no apparent price resistance with the product.

Given the cost that she needs to recoup, it is not advisable for her to cut its price but she just have to work on the scale of her sales. Her promotions are her travel and sales calls and the advertising placed at Good Housekeeping. Her place of distributions are the national grocery, hardware, and drug chains such as Safeway, Kmart, Hechingers, and CB Drug. Martha is not hitting her target sales of 5 million units in the first year but instead sold only few hundred thousands units. This only means that her marketing mix is not as effective as she would like it to be.

To reach her target of 5 million units in the first year, she should consider diversification of her product by offering different variation of Trap-Ease to achieve scalability. Also, given her budget of mere $60,000 dollars, she must also consider cost-effective and highly targeted advertising such as the internet. This is cost-effective as she does not have to maintain an actual store to sell her product. And as such she should also utilize the internet in selling her product where the consumers can fully appreciate the full functionality and benefit of Trap-Ease without the overhead of a brick and mortar store.

In addition, internet users are a good market for her product since internet users are willing to pay extra for the right product. This suits Trap-Ease considering that it is highly priced compared to the competitors.