My first question was “Have you got a sports bag?” 7 out of 10 people said that they already had a sports bag which showed that the majority of the people a little bit about sports bag so my results would be useful. This also showed that I have a lot of competition from different sports bag companies.
My results show that a lot of people already have a sports bag so I have a lot of competition and these people know what they like. I will have to make mine better than all the rest and advertise it a lot.
Along with this question I asked “If no, do you use a carrier bag instead?” 2 people said that they did while the last person said that they didn’t. This just shows that some people using a carrier bag instead of a sports bag whereas they could buy my sports bag. I will need to advertise for this because there is a large market of people who can change from having to use a new carrier bag each time to having the same sports bag every time.
2 of the 3 people use a carrier bag instead, this means that they most likely want to replace it but haven’t found a bag that suits them. I’m going to need to make sure I can try and get all of the public who use carrier bags as sports bag to want to buy my product.
My third question was “How many sessions of sport do you play per week?” I needed to know this because if people play a lot of sports per week I would know how much the bag would be used so how durable it needs to be and to make sure that it is easy to clean. Also I will find out how much sports the people play to know how dedicated to sports they are. If all of them are extremely sporty I will know that the results in the second section are all correct and useful.
2,3 was the average amount of sports played per week. This means that I’m going to have to make my bag durable but also easy to pack out of the way during the time that they are not going to be using it because they won’t want a really big bag in the way when its not going to be used.
After that I asked “Which sport do you play?” I asked this because if for example the majority played football and nobody played hockey I would then think that I should design the bag towards footballers and not towards hockey players. This will be useful because that means I wont waste money making a really complex hockey stick bag and not a very good part for football boots.
Hockey was the most common sport to be played, cricket was the second most played. This means that I am going to have to make the bag mainly based towards hockey but yet including cricket and other sport parts still. I will make sure the bag will be able to fit a hockey stick and shin pads ect. But I will make sure it can fit cricket pads in still.
Finally in the first section I asked “What size bag would you like?” I needed to know this because if people all proffered small draw string bags I wouldn’t make a big bag that could hold tones of equipment. This would also be useful the other way round. With these results I would know what the basic bag would look like.
The majority wanted a big bag by a long way which means that I will make sure my bag is big and hope that everybody is going to want one. This will mean the bag is being based around the majority of my market.
My first question in the second section was “Would you like house colours on the bag?” I needed to find out this because I wanted to know what colour they wanted the bag. I was interested in finding out if people would like house colours also because if I made a sports bag for Buford school that would have a large target audience. This would mean that everybody in a Buford school sports team would have to buy my bag which would increase sales by a large amount.
People don’t mind about this so I will have to use different questions.
My second question was “Would you like a space to hold your equipment on the outside?” This was the main idea for my sports bag which was holding your hockey stick for example in a bag attached to the outside for easy use.
These results prove that my idea of having space on the outside to hold my equipment was good because only 1 person out of the 10 didn’t like the idea. This means that I will defiantly do this and hopefully people will buy it for its Unique Selling Point (USP).
Because of the question before I then decided that I should find out whether they wanted the bag on the outside to be able to change depending on the sports that they are going to partake in. The question I used was “Would you like to be able to change the bag on the outside for different equipment? This means that I can expand the bag if people stop buying it I can add a extra accessory onto it.
These results are equal because 4 said yes and 3 said no and the rest didn’t mind so its hard to decide but because one more person said yes and if they don’t mind then its probably better to use the idea. So I will make it so you can change the bag.
My final question for the model of the outside of the bag was “Would you like a strap or handle to hold it?” this was important because some people like to carry their bags in different ways so I had to find out which was most proffered. This is important part of the bag so I had to make sure it was perfect.
This is a pretty easy decision to make, ill just have to put them both on. This is quite common on bags though so it wont increase the sales that much because of this one added feature but it is still a useful thing to know.
Now that I new what I wanted on the outside of the bag I had to find out what the public wanted on the inside. To solve this problem I first of all asked the question “Would you like small sections for Deodorant ect?” this is important because if people are doing sport it is highly likely that they will take a can of Deodorant.
This is again a clear answer and I will have to make a few small sections for deodorant, body wash, shampoo ect. This isn’t too difficult to do and a lot of people like it so it will be a useful thing to advertise with the bag.
After this I asked the question “Would you like different sections in the bag?” I needed to find this out because if nobody wants extra sections I will just have one big section in the middle were they could keep everything but then on the other hand if they wanted lots of sections I would have to decide what the sections should be and where they should go ect.
With everyone wanting different sections it is an easy decision for me to put in more sections, all I’m going to have to find out now though is what sections they want and what size they would like them to be.
My second from last question was to find out what colour is most wanted for the main part of the bag. I simply asked the question “What main colour would you like on the bag?” This is a important fact as well because if nobody likes the colour they will choose a different bag. For example if the two bags are similar and the customer is sure they will just think of how it looks and that will make a huge difference so I’ve got to make mine the most eye pleasing.
Black was the most chosen colour and so I will make my bag this colour but I will add some extra colours to make it look nicer and I will have my company decide what colours those will be. If I want to expand my product I can always change to colour to Navy for example and this will bring in a lot of extra customers.
My final question was “would you like the school logo on the front?” I thought this was a good idea because if people want the house logo on the front it will show which school they come from and also people will like to buy a school bag if they are on a school sports team. Maybe the school might make it mandatory say for example the whole cricket team has to have the same school bag to make them look better, this will increase my sales by a great deal and will make my sales constant for a long time.
This is a good result because this means that my sales will increase and also once the company gets bigger schools might ask me to make a bag for their school or I could request it. This would be a great thing for my company.
From my results there is a lot of work that I need to do. I have to take key points from this questionnaire and then edit this to make my sports bag as good as it can possibly be. This will be some very useful information which means that I now know what the public wants compared to just the person I interviewed.
Second Questionnaire goes here
Second Questionnaire Review
I decided that I am going to create another questionnaire; I chose to do this because I had some information about my product but I thought that I needed to be more precise. I knew the basics of what people wanted from my first questionnaire but I needed to find some more information about my bag. I needed information not about the design of the product but about how I would sell the product and general information about the bag. I will use distribute the questionnaires similar to how I distributed my first questionnaire. I will select a random 10 people and then take in their results. I have chosen to use this tactic like last time because I have to know precise primary research about my specific bag so it would be useless to use secondary research and get somebody else’s research.
From the first question I found out that I would use the name Zultan, 80% voted for this. That was good because that is the name I liked the most. This is good because Zultan is easy to remember but also quite catchy. I think that this name will work very well in the shops.
I found out that most people would like trainers as the next product to be designed by my company because of my second question. Only 60 % voted this while 30% voted for sports equipment so I could maybe do them both at the same time.
The third question was pretty equal but because it is Wimbledon soon I will choose a tennis player, this question didn’t help that much but small bits of information are always helpful.
The final question helped a lot with me finding out that a lot of people read Match of the day, I personally don’t read that magazine but because of the question I found out the majority of the people do so it will be useful for when I advertise in magazines.
What I found out
From this questionnaire I have found out a lot of useful information, for example I found out what was the most popular name. This was a very important piece of information because the name can make a huge difference in the product. This in my opinion is quite a masculine word and so people would prefer it. I wouldn’t choose a feminine word for my sports bag because I would expect more men to be buying my sports bag compared to women. I think that “Zultan Sports Bags” just sounds like a classy name, showing a high quality of bag.
I also found out that people would be most interested in me producing footwear e.g. Rugby Boots, Astro Trainers. These would be good because once my sports bag has started to get steady sales in the market but doesn’t need as much investment with money. This means that I can diversify and start putting money into developing and producing trainers instead. This means that I will expand in the market and have an increase in sales because I will have a larger market spread. I would hope that because I have more products in the market the reputation from my business will grow and because more people know about my product they will start to buy the sports bag and then buy the trainers because they like the sports bag or vice versa. Another marketing tactic I could do would be buy 1 sports bag and get a pair of trainer’s half price.
I didn’t gain much information about from my third question because the results varied and there wasn’t a distinct result. I decided that because it is the tennis season and of all the media attention to Andy Murrey’s great performance this season that I would choose a tennis player to perform in my adverts. I thought that this would be a good choice. I had already decided before this question that it would be a sports star in my advert because it is a sports bag so it would make sure everybody knows it is. Also it means that I can make a good TV advert from it. I could for example make an advert with him using it while playing tennis etc. I will not decide what I will be doing for my advert until I have completed my Advert Research.
Because I found out that the majority of the people read Match of the Day I started to buy their weekly magazine so I could see what the layout is like and if it would suite my product. After checking the magazine I thought that it would be a good idea. I thought this because it is large national sports magazine. Lots of people read this magazine so the advert will defiantly been seen. The magazine has space along the side of the page where people can put adverts in. If I create a small advert I could put it along the side for a cheap price but it would be well worth the money because if people see the advert it will increase the company awareness.
Website Research
I am going to be researching many different types of websites. I am going to be researching these websites because when I make my one I want it to be the best possible. I am going to take all the good qualities out of the websites I look at and ill see what I dislike so I will know what I won’t like to see on mine. I will be using 4 different websites as examples. My website will be one of the main ways my customers will find out about me and they will also be able to see/buy my products from there so I will want it the best as it possibly be. My product will hopefully get a lot of sales over the internet. This will be good because then I will have to pay less making and maintaining bigger shops. I will also not have to pay for staff to run the tills in the shop and keep the shop clean. Other companies have used this technique to sell their products. For example Play.com do not have any shops. Instead they just use the internet to sell the products on the website . This works really well for them because they are such a well known business people will instinctively go to their website when they want a game. And because they do not have to pay extra money to have a shop in the city which costs a lot of money instead they can just get factories in the middle of nowhere that are a lot cheaper. Because they spent a lot less money on the shop, they are able to charge cheaper prices for their product. With Play.com because they can charge left they make it free to deliver the product which is another bonus, because they deliver for free it is another marketing bonus. This means that people would buy from them as well for the added convenience; it will save them a lot more hassle for them to have the game delivered to your door instead of having to spend money on petrol on getting there. If you had a choice in a game from two different shops you would choose the shop that delivers them to your door for free.
The good things about this website are that all the products they are trying to sell are in the middle which I really like. The colours are a bit plain which I don’t like but it has a lot of links around the side which take you to different parts of the website which is also very helpful.
The first thing I notice about this website is that there is a serious lack of colour which I really don’t like. Also it has a lot of spare space which I will use to put adverts on to make a little extra money. One thing that is good is that the pictures are good and they are all in the middle which should be the first place that you look. Also like the others it has links down the sides taking you to different parts of the website.
This website is plain and has a lot of spare space. For example in the middle it has 4 items that it is selling unlike the others that have like 9 in the middle. Also there are only a few links at the sides. One good thing though is that it has adverts on it which will bring int a lot of money.
This website is nice. It keeps the website colour to the same sort of colour as the logo. Also it all well spread out. The links down the side are all neat and ordered well. The only problem though is that there is so much space down the side which can be filled with anything such as adverts, more products ect.
From the research I have done I have found out that the most important thing to do is make sure there is no random space. Random space in my opinion looks really bad, if the website looks terrible people are less likely to spend time on the page. To make a website attractive is not to difficult or expensive but the results are amazing. Another problem with random space is that it can be used to have advertisements instead. Websites make the majority of their money from advertisement. For example you do not have to pay to use Google yet the owners of Google are one of the richest people in the world. All of their money comes from advertisement, because so many people view Google each day they can charge a large amount to have an advertisement on their webpage.
What I’m going to do
If I keep a section of my webpage for advertisement I will be able to make a lot of money and it won’t ruin my webpage. The bigger my company becomes and the more views that I get on my website I will be able to charge more for the adverts on my website. It is also important to describe the products well, this means it can’t use too many words but it still describes it well. I have only a couple of words to describe my product. I will need to use very useful words to get them interested so they will click on the product. I can then insert a hyperlink so that they will go to a different webpage (Where I can have more adverts for money) and it has a lot more detail about the bag, etc price, size, design, and material. I will use my website to sell all of my products as well as advertise them. This will increase my market sales with more people knowing about my company. I could always pay to have advertisements on other people’s website and put hyperlinks in the advert so it brings up my webpage.
Price Survey
I am going to find out how expensive I am going to make my bag. I will have take into consideration how expensive the raw materials are going be and how much I am going to have to spend on wages, fixed costs ect. Once I know how much the minimum I have to charge is I will just then have to find out how much my competitors sell their products at so I can make the maximum profit per bag being sold.
CCC Cantonbury Pro Medium Sports Bag – £24.99
Dunlop Tennis Bag: Large Holdall - £36.95
Everest Bags Medium Sports Duffle - £11.39
EAS’s Men’s Sports Bag - £13.49
Panasonic Toyta Racing Sports Bag - £37.99
The bags that I looked at had prices varying from £11.39 to around £36.95. The average bag though cost around 24.99. I noticed that when looking at the bags that the bags made by big makes were a lot more expensive, for example a Dunlop bag was £36.95 whereas a EAS’s bag was only £13.49, this is partially because of the quality of the bag but also because that the company has a bigger name so it can charge more just for that reason. I am going to have to take this into consideration when producing my bag because my company is going to be a small make at the beginning so I will not get as many sales. I will have to try and get the majority of my sales from people that don’t care about the make just the price and quality otherwise I would not be able to beat company’s such as Nike.
What I’m going to do
For my bag I will start selling it at a cheaper price at around £15. This is because I will have a good quality bag with lots of extra features that will make the price increase but because of the fact it is new I will have to sell it at a cheaper price because then more people are going to buy it. I choose £14.99. I decided this because when people look at prices if they saw a bag for £14.99 they would think that it is really cheap whereas if it was £15 they would think, that it was quite expensive even though it is a 1p difference. People will pay more for other bigger name products because they know it is going to be a high quality product so they are willing to take the risk. Whereas with my product they would expect it to be alright but nothing amazing, I will have to make my product really nice so when they buy it for cheap and they get a high quality they will be impressed and remember the make. I am going to have to not make as much money from my first product because I am going to have to sell it for cheaper, but when my product gets bigger I can use the same product but increase the price because people will start to know the make.
Secondary Research
The sports bag is a good idea to produce because
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Production Methods
There are many ways in which you can produce a product. There are the three main types of production these are Job Production, Batch Production and Mass Production. Job production is where a single unique item is made from start to finish. For instance a painter would use Job Production to make there paintings because they will spend all there time painting one picture until it is finished and then start another picture afterwards. This technique has a lot of positives and negatives about it. One of the main positives for it is that because it is unique you can sell it for a lot higher price because they will not be able to find it anywhere else, if this didn’t happen the artist wouldn’t be able to cover the costs of his every day-to-day life. Because with other methods of production they make a large amount so they can charge for cheaper because he would need for example a £1000 a month to live, so he would create 2 unique pictures (one after the other) and sell them to make £500 profit each. But if he uses a different production method he could sell them all for a lot cheaper and make £20 profit but then sell 50 a month to make the same amount of money. Another added benefit for using this method of production is that you will be making all of the money and you won’t have to distribute the money between different staff members. The problem with this is that you will never have a consistent income, this is because you are going to have to charge such a high price for your product people will be less willing to spend a lot. So you will have to paint an extremely good painting to be able to sell it. This means that 1 month you could sell 1 painting and then the next month you could sell 8 painting and so you can never be a 100% sure when your next pay check will arrive. One big problem with this method is because you do not have as many products in the market less people will see and hear about them and people will not be using your product for them to see so it would be harder for you to expand your business’s reputation.
Another form of production is Batch Production. Batch production is when you produce a number of products at the same time. You would have the template of your product and then you would duplicate it a set amount of times. A big company that uses this method is Hob-Nobs, with there company they will create a huge amount of normal Hob-Nobs over a couple of days and then they would change and make a huge amount of Chocolate Hob-Nobs over the next couple of days. This is a lot more expensive that just producing one kind but it is worth it for Hob-Nobs, this is because it means that they have a variety of products on the shelves. So when a customer walks into a shop they will have a variety of products to choose between and they wont get bored of just the same product. Instead they get a variety so they can have Hob-Nobs one time and then the next time have Chocolate Hob-Nobs. This will increase their sales by a large amount and also it would means that they will increase there reputation. A problem with batch production is that you are going to have to make so many of the same product at one time that you will have leftovers that are not going to be sold to other shops so they will have to store them somewhere. Storing products costs a lot of money because you will have to buy a building to keep them in and then look after that building. Also the machinery that is going to be used will cost a lot of money and it is a lot of effort and money to change between one product being made and another product being made.
The final production method is going to be Mass Production, mass production is when you constantly make the same product. Coca Cola use Mass production as there main method of production because they will constantly be making Coke. They have so many sales they know that if they constantly make coke they will sell it all. Using Mass production is much cheaper than using batch production because you set the production line up to make one product all the time and don’t have to spend money changing between different types of products. This means that they will be able to produce more of the same product in the same amount of time. The main problem with this method of production is that because there is only 1 product there is not a variety of choice for the customer. This means that you will not have as many sales and you will not have as much of a reputation for this product. Because for example if Coca Cole only made Coke people would buy a couple of bottles but the name wouldn’t be spread around because if they made a large variety of products people would choose there favourites and so more people would buy the product. You would have to be certain that your product is going to sell extremely well, because you will be making so many of your product and so if you don’t sell as well as you expected to you are going to have lots of left over products that are going to have to be stored which costs a lot of money.
For my product I will use batch production because I won’t sell enough products for Mass production to work correctly whereas if I create a large amount of my sports bag over a short time I can then stop the production line to save money. I can store my left over products in a small factory somewhere away from the city to save a lot of money. I will use a place that is not near any city so I can save money on the rent. My product is different to products such as Coke because they get a high amount of sales each week because people buy some more bottles every time they go shopping whereas with a sports bag I will only get sales when from each customer when they need a new sports bag which is about once a year. So that is why I will use batch production to produce my product.
To find out what price I want my product I went onto the internet and looked at different price bags.
Boston Matrix
The Boston Matrix is a theory which shows how the product will do in future. This is used in big businesses to decide which products they should invest into and which they should try and stop producing. The results are put in a table and then analysed. On the table there are 4 sections, Stars, Question Marks, Cash Chows and Dogs.
(Tutor2u.net)
This is an example of the Boston Matrix. This shows high Stars have high market share and market growth whereas Dogs have low Market Share and Market Growth.
Stars
Stars are high growth products. They are the biggest competitors in the market. Stars bring in a large amount of money and they are still increasing in popularity. You would want to keep your product in this area for as long as possible, to do this companies nave to invest large amount of money into the product so that they can keep at the top of the market. It is impossible for a star to stay as a star for the whole of its life, eventually they will reach the top of the product life cycle and will start to decline into hopefully Cash Cows but they can turn into dogs. If they turn into Cash Cows this mean that they will get a large amount of money still. They will only become Cash Cows if they keep a large amount of the Market Share.
Cash Cows
Cash Cows are low growth products. These products bring in a large amount of money but they are not going to develop in the market. These are useful to maintain but you do not want to expect great things from them. You will need to put a lot of effort in them to make sure they are maintained at a steady level. These products bring in a large amount of cash which can be invested into the Stars to increase there profit.
Question Marks
Question Marks are products with a low Market Share operating in High growth Markets. This means that the product is popular and has a lot of potential in the future but at the current time it does not bring in much money. But there is a risk that you invest money to try and make these Cash cows but they do not work and they become Dogs, business to make decisions if it is worth the risk to invest in the product. Larger businesses are able to take more risks with question marks because they have more money.
Dogs
Dogs have low Market Shares and low Market Growth. No company wants to have a product as a Dog. Dogs can sometimes make enough money to brake even but it is not worth the effort to do that and then they can still get worse and start loosing you money. Dogs are usual sold or closed down by the company.
Coca Cola
Coca Cola is a great example of how the Boston Matrix works. I will use them as an example of how this works. The main product they produce is called Coke and this would go under the star category. This is because it makes a huge amount of cash but the product is not going to get any bigger. This means that they do not have to put as much money into advertisement and improvement. On the other hand they have made products such as Vanilla Coke which is now a Dog. This product did not work very well and the public were not that interested in it. So this meant that it made little money and there was not potential in it. To solve this problem Coca Cola just got rid of that type of drink and started to develop different products. Because of how big Coca Cola are they have the money to take chances on ideas like and for them to not work, because of this they are able to take lots of chances with drinks in case they work because they know that Coke will cover the costs if it goes wrong. One product that worked well is Diet Coke, this product has taken of hugely and would fit in the star category. This is because the product makes a large amount of money and with the current demand of health base products due to the large amount of obesity and government warnings. This means the product will still be getting bigger and bigger and make a large profit.
My product
During my product life cycle I would hope for my product to expand into the market quickly and then become a star. I would expect it to at the beginning to slowly climb up the graph with the product making more money each month and then having a bigger growth. After a couple of months I would expect my product to be near its highest point on the table. I would put in a large amount of money for advertisement so that everybody knows about my product. Once it is at its highest point I would hope for it to then stay there for a large amount of time. To do this I will have to put out a couple of adverts every month so that it stays in peoples head. Once I can see that my product is starting to decrease into a star I will stop producing a different product to replace it instead. It would not be worth advertising the product when people have stared to get newer bags. I would keep the product in the market but then just concentrate my funds into a different product. If my product was going towards to dogs instead I would decide to stop producing my product instead and just get a new product into the market instead. It is not worth keeping a product in the market if it is in the dogs.
SWOT Analysis
Swot Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Swot Analysis is used by large organizations to look at the characteristics that are positive (Opportunities and Strengths) and negative (Threats and Weaknesses).
Strengths and Weaknesses are used to explore the positive and negative aspects of the company.
Opportunities and Threats are used to explore the positive and negative aspects external to the company.
This is usually used for a company as a whole but in my case I am just using it to help look at my specific sports bag.
This is an example of a Swot Analysis graph taken from . This shows how that each section has different points. You will want your company to have a large amount of points in the left side of the table and a few points on the right hand side of the column. Your company will look at these points and decide how they can exploit the strengths and opportunities and then minimise the impacts of the Threats or Weakness.
My product
Supply And Demand
Supply and Demand
This is when you supply your bag to the customer. For example whenever you sell a product you are supplying that customer with the product. Whereas with demand this is when your customer needs the product and you can sell it to them for a higher price.
Conditions that change Supply
Supply can change depending on the current climate in the market. There are many different things that can change the level and Supply. For example the cost of producing the bags will change due to the efficiency of my company. So if I were to produce my bag at a cheaper rate I will be able to produce more sports bag which increase the level of supply whereas if I were to have to pay more for the production of my sports bag the Supply would decrease and so I would sell less.
Conditions that change Demand
Demand can change in the same way that Supply can change. If demand is increase this means that I am able to sell more products and for a higher price, whereas if the Demand for my production is reduced this means that I will have to sell less bags and for maybe a cheaper price which then reduces my income. An example of how Demand can change is the amount of income people get to spend on luxuries like a sports bag. With the recession people will get less money from their jobs and so they will not want to waste money on sports bags whereas they could spend the money on petrol which is increasing in price. But then again the Demand for sports bag can increase, for example when England won the Ashes they were all over the TV and everybody was talking about it. Huge amount of youngsters started to play cricket and so they bought cricket bags. This would have increased the demand for the bags by a huge amount and so a sports bag company would have got huge sales.
This is an example of what would happen if Demand was increased. Along the bottom shows the Quantity being sold and along the side shows the price of the product being sold. Where the two lines cross shows the amount of sales that are made. The ideal place for the lines to cross would be at the top right of the graph. With this diagram because the Demand has increased the D1 line would move right to become the D2 line and then this would mean the lines cross further to the right. This means that the amount they sell is increased and so then they are able to sell the product for less money and then get the same amount of profit. And then if they are selling for less money they will sell even more bags and this would increase their profit even more. This is beneficial in every way for a company. The graph can also change if for example Supply decrease because the price of production had gone up so I couldn’t afford to create as many products. This would mean that the blue line would go further left and so they would be selling the product for more money so that they can make the same amount of profit. They would be selling a lot less products and then people would not want to pay as much money and so then they would have to decide whether they will sell their product for more money to keep gaining money or for cheaper but then still selling the same amount of products. This means that they would be losing money each month but then when they Supply increases again they can make up for the money and they will still be increasing their popularity.
What I’m going to do
For my product I am going to have to make sure I advertise well so that I increase the Demand for my product. Once my company becomes bigger and I design trainers or other accessories for my product I can make deals and special offers for my product so that if you buy one you will want to buy another which will also increase my Demand. I am going to have to make sure that I have the cheapest production method so that I can produce the most amounts of products as possible for a cheap price which will mean that my supply is high and I can sell as many products as possible.
Report
FROM Alex Rivers
TO Mrs Sangster
BATE 2 June 2008
TITLE A Report into in to a Marketing Strategy for a New Sports Bag
Introduction
During my GCSE Business Studies lessons I was given the task to design and produce a product of my choice and create a marketing strategy for it. I decided to create a new unique sports bag.
Website Research
To first of all decide what I wanted my product to be like I had to find out what other bags were like before hand. To do this I decided to go onto the internet and just look at bags that are for sale on the internet. I looked at 4 different websites and looked at the good and bad qualities of each website. I looked at each website and how they sold the product. I found out the companies tended to centre the product that they wanted to sell whilst they put links to other websites around the outside and adverts in spare space. This is good because now I know to do this when creating my website. The colour was important a few websites that I looked on didn’t have any colour so I learnt that I have to make sure my website is appealing. One thing that I noticed which I didn’t like was that a few websites didn’t have any adverts on but just had spare white space. I thought this looked bad because having spare white space makes the website very unattractive. Also they could be making a lot of money from the websites. For my website I will put the name of my company along the top in big bold letters and then put the company logo in the two top corners. I will have all of the products for sale with the price clearly displayed along with links to other parts of the website eg. Other products, company info and a help page.
Marketing Mix
Marketing Mix is divided into 4 factors; these are called Price, Product, Place and Promotion. Once these have been perfected I will be getting the most out of my sports bag.
Price
With my pricing I am going to have to make sure that the cost at which I sell the product make up for all of my fixed and variable costs. If the price at which I sold the product was lower than the variable costs I defiantly wouldn’t be making a profit because it would cost more to make the bag than sell it, this is not including all of the fix costs. This means that I am going to have to decide how many bags I am going to sell per week so that I can put a price on the bag that is not to expensive. For example if I sold a 100 of my product per week I would not have to put as high a price on it because if I made a profit of £2 per item I sell and I had to make £200 per week for fixed costs id be fine and id be making a profit on anything else. This is good because the prices are low so more people buy the product. But I if I only sold 20 per week id have to make a £10 profit on my product which would mean the product is a lot more expensive and I would loose even more customers. I know on average products similar to mine sell for around £25, but because I am a new company I am going to put the prices down a bit otherwise why would they choose me when they could go to there normal stores such as Nike who they know have top quality products. To decide my price I will have to take into account the price to produce it. I will take this price then add an extra % that will cover the costs of staff + making a small profit. So if I sell each bag £19.99, I chose that price because if I put £20 the item would seem a lot more expensive because people don’t tend to look at how many pennies they are using just the pounds and also 20 sounds a lot bigger than a number starting with 1.
Product
I know what my product is going to be like because of my questionnaire. With my questionnaire I found out a lot of information about design and colour scheme. I am going to design the sports bag towards schools because this will increase sales because if the school make it mandatory for students who play for a sports team have to have the bag this would be a definite 100 sales per year. Then if I go to more schools and do this it will increase my sales by even more. For Burford School ill make the base colour a navy blue but then I will add colours in certain places for pupils house colours, (Red, Blue, Yellow and Green). I decided to choose black as my base colour because the majority of the questioned people chose this over other colours. And also around 70% said that they wanted house colours. This will differentiate the pupils from each other. I will also be thinking about putting the school logo on the front. I am going to put the logo onto the front because when I was doing my product research, I saw that all of the best designs had a logo on the front and I thought that this was a really good look. And also from my questionnaire I saw that lots of people liked the idea of having a logo on the front. The design is going to have to look extremely good because otherwise pupils will not want to buy the bag so they won’t want to buy the bag. I decided that the name for my sports bag should be “Zultan” I asked around a bit with a few different names and everybody seemed to think that “Zultan” was the best name. I decided to use Zultan because it is a cool sounding word which no other company has chosen. Zultan will also be easily remembered because of how unique it is. I am going to also have to create a slogan for my product because every good company has a good slogan so that people will remember it. I was thinking that my slogan can be something like “Zultan … The Tardis of sports bags” this will be easily remembered and it also explains a little bit about the product saying how it is small on the outside but big on the inside. I came up with this name by myself but I have not formally asked anybody. This could be a problem because people might hate it.
Place
When setting up a business you have to make sure that there are going to be customers who want to buy your product in the area. With my product I will most likely set it up in a city centre. This is because when people go shopping the majority of the time they go to the city centre or there local town centre. I will most likely choose Oxford as the city as well because this is the closest city to where I live so I know the most about it and also because there is a very large shopping centre which lots of people will go to. This means that I will be able to rent out a place to set up my shop. The only problem with this though is that the cost to buy/rent a building the set up the business is going to be very expensive and also there is a lot of competition. Hopefully when my company gets bigger I will have enough money to expand into other cities such as London.
Promotion
I am going to advertise my product in different methods. For example I am going to advertise in different types of sports magazines. I am going to choose these types of magazines because people that read this magazine are quite likely to play sports thus use sports bags. If I decided to put my adverts in girly make up magazine there is a high chance that they are not going to want to buy the product so it is a waste of time. My magazine advert is going to be a picture of a sports star who is carrying my sports bag. Then I will have “Zultan” along the top, and then put the price in the bottom corner. The slogan will be under the word Zultan. I will also have to put the website on the picture. This means that when people look at this picture they will probably look at the famous sports star then realise that it’s a sports bag for sale. This will be good because it will grab the reader’s attention and then also give out a lot of advertisement for my bag. For each new advert I will choose a sports star that is in the public eye at the time being. So for example if I made the advert right now I would probably choose a tennis star because of Wimbledon. This will be expensive but then if I sponsor the sports star as well then he will advertise all sorts of my sports equipment which will increase sales. Another tactic I am going to use is put adverts on TV channel. This will be good because you don’t tend to see sports bag adverts on the TV so this in my opinion will show a high quality of the product. I will have to get a professional to design the advert but it will include the same sports star I used for the magazine advert. This is good because lots of people watch TV so they will see the adverts. They will also see the sports star. The advert is going to be my tennis player doing a couple of shots against a opponent and then skipping to him finishing in the changing room packing stuff into his bag. Then finally ill have him walking to his car accompanied by some attractive young models. This is good because I know that people use models are advertisement ploys, because people sometimes think that if you buy the product then they will get attractive models to like them.
Product Life Cycle
Development
When designing the product I did a lot of marketing research. I decided to write a questionnaire that I could hand out around certain places. The questionnaire was good because it’s first hand research; this means that I am getting the information I need without wasting time on information that is irrelevant. This is meant to be a more expensive idea but because it’s in a class room it doesn’t cost much. I had two separate questionnaires, one about the person taking it so I know how reliable their results are. The other questionnaire was more about the sports bag and what they want, don’t want on the bag. I found out some information that I already new like having sections for deodorant but its worth making sure. But I also found out that people would be interested in using school colours and having a school logo on the front. This is good because I could specialise the bag towards Burford School which will increase sales. I also went onto the internet and looked at other products. I found out what other companies sports bags looked like and what was commonly used and what looked good and bad. I new which in my opinion I thought were the best ideas and I needed to be put onto my design. Such ideas as putting small sections on the outside of the bag, having a handle for it to be easily carried and also to make sure the colour scheme was appealing. But the problem with this is that I had all of the information but which only suited me. I wasn’t trying to sell the product to myself I had to try and sell the products to other members of the public. I did learn that people would be interested having a school logo on the front. I didn’t think that students would want this. The branding of my product is also very important. I am going to have to make sure that the style of my product will be easily remembered and linked with my company. My logo is going to be the main part of my brand image. My logo is going to be a sports man running with a white circle around him. The sports star will be completely shaded out. This is a good logo in my opinion because it will be easily remembered but it is still very unique and links with my company. This means that if all of my products have that logo on them everyone will link them with the company. Nike for example has the Tick as there company logo and it is so simple but yet it is remembered so well. This will also link all of my future products.
Launch
For the launch of my product I will sponsor a sporting event. This will depend on the amount of my I have. Hopefully I will sponsor a big football tournament. This means that anybody watching this event will constantly see adverts for my sports bag which will increase my sales. This is because if people aren’t sure of what to buy when they are in the shop they will have seen all of the adverts and think this bag has to be good because they see it all of the time. For my TV advert I will use a football player or a rugby player in the advert. Hopefully a very famous player, then ill have him playing his sport and then skip to when he is putting his cloths ect in the sports bag. Finally I’ll have him walk out with the sports bag accompanied by a good looking girlfriend. This will be good because this will have the sports bag in use and showing the space it can hold but also if a sports star is using the sports bag then his fans are quite likely to buy the product. For example Ronaldo is sponsored by Nike and so people will buy Nike boots just because Ronaldo wears Nike boots. Also when the launch is about to happen I could put a lot of adverts into sports magazines with a picture of the sports bag being used by my sports star. I will put the advert on programs such as Sky Sports or the BBC when I know there is a sporting match on that channel. This will mean that anybody watching the advert will have some interest in sport so I won’t be wasting my time. Another form of advertisement that I could do is advertising in a magazine. I will most likely advertise in a magazine. The magazine I will use will be Match of the Day and Inside Sports Weekly because form the people I questioned these two were read the most out of all of the choices. Because the advert in the magazine is only I picture I will have a picture of my sports star while he is carrying the sports bag. I will then have the name “Zultan” and then the slogan underneath it. I will then put the price and the link to my website on the bottom. This will be good because it shows the product and also name. It gives out a little detail as well. When my product is going to be launched I am going to have to use a lot of advertisement because I have to make people think of my sports bag when they are going to buy one instead of a Nike one for example. I am also going to have to think about the pricing and make sure the price is below the others.
Growth
During this stage I will have to make sure my product is still advertised but not as much as it had been. I will maybe bring out a few new adverts to catch the publics eye every now and then. This stage is mainly just making sure that my products sales are slowly increasing and just expanding the name of the company. I will have to make up for all the money I had spent in the first two stages. During this stage I could use a lot of sales or special deals to persuade them to buy at my shop. This will be a good plan because I know that with my parents they will go into a shop if it has a sale on instead of getting a similar product which is a lot more expensive. I would expect this to be the same with other people.
Maturity
With this stage I will be getting the most amount of money I will ever get for this product. I will have to be carful though and keep some money spare for when I later start the decline with this product. To solve the decline I will have to also be designing a producing new products, for example small sports bags or other sports related products. From my second questionnaire I found out that lots of people thought it would be a good idea to create some trainers for different types of sports, these trainers could then be linked with my sports bag. This will be good because I can make sure that they are able to fit together perfect and then I could do deals such as buy the trainers and get 50% of any sport bag. These can be put on sale when my Sports bag starts to reduce the amount of income. The main ways I will stop getting into the decline is every now and then put out a new advert or sponsor a new tournament or something along those lines. I will have to do this just to keep my sports bag in the public eye. I will also have to carry out research and development on the bag to try and keep the sales up for as long as possible. To do this I will start to increase the amount of advertisement and then just try and put it back into the public eye.
Decline
Before I have started the decline stage I am going to have to be very careful with what I do. This could ruin my company if I don’t make my new product extremely well. I will have to be careful though when spending just in case my product doesn’t work very well and doesn’t make as much money as expected. But to try and slow down my decline I could also put special offers with my sports bag again to try and get a few sales. The reason for the decline is most likely going to be because the product goes out of season. For example a cricket bat goes into season at the beginning of the season; it is the same with a sports bag. I might have to then increase the amount of product at the beginning of the season and then reduce it near the end while getting ready for the next season. I could then make a sports bag for hockey or football which season starts at a different time. This means that ill always have a product which is in season.
Extension Strategies
When I am planning an extension strategy I will have to keep my product related to my first product which is a sports bag. I could make such products as a newly designed sports bag that keeps up with the markets wants or I could change slightly into sport clothing or maybe sporting equipment. All of this could work because when people think of my company name they will think of sports and know that this shop will quite likely have the product that they need. But I will have to advertise my new product and also use some questionnaires to decide what the product should be.
Conclusion
With my report I have found out that I am going to have to put a lot of effort into my advertisement because if this doesn’t work properly the whole product will fail. For my next product I will create some more questionnaires to find out what the customers want because at the moment I found out a few details about what people want buy I did not find out enough and the questionnaire wasn’t broad enough it was just people from Burford School plus a few extras so the results were not fair I am going to have to put a lot of effort into my unique selling point because nobody is going to buy my product if they could buy a Nike bag because Nike is a bigger name so I am going to have to give them a good reason to buy my product. One day in the future I will expect to have a shop in the majority of major cities in England and then maybe some in countries abroad depending on the amount of sales.
Resources Used;
I used quite a few resources to create my product. I used a book called GCSE Business Studies for AQA written by Alian Anderton. This book was very helpful. I also asked a shop assistant called Jack in JJB Sports. This was a very helpful part of my research he helped me of the starting line. The internet also helped me a lot providing me with sites such as , , , . These websites all helped me research other company’s bags and how they produce them ect. I also used for general information about the business aspect of the product.
Finally I handed out 10 questionnaires to different people for a little extra information.