Product Development Plan

Product Development Plan

The current target market for this product is young people, mainly aged between 18 and 25. These are the main group of people using laptops for a significant amount of time as well as being the worst offenders of leaving laptops plugged in while they are fully charged. The market research that has been carried out backs up the assumption that this is the case and that young people aged 18-25 would be the most lucrative target market.

Market Size

The potential gap in the market for the product is large and therefore had the capability to be very profitable. With the UK consumer electronics market being valued at around $10bn revenue in 2009 there is plenty of room to make money in this huge market. In the future this firm is also looking to expand into the global market - worth $220bn - this can be done by simply adapting the product to fit foreign plug sockets which will allow the firm to gain a share of a far larger market. As the graph below shows it is estimated that there will be an increase of the amount of people who have laptops in the next few years. Whilst the volume of laptops increase so will the amount of potential customers; therefore giving a larger market to target.

* Reference: Mintel Group. (2011). Desktop, Laptop and Tablet Computers. Available from: Mintel.com (accessed 14th Feb 2012).

Competition

Although overall the electronics market is packed with firms aiming to grab a slice of the very profitable market, there is very little competition to this product (this is backed up by substantial research) The strongest competition come from the Apple Macbook laptop which cuts the power from the adapter once it is fully charged however, the fact that this is a built in system means that it is not really direct competition and only takes away customers who own these macbooks.

Marketing

In terms of expansion into foreign markets the marketing campaigns will not have to change significantly. The only change in advertising will need to be the image of the product - due to the foreign plug adapters - while everything else can stay the same as no matter what country it is being promoted in it is still aimed at doing the same job. There could be some slight tweaks made in terms of the focus on the benefits of the product. Putting emphasis on the environmental benefits in countries in which that is a strongly supported issue and focussing more on the savings made in countries where the environment is not so important to booth the government and the public

Production

Although research and development costs may be high, with production taking place in