Wednesday 3 December 2014

Stage 4 - Marketing Strategy and Development

Stage 4

Marketing Strategy and Development


The fourth stage of the new product development process is marketing strategy and development. Marketing Strategy is defined in the Business Dictionary (2014) as ‘strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan’. Therefore, in this stage you will analyse your preferred target market and assess how your new concept will be received in this market. Marketing strategy is also defined by Shankar and Carpenter (2012, pg. 1) as ‘a broad plan of managerial initiatives and activities relating an organisation to its customers and markets’, this means that you plan how you will introduce the concept  to the market and obtain the best long term outcome as possible.  The element of development is where you see if the concept is feasible in the long term with regards to areas such as manufacturing. Also, if needed a prototype of any new equipment needed in the new sport concept would be produced, to again, check if the concept will still work in practice. 

An example of a sporting product that has gone through this stage is the iGolf mobile app. In their marketing plan for the product, they go into detail on how and why they will market their application. They say that the main advantage of having the product will be to ‘lower golf scores’ but they also describe how their product will be different to others on the market through quantity of data, reliability and customer service. This shows they have gone to great lengths to market their product and show how it is different to other products in the market place. iGolf also produced a pricing strategy and planned where they would place themselves in the market, and they decided that with the already established database, they would be able to position themselves as a market leader.

In the last blog, it was stated that questionnaires would be used to test how the new concept would be received on the market by both people that are already fans of motor racing, and people who aren’t. A marketing strategy has been developed and it has been decided that the new concept will be aimed at introducing new fans to not only Formula One, but other types of motor racing. At first it will be marketed as a short season appearing outside the already established Formula One season, to make sure it is available for as many people as possible to watch. It is planned that the short season and the short races will appeal to a wider audience and then in the future, the season will become longer if a fan base is developed. At this stage, no development is needed regarding the cars, because the teams will already be established in Formula One and they will be using the cars that were used in the previous season. With this being the case, the teams and sponsors will hopefully see this a new opportunity to invest in something that will grow over time.


Reference List  
  • Business Dictionary (2014) Marketing Strategy. Available at:  http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-strategy.html (Accessed: 2nd December 2014).
  •  Shankar, V. & Carpenter, G, S. (ed.) (2012) Handbook of Marketing Strategy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 
  • Zazo, A. (no date) iGolf Mobile Marketing Plan. San Diego, CA: L1 Technologies.  

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