Home networking system design and implementation

¶ … complexity of consumer electronics has made the home networking market into one of the hottest new growth sectors in the United States. Products that have the ability to synthesize existing consumer electronics into a user friendly format have great market potential. The following analysis will look at the emerging home networking market and the potential profitability and marketability of a home networking system.

The first step is to create a SWOT analysis in order to detail the inherent strengths and weaknesses within the business analysis. The primary strengths of the home networking market is the emerging need to centralize existing consumer electronics in the home setting. The primary advantage of such a system is that it simplifies the control mechanism and overall usability of existing technology and at the same time allows consumers to coordinate their electronics into a cohesive unit rather than different devices. Such a home networking system must be able to accurately adjust to existing consumer electronics and at the same time provide customer friendly usage. The implication is that for such a home system to be effective, it must be adaptable to many different devices in a coherent manner. Since having a home networking system expedites current consumer electronics, in many cases supplanting existing remote controls and devices, it is a cost effective option for consumers. In the final analysis, customers will see this product as a value added device that can both simplify and organize their consumer electronics.

The primary weakness of this product is that it lacks standalone appeal. Households that do not have in access of three to four different home electronics will have no real need for this product. Therefore marketing and creating market opportunity becomes extremely important. To improve the device, it is necessary to create a home system that can utilize as many different electronics as possible in a cross-platform environment. Therefore if this product can be utilized for kitchen electronics, entertainment electronics, and household electronics at the same time, it has far greater marketing potential than other products within its market.

The primary opportunity within this market is in consumers who purchase complex home entertainment electronics. Many times such additions to the household will afford many different remote control such as a television, digital receiver, sound system and HD tuner. For consumers within the high entertainment technology sector, this home networking system becomes an ideal solution to unify their existing devices. The home networking market itself has been growing exponentially, the benefit of an emerging market is that it has not been fully exploited. Only three products on the market today attempt to create a unified approach to home networking, and a more efficient and optimized device could easily take over their market share. The creation of a marketing plan then is the most important part about gaining a good market penetration.

Following a comprehensive SWOT analysis we must also engage in a PEST analysis to fully understand the environment surrounding the home networking market. On all four levels of the PEST test, this product appears to be exceedingly feasible. There are currently no patent protection against using central home networking systems via either existing market players or specific electronic retailers. Since this is an emerging field, political and legal barriers are almost non-existent and therefore pose no real threat to future product advancement problems. Although the current economic trend is towards a cooling of the overall economy, the consumer electronics market is still very strong. This is because both technology as well general consumer spending has not declined along with the economy. The sociocultural forces surrounding this current circumstance does not explicitly affect the home networking market. Since it is an addition to current home electronics, acceptance of this product is contingent upon already existing technology within the sector. Finally, the technological climate in the current era is extremely conducive for home networking systems. Consumer electronics is the fastest growing technology sector in the United States for the past three years. As greater complexity and general usage increases, the need for home networking systems also increase, therefore it is to our advantage that pace of technological growth continues. In effect, current technological forces are growing the home networking market for this product without any outside impetus.

The target audience for this product are consumers who have multiple consumer electronics. In order to effectively target this audience an analysis and profile of the consumer has to be created. Since the purchase of our system requires existing consumer electronics, the target audience has to be relatively affluent, with income ranging upwards of 80,000 to 100,000 per household. Since the special appeal of our product is for centralizing electronics, the biggest sector will be entertainment electronics, therefore advertisements and marketing campaigns should surround this particular sector.