Marketing concepts and strategies

Marketing

Target Market

Our innovative product is a new category of automotive safety devices, a floatation device that will prevent passengers from drowning when passengers are in an accident involving bodies of water such as lakes and rivers. The market targeted for our floatation device will be U.S. automobile drivers who are between the ages of thirty to fifty years of age that have an average or above average income and education at the college level. These targets have been selected base on an evaluation of our internal resources and consumer demographics and psychographics.

market has been chosen for two main considerations. First, as a startup, we have decided to stick to a single regional market as a launching pad for our new product. Our initial resources for product development and marketing will only be $20 million. These funds will not allow adequate penetration of multiple markets and we are not prepared to deal with differences in regional consumer tastes, advertising, employee management, and legal requirements for conducting business. Secondly, the U.S. market provides enormous opportunity. In 2001, the U.S. had approximately 166 million automobiles. Other geographic regions will be explored as the business becomes prepared to expand over time.

The personal security segment or what some refer to as the reliables segment is twenty-one percent of the overall automotive market, or nearly thirty-five million consumers in the U.S.

This group's purchasing decisions are driven by value, safety and information. Gender does not play a huge part in this segment, approximately twelve percent are males and nine percent are women. Therefore, we've decided to target both groups focusing on age bracket, thirty to fifty years old, that are likely to have younger children and to be more safety conscious with their automobile use. Also, this group encompasses many of the baby boomers (thirty-five to fifty-four years of age) who are noted to be very safety conscious as demonstrated by their purchases of sport utility vehicles and light trucks instead of smaller-sized cars.

We also believe that the type of consumer of our product will have at least some college education. This is evidenced by their need for information common to psychographics of the personal security market segment for automobiles. This group will be highly involved in their purchasing decision and will require a lot of details about the safety benefits of our product. Also, our floatation device represents a new product category that will require extensive market education.

Although our floatation device is by no means considered a luxury item, it will not be a necessity or required by law as are many other forms of automotive safety devices. We also do not expect that insurance companies will provide incentives for obtaining this device. Therefore, a market will need to have enough discretionary income to allocate to our safety device. But, at the same time we will have to remember that the psychographics of this group show that they are very conservative with spending. Research shows that the primary message that the personal security automobile segment relates to is safety, but secondary messages they will identify with include both affordable and economic products.

Customer Loyalty

We realize the value of customer loyalty and have many exciting plans for building a life-long relationship with our customers. First, we will introduce out product with rebate offerings. This is not only to appeal to the conservative spending habits of our customers, but also to allow us to obtain contact information for building a comprehensive customer database. We will also request email addresses as part of the contact information to reduce the cost of our contacts with customers.

Because our target audience enjoys consuming information we will send them a bi-annual newsletter. This newsletter will inform the consumer of success stories of customers that have purchased our product, other safety related tips and information, and information about our products and services. We believe that this informative approach to marketing will be highly satisfying to our customers as well as serve our needs to keep our company highly visible to the consumer so that they will remember us for future purchases.