Christopher Rowe Case

Christopher Rowe

Week 2 Company Case

Jan. 22, 2014

MGT3010XB Introduction to Marketing

1:Martha and the Trap-Ease America investors believe they face a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What information do they need to evaluate this opportunity? How do you think the group would write its mission statement? How would you write it?

Martha and the investors need to look at the wants and need of the consumer, not just be marketing to one segment of the population. Is the consumer wanting the ease and convenience of what they are offering or are they looking for something that is more cost effective and does the same job. Martha and the investors are amazed by this product, but only know the responses of a certain portion of the population and not everyone. If they were to change their marketing to a more environmental friendly device and more convenient and reusable, they would get more interest in the mouse trap they are trying to promote. If they were to look more at a social marketing concept they would get more interest in the product.

For a mission statement they would more committed to the product then they are the consumer, they need to look at both aspects when coming up with a mission statement. Their mission statement would go off of the quote that hung by her desk. " If a man {can}... make a better mousetrap than his neighbor ... the world will make a beaten path to his door." Where as a better mission statement for the product might go like - We are committed to better satisfying pest elimination of our consumer through our innovations and quality. With this statement they are not just pinning themselves down to mouse traps, but can expand into other rodent traps that are just as good as the mouse trap.

2: Has Martha identified the best target market for the Trap-Ease? What other market segments might the firm target?

Martha has only targeted one segment of the population and that being women. She is thinking that women are the house makers and have to deal with this problem with mice and they would be the ones to go with a no mess solution to the problem. She also figured it was easy to women to use and less likely to get hurt with. This might have been a good teat market to see how well it was accepted, but then she needed to broaden her target market. Martha and the firm need to broaden the market to better market their product. They need to target all families, there are single men out there that would find this device to be more convenient then regular mouse traps, also look at big companies and restaurants that have mice problems just like women do. With putting empathize on bigger companies and restaurant they would get a bigger piece of the pie and make more of a profit. Now to these larger companies and restaurants they would have to lower the price some since they would be purchasing larger quantities of the product. Expand to all retail stores and magazines and do some social marketing to show you have a product that suits any one and not just one segment of the population.

3: How has the company positioned the Trap-Ease for the chosen target market? Could it position the product in other ways?

Martha and the investors have positioned the Trap-Ease as a innovative and well engineered product. That the product if safe, mess free and easy to use. Most of the positioning they have done is though trade shows and magazines. Their feeling is that women who read these magazines would find it as a interesting item and go out and buy it,