Marketing Case Study Thermacare What Are Possible

Marketing Case Study ThermaCare

What are possible target audiences for ThermaCare? In what buyer-readiness stages will these target audiences be.

The potential target audience for ThermaCare would include several segments of the buying population. One would be women who experience menstrual pain and back pain that accompanies menstruation. Another would be athletes who normally suffer muscle pain. Another segment would be the population of seniors who have trouble with aching joints, such as people suffering from arthritis.

Because the product is innovative with no competitors, the target audience is in the awareness stage of buyer-readiness. The advertising agency will have to make the target market aware that the product exists and educate the audience as to the benefits of using ThermaCare.

What issues will the advertising agency face in designing messages for the selected target audiences. What message "theme" or "headline" summarizes the positioning that you'd recommend for ThermaCare?

The most obvious issue facing the advertising agency will be the differences in demographics among the target markets. For instance, athletes are typically younger people and arthritic patients are generally older. In order to position the product in a marketplace that includes a wide demographic range, I would downplay age and tout the product as an innovative, proven effective solution for chronic or occasional muscle pain.

In choosing a theme or headline, I would summarize the product as "therapy for pain, without the therapist."

What recommendations would you make to P&G and D'Arcy to help them develop an integrated promotion strategy for TermaCare? Be sure to deal with the issues of setting the overall promotion mix, selecting a message source and collecting feedback.

The integrated promotion strategy would be to identify who exactly would be the target market. This information is probably available in house from the sales of more conventional pain relievers such as P&G's Aleve. The next would be to educate and make the target market aware of ThermaCare's existence and the studies done by P & G's research team that states that extended heat therapy significantly greater pain relief (68%) on day one of treatment when compared to placebo.(http://www.pg.com/frameset_fs.jhtml?frameURL=http://www.pghsi.com).