Marketing plan SWOT analysis

Marketing Plan SWOT

Before making a decision on entering a foreign market for a big multinational company, expanding presence on local market or just deciding on making small private business, feasibility of such service or presence of such good on the market must be made in order to avoid simple mistakes and make the entry process as correct as possible and in the most optimal time. The procedure called Market Opportunity Analysis was established to serve this goal and this logical multi-step process "involves assessing the external market-potential demand, current players in the market, and customers' needs - along with the internal capabilities of the company to determine the feasibility of pursuing the market."

The subject of this marketing study is the ability to create new opportunities within personal services sector. The average for USA wage for personal service industry is at the range of 3,100,000 people with wages varying greatly from state to state and retail trade accounts for 11,7% of total USA employment. Though being a very competitive industry now and especially with globalization which brings new countries into international trade and makes it harder for USA companies to provide good values for money, there are always great opportunities for new services offered in the market and the pioneers of these services can enjoy high margins and generate good profits by creating, sustaining and developing competitive advantage.

The first step within this procedure is to correctly identify the product which is personal assistance service in our case. The second step within Market Opportunity Analysis involves microenvironment analysis, or estimation of existing in the local or planned for entry market suppliers, competitors, customers, marketing intermediates and finally most important - potential customers. The competitive suppliers of personal shopping service are the firms and individuals that are mostly located in more wealthy parts of USA and thus are less present in less well-off states, which can be the potential market area for a beginning personal shopper. Their mostly spread services include purchasing clothing items, grocery shopping, pet grooming, walking the dog, booking theatre tickets, cleaning, house sitting, deliveries and collection, paying bills, arranging birthday parties; and more exclusive services as ability to carry out professional tasks by the assistant, which is more rare. As we are not an already existing company, we shall not consider company internal environment: top management, finance, R&D, purchasing, manufacturing and accounting segments.

But internal to our services environmental analysis includes realizing our capabilities, providing professional personal assistance services, defining necessary to improve skills such as customer service skills, creativity and ability to adopt to changing market environment, setting a list of possible professional courses to attend and schedule when this should be done, studying carefully competitors and setting their strengths and weaknesses, gaining personal preliminary experience by probably working for some time for a competitor.

Potential company customers or our target group include those already using personal shopping services which one may know from neighbors, acquaintances and may switch to our services in case of providing them better deal; acquaintances that one knows that are not using such services but would be willing to do so if certain conditions are provided (optimal cost of such services that meet their needs), other people that you do not know yet but in the future can enjoy such services that have necessary income to be able to use our services.

I am offering potential services for a target group of wealthy people who would be able to enjoy high quality personal assistanship. Once personal skills are advanced within less challenging tasks, it is possible to start searching for more sophisticated clientele through mass media sources. Defining market in which services will compete and end-users of the services is vital for conducing Market Opportunity Analysis.

The company and all the other market actors cooperate in larger environment and the more exclusive the service or product is, the larger is the market area for the product/service, but very often the smaller is the potential target clientele. External environment analysis incorporates political, economic, social and technological factors that influence subject industry.

Political matters include:

taxation issues, such as income tax payments, payroll taxes on any potential employee, or a corporation tax; no specific to this industry employment laws apply; no consideration of environmental issues, trade restrictions to low turnover or tariffs, industrial safety regulation or product labeling requirement is necessary at the early business stage; it would be a good idea from the very beginning to create a brand for the exclusive mix of services you shall provide and to register it in order to avoid any possible concurrence deloyale.

Economic analysis includes:

Subject services are not necessity goods, so this product is not price sensitive only if it is provided in the very wealthy people district, whose consumption preferences are not price sensitive. Thus, the pricing strategy of the product must be well worked out and based on current and expected economic development. Our services are targeted at wealthy people and thus together with expected economic growth should not be subject to falls in demand;

Though increasing interest rates are cause for increasing propensity to save, no sharp interest rates swings are expected and usually demand preferences of subject target group are not correlated with interest rates swings. On the other hand, inflation of the local currency, dollar, may increase population propensity to consume for middle class people and to some point of wealthy people which can lead to increasing demand for personal assistance services.

Considering uniqueness of target group, social factors as population growth rate, age distribution, emphasis on safety should not be considered, while it is important to note:

Ambitious career attitude among sub-target group, mainly business people with tight time and very strict time management, can increase the demand for subject services and stressing efficient time savings for this sub-target group is necessary to succeed.

For another sub-target group, wives of wealthy businessmen, it is the matter of prestige and of belonging to special class, which will lead them to avoid home tasks and search for outside home aid services.

Technological factors, as recent Internet development can allow to increase the web of potential clients and intermediary suppliers for our services.

Having done the environmental scan to personal services industry, defined the competitive markets with existing rivals and potential customers, estimated potential demand and drawn ways to increase it, I came to the conclusion that the majority of the services provided are not necessarily well-quality and there are few personal shoppers able to provide a mix of certain services. Thus, a new way to satisfy advancing customer needs which correspond to my current abilities can be worked out through SWOT analysis.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Strong marketing skills;

Strong communication, persuasion skills;

New, innovative product - exclusive complex services for wealthy people born from willingness to learn and thus improve inborn talents;

Intension to take fashion trends lessons, yoga courses, study relaxation methods, learn healthy eating rules, exercising basics, motivation principles, time management grounds, visage, manicure and pedicure basics, hairdressing basics to provide them on daily basis when not more sophisticated variants are necessary, thus being able to offer a sophisticated client a full mix of services and stress your exclusiveness in this manner; follow literature, cinema news to be able to become a good friend, read psychology basics. It is not necessary to become proficient in all of them, grounds is enough for beginning while growing professionalism with time is necessary;

Ability to stress that together with time saving which is the already wide known feature of personal assistants - I am able to provide exclusive services aimed at satisfying specific needs.

Plans to agree with local shops on possible discounts in case of signing with them long-term cooperation agreements;

Must start with myself and work out a self mastering plan in order to attract potential clients by personal positive attitude;

Relatively low costs to start up this business.

This segment is relatively undeveloped and once having gained wide knowledge in the sphere, it is possible to become a full-time personal assistant for one wealthy client and thus no need to outreach actively while keeping track of all possible acquaintances during your working experience;

Ability to use developing technologies and become a personal assistant to people throughout the state or the country, and even abroad, majoring on exclusiveness of the services and taking advantage of high profile of American personal assistant professionals.

No developed clientele and need to relocate in order to reach target group and develop my high profile;

Lack of patent protection for possible unique brand of mixed personal assistance services;

No developed brand name;

Very differentiated product subject to influence of subjective client opinion spreading;

Rather narrow at the beginning target group and thus need to operate on high margins;

Threats

The majority of mentioned above opportunities can be employed to decrease the possible threats to this business.