Stage 4- Marketing Strategy & Development

The New Product Development Process

Stage 4- Marketing Strategy & Development

The New-Product Development Process (NDP) is outlined above by Kotler & Keller (2012).

 Marketing strategy can be defined in terms of the product and the customer focus. On the dimension of product focus, “a company can concentrate on developing products that are essentially variations of existing products- product modifications, or it can focus on products that fall outside the established product line- product diversifications.” (Hart & Baker, 1996, p. 136). The second dimension of marketing strategy is customer focus. “If new products are primarily aimed at getting new customers, the strategy is offensive. If they are mainly directed toward trying existing customers closer to the company, the strategy is defensive.” (Nystrom, 1977).

Kotler & Keller (2012) break the marketing strategy components down into three parts;

1.      Identify the target market, size of the target market, its structure and behaviour; the products positioning strategy including its sales positioning and market share.

2.      Outline the product’s planned price, distribution and promotion strategy for the first year.

3.      Describe the long-run sales and marketing mix strategy of the product over time.

Examples of Marketing Strategy and Development

iGolf is a mobile golf GPS application. L1 technologies Inc. are the company behind iGolf. 

Marketing Manager- Anthony Zazo has developed a marketing plan for iGolf. 

This has broken the marketing strategy components down into three parts as outlined above by Kotler & Keller.

1.      iGolf’s target market is golfers in the USA who currently own GPS-enabled mobile devices. The current market size and potential for iGolf Mobile is approxiamately 6.643million people in USA. The size of this market is approximately $3.58m. Anthony Zazo outlined that L1 aimed to position themselves as a company that introduce affordable, high quality products and solutions.

2.      iGolf was promoted through newsletters, social media, public relations, merchandise shows and their own website. The planned price is higher that all 14 competitors because it is a premium product. iGolf has been distributed electronically via downloads to consumer’s mobile devices.

3.      “L1’s sales strategy will entail gaining acceptance and distribution for the application through the mobile ‘store’ of all major wireless companies in the United States.” (Zazo, 2003).

Quick Baseball

See table below for my new sport format- Quick Baseball. Quick Baseball is a shortened format of Baseball which will hopefully be played by all 30 teams in the MLB.

Target Market	Viewers of Major League Baseball (MLB)
Size of Target Market	Approx. 1.01billion people (Calcaterra, 2014) This is the number of viewers that watched the MLB in 2014.
Planned Price	Ticket price 40% cheaper that current prices for MLB. So to watch a MLB game at Boston it would cost $50. To watch a Quick Baseball game at Boston it would cost $20
Profit Goals	Aim to sell an average of 20,000 tickets a game (60 games will take place during the season) at average price of $15. Total profit at end of the season= $18,000,000

References

Calcaterra, C. (2014). Comment of the Day: How many people really watch MLB games?. (online) Hardballtalk.nbcsports.com. Available at: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/09/15/comment-of-the-day-how-many-people-really-watch-mlb-games/ (Accessed 3 Dec. 2014).

Hart, S. J. and Baker, M. J. (1996) New Product Development , Hart , S. (ed.). London: The Dryden Press.

Nyström, H. (1977) Market Strategy and Market Structure: Learning and Adaptation in Market Relations.

Zazo, A (2003). “iGolf Mobile Marketing Plan”. Available at: https://elp.northumbria.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3405259-dt-content-rid2754417_2/courses/2013YL_SP0568BNN01/iGolf.pdf. (Accessed 3 Dec. 2014)