Microfridge

Situation: MicroFridge is a product that combines three units and these are the Refrigerator, Freezer and a Microwave Oven which works alternatively at a time with minimum current ratings. Bob Bennett’s restless job at Star Technologies made him think about starting his own business and he eventually came up with his own company, MicroFirdge, inc.  Although, MicroFridge resulted in huge success due to his excellent sales ability, Bennett still faced major risks and difficulties on his way. Having no manufacturers of such compact device within the country, he approached to Samyan, a Japanese manufacturing Company.

Problems:  Besides this huge markets there were few major problems.

1. While selling MicroFridge through 17 different distributors he faced difficulty selling first 4000 units. Only 1000 of them were sold out whereas for rest of them he decided to reach out for direct sales with 4% commission per salesman on each sold out unit plus a fixed salary.
2. Bennett followed only the Survey results and built up a perfect market in Colleges, Military bases and Motels but Surveys are not always perfect. He should have taken more fields into consideration.
3. As Bennet predicted the promising future of MicroFridge in the market but he did no arrangement in expanding marketing as potential product. (future feature expansion)

Analysis:  MicroFirdge was with 17 distributors for sale. It was in total of 4000 units but it still didn’t work out and only 1000 were sold which might have laid bad impression of product as well as the company against those distributors. Again, he paid 4% commission to each sales person including salary which led him to settle down in less amount where he could have made better deals with some different marketing methodology.

After reviewing the surveys for the MicroFridge, Bob decided to focus just on the areas where he got highly interested people. Here, he could have thought about other organizations where this could benefit him and others aswell.

A product is always maintained in the market with different innovations by upgrading certain feature over time. Bob believed his product will withstand in the market with a belief of his patent not being copied. Although the patent remains confidential, there is a smart world outside which could study every circuitry with a better innovation of similar product with less price than MicroFridge, inc. Here, along with thinking of future ‘Home away from Home’ product, he didn’t focus on Continuous Innovation.

Recommendation: Prior to the selling of MicroFridge, proper advertisements had to be made so that people could get to know about product and for its functioning, a demonstration video or live demonstration could have helped a lot. Again, during such situation student discounts, early bird beneficiary deals could have saved a lot of amount which Bob spent unnecessarily on sales person commission.

Targeting customers from surveys is a good practice but how nice it would be if a passenger gets the benefit of using MicroFridge on Railway Station, Bus Station, Gas station, etc where Bob could charge some amount per use which could also help homeless people and likewise he can increase his profits in multiple areas.