Marketing product development

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Project Assignment- FINAL

I. INTRODUCTION

· Product Overview

H.O.M.E kit focuses on supplying the consumer with simple non-perishable goods that are often looked over when making a move. Hence it provides ease of mind to the consumer because moving into an apartment can be very stressful and most college students are likely to miss out on some of the smaller details. The H.O.M.E kit is a bag filled with either cleaning tools or cooking tools like cups, plates, pot, pan, grater, cutting boards, utensils, flashlight, towel, dustpan, and spray bottle etc. It could also be a customizable kit where the customer can mix and match tools by themselves. The bag has two sizes, a medium size H.O.M.E kit that can carry 21 products and a large size H.O.M.E kit Plus that can carry additional contents like a mini-vacuum, lightbulbs, batteries, and a toolkit. Each kit comes in a considerable weight that can be easily carried

· Idea Generation (why is there a need for your product?)

Moving can be very hectic, it is considered the 3rd most stressful event in a person’s life. About 40 million Americans move every year making up 17% of the US population. (https://www.ctmovingandstorage.com/resources/15-interesting-moving-facts). Even though the idea of making kits is popular and the familiar to people, there are still students and couples who would rather spend money to get a kit that contains the essentials when moving in. Also, the trend towards gifting newlyweds couples or students already moved in kit that has everything in it has increased dramatically for the past years. This service would ensure when the consumer moves into their new living situation all of the small details will be taking care off

· Value Proposition (why should a consumer purchase your product?)

Recently the popularity of bundles or kits have become more apparent. For example, there are a wide array of services that offer premade meals for people that find gathering all the ingredients and preparing the meal may take too long for someone with a busy life. Therefore, and idea of replicating this type of product but in the form of necessities is needed when moving into a new college living situation. Young adults now are seeking the aspect of ease and simplicity so this product will align perfectly with that trend. HOME kit developed this product based off the needs for college students, and with that in mind it is created to be the cheapest alternative possible. 

II. MARKET ANALYSIS

· Product Description and Pricing (specific details)

HOME kit product is new to the market, and since it will be produced for the first time, there is no data for any previous products. HOME is a bag filled with cleaning tools or cooking tools like cups, plates, pots, pan, grater, cutting boards, utensils, flashlight, towel, dustpan, spray bottle, etc. It could also be a customizable kit where the customer can mix and match tools by themselves. The bag has two sizes, a medium-size HOME kit that can carry 21 products and a large H.O.M.E kit Plus that can hold additional contents like a mini-vacuum, lightbulbs, batteries, and a toolkit. Each kit comes in a considerable weight that can be easily carried. For pricing, the suggested retail prices after penetration for these products are $60 for the H.O.M.E kit and $90 for the HOME kit Plus. According to 13WMAZ, college students spend around $400-$700 when moving into dorms. The starting price is $60, half if not less than other pot and pan bundles, ranging from $100 to upwards of $200. With this low pricing, HOME aims to attract many young customers (especially college students) struggling with money or do not have a lot to spend on items for their apartments/houses. HOME developed this product based on the needs of college students, and with that in mind, HOME’s goal is to create the cheapest alternative possible.

· Market Size and Trends

The market size that HOME aims to target at the start is approximately 25% to 30%. However, through sound marketing strategies and high-quality service, HOME expects the business to attract new and more customers and increase its target market. Recently the popularity of bundles or kits has become more apparent. For example, there are many services that offer pre-made meals for people that find gathering all the ingredients and preparing the meal may take too long for someone with a busy life. Therefore, HOME would replicate this type of product but in the form of necessities when moving into a new college living situation. Young adults now seek ease and simplicity so that this product will align perfectly with that trend. The target market provides a potential for increased growth because it incorporates a wide range of customers without restricting specific demographics. Besides, more people are becoming technology savvy and are adopting mobile phones and computers and embracing the convenience received through online shopping. Also, the convenience of kits being delivered at people's doorsteps is drawing them to order online. The growth rate of the target market is around 20%, which is expected to be more in the future.

Moreover, various changes or trends are occurring in the makeup of the market. Another difference is that the older generation has also embraced buying ready kits online and joined the need of young people who are the majority of consumers of online purchasing. In addition, with the COVID-19 crisis, most people changed their shopping habits to online. There is an accelerated shift from stores to e-commerce. According to Digital Commerce 360, COVID-19 has a related boost in online shopping resulted in an additional $174.87 billion in eCommerce revenue in 2020.

· Competition (present and potential) and Barriers to Entry

HOME kit faces stiff competition as each company thrives on gaining an advantage over other rivals. The existing companies are financially stable and therefore have the opportunity to offer tough competition. However, the market competition provides a benefit to customers as they receive quality services and businesses get to improve their operations and efficiency.

HOME faces several different levels of competition. Its direct competitors include companies that also market these kits like Moving Day Survival Kit, moving care package, other smaller manufacturers, and individuals who make these kits as gifts for their friends and families.

HOME has many barriers to entry, meaning there would be stiff competition in the future. Some of the few barriers to entry in the industry relate to cost, quality, and means of transport. The capital requirement is relatively high, like purchasing adequate transportation modes like cars for all the drivers in the desired locations and the service costs. The other barrier is the quality of the products as HOME must deliver a good quality product that lasts long and works effectively for consumers. The additional wall relates to the delivery modes that must be selected effectively based on speed and convenience. Besides, based on technological changes and advancement, the industry is likely to face high competition in the future.

· Position Relative to Competition

Competitive positioning is a strategy opted in the product marketing that allows the product to metamorphose itself from similar products already available in the market. This strategy makes the brand offer values in their launched products which were not previously offered by similar products in the market. The value provided by the brand can, for example, be any newly launched feature that differentiates the product in the competitive market. The Home kit also brought in some excellent strategic ideas, which can significantly impact its position in the competitive market. One of the most personal strategic goals of the home kit product revolved around college students. There are not enough similar tool kit brands that identify college students as their target audience in the competitive market. Though the HOME kit can be approached by anyone but acknowledging students' needs in marketing strategy can immensely attract students and elevate its sales in this class of buyers.

Apart from the strategy mentioned above, the HOME kit also introduced quite specific pricing plans of the products to escalate its position in the competitive market. As the brand promises to cater to college students and provides all the essential cooking and cleaning tools mainly to college students, the brand offers appropriate and low-cost products to afford to buy the HOME kit easily. HOME acknowledges that having a notched and high-end quality product is not the criteria for purchasing tool kits. Instead, they look for equipment that can provide all essential gadgets not to miss any important tool and help them get the task done. None of the competitive brands offers low prices for tool kits and all the essential tools in one carrier bag, and the HOME kit provides a range of prices for the different sized products that highly differentiate it.

· Consumer Profile (specific details)

H.O.M.E kit will not restrict its target group to a specific demographic but all those individuals who are seeking the aspect of ease and simplicity and would like to order them online. Simply, it will target both men and women, elderly and young, different income classes as long as the consumer can afford the payment rate. Most of the purchases will come from new apartments or homeowners, especially college students, to be the primary target market. HOME will target market constitutes consumers who are willing to pay a little extra cash to get their kits delivered to their front door without visiting many shops. Individuals who value their time and speed of their orders as HOME ensures faster delivery of the equipment within the minimum time possible.

· Retailer Aspects (types of retail outlets now and in the future and the level of customer service needed)

Retail marketing strategies account for the retailer's plans to elevate its sales by attracting customers according to ScienceDirect.. The retail aspects of any product include the factors that affect the sale of a product in consideration from the primary source to the direct deliverance to the main customer of the product (Ivanauskas and Pajuodis, 2005). The features of the merchandise of any brand include the pricing of the product, the origin of the product, its promotion, and most importantly, the product itself (Ivanauskas and Pajuodis, 2005).

The retailing aspects of the HOME kit are also required to meet all four features of the merchandise. The pricing and promotion of the HOME kit is already a good score in the competitive market as the brand aims to provide and low-cost kits. For promotion, the brand is already making big moves in the social media advertisement plans. The place of origin of the objective of the HOME kit is already well explained in the texts mentioned above, which state to meet the requirements of college students and families that move in. Another important aspect to take care of the promotion cost of the product is to ensure that it does not exceed the profits that the brand is making. For this reason, the HOME kit compares its highly returned investments from retailers and those from the social media ads, so the brand should know where to put its efforts and budget. The HOME kit also keeps a keen check whether the profit made by the retailers is balancing the amount the company is putting in their commissions. These strategies will ensure that the money made by the company is not misspending, and in fact, every penny put in by the company will further enhance the sale of the products.

Promotion Objective

School and college students who live away from their homes often face trouble receiving good home-cooked food. Students start compromising with their daily intake of a good diet and begin taking junk and unhealthy but readily available meals to focus on more important goals of their lives. Apart from students, other workers spend their whole day working, and when they reach home late, they do not have enough energy to cook their own and start skipping meals. Students who cannot afford to eat daily outside and people who work on back-to-back shifts but still want to have home-cooked food face trouble getting access to utensils that can help them cook food or clean their house. Arranging tools and utensils at the last minute can be a significant burden. HOME Kit is a brand with the idea of providing ease to such students and workers for whom eating healthy food has now become a daily struggle. HOME Kit offers a set of utensils composed of cooking appliances and cleaning tools to access the products they need quickly and easily.

Packaging

One of the biggest problems’ customers face when buying tool kits is that they are not available in appropriate packaging either the packaging is way too big to carry, or the packaging is way too small to fit all the necessary tools. The packaging of the HOME Kit is composed of a carrier bag in which the brand places all the valuable tools according to the size and customers' requirements. These utensils can include kitchen equipment, cleaning tools, vacuum cleaner, torches, cleaning fabric, cleaning sprays, etc. Another exciting thing about HOME kit's packaging is that it can be personalized according to client's wishes and requirements. Even its sizes are available in variations that include a medium-sized container that can fix up to a maximum of twenty-one tools. A larger-sized container can fix more equipment like a mini vacuum cleaner, torch, and other comparatively enormous tools. The large size of the container is not to scare customers because of its weight because HOME Kit is available in portable packaging, which is also available in different weights and can be easily carried while moving, moving out, or traveling.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy for any company or brand requires identifying its target audience and then requires a strategic plan to endorse the brand according to the targeted audiences. The HOME Kit company declares college students, wedding planners, and frequent movers as its target audience and employs its promoting and pricing strategies. For such an audience, the HOME kit provides a less stressful experience of moving by providing all the required gadgets.

The brand carried out a study on its previous customers and found out that people are often likely to forget at least one, two, or more essential products while moving out with limited time available. For this reason, HOME decided to launch a new kit accordingly so that everything is available in the Kit and relieve the clients from forgetting anything.

To expand its market in the college or school students and frequently moving families who are the primary target audiences for this Kit, HOME provides a range of prices so that students can get the least expensive Kit to fulfill their basic requirements and families can buy more extensive kits according to their moving needs.

Another important aspect of marketing strategy is hiring consistent and dedicated workers. HOME is known for having skilled, and hardworking employees to put together each and individual Kit which immense care and thought, and the Kit gives a high-definition appearance that attracts its customers. Apart from this, HOME adopts a strategic plan of selling products with its good number of distributors, promoters, and agents who dedicatedly complete their tasks.

HOME also brings a competitive market in the tool industry by providing low-cost products without bringing any compromise in the quality of the tools and other products.

The brand came up with the marketing idea of collaborating with non-competitive brands that also provide home accessories like Bath and Beyond Home and other similar brands to be promoted and distributed to a similar market audience looking for home goods. HOME also introduced the feature of taking online orders and providing home deliveries to opt for HOME because of its convenience and less burden of going out for shopping each tool.

HOME has its primary objective of providing a moving-in experience for all students to be happy and less stressed. College students launch the brand itself, so this makes a good marketing opportunity for sellers and customers to relate in the same circumstances.

Lastly, one of the marketing strategies that HOME will use is social media platforms. The business will use direct messaging on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to communicate with the potential and target market. Social media strategy would be effective due to its high use in society today.

Consumer Advertising Before Purchase:

As mentioned above, one of the main objectives of the brand are to provide comfort to the students who move in apartments and dorms. Hence, it gets difficult for them to enlist all the important equipment needed for moving. They often are young enough to realize the tools they are going to need so for this target audience HOME gives a comforting experience of the shopping tool kit as it provides all the tools that students should need that even they cannot perceive about. Similarly, families who buy tools for moving often forget to buy some of the essential because of the stress of moving in. Even for those families, the HOME kit provides a large-sized carrier bag that encompasses all the house cleaning products, fixing utensils, along cooking tools. Consumer advertising is high lightened by the brand by associating itself with the brands that are also manufacturers of home goods. It's a smart strategy opted by the brand to catch the attention of the customers who went to buy home products from, for example, Bath and Beyond Home or Macy's and saw the HOME kit products there and attracted them to buy the HOME kit along with other household products. Also, for college students when they sign a lease for a dorm or an apartment, HOME will be providing these apartments and housing facilitates with brochures and fliers that advertise and carry important and interesting details about HOME. This strategy could help attract more college students.

Online and Social-Media Advertising

As mentioned in the marketing strategy, the brand employs skilled promoters of the product responsible for promoting and advertising the product on a social media platform and online shops. HOME came with the idea of selling products online, which can significantly impact the sales of products as online shopping is convenient for the customers to receive the products at their doorstep rather than shopping and to look for each product. Another selling strategy adopted by HOME is that it provides free shipping on the customer's doorsteps which is an excellent attraction for online buyers.

HOME has opted for online social media platforms for advertising like Twitter, Instagram, etc. In the current times, social media and technology are at their peak, and it has now become important for every brand to promote its product on these platforms to gain a vast range of customers. The HOME kit has also taken part in the online promotion by putting up advertisements on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc., which is also a great strategy to upgrade the sales. HOME also put-up online ads about the recent deals and sales so that more people could avail themselves the discounts and cut off prices.

In-Purchase Advertising

In-Purchase advertising refers to the strategy opted by the product promoters who display the advertisements of the products on the stores so that buyers can catch the attention of the products and buy them; This is the strategy opted by the HOME kit brand well which is displaying product advertisements on similar household products brand so that when the consumer is looking for other household product, he catches attention on HOME fixing toolkit and buy it along with the products he came for buying in the similar store.

In addition, due to COVID-19 impacts on businesses, advertising for HOME is going to be much easier since most people shifted to purchase products online. HOME is also going to provide sanitary items as a gift towards each purchase. This will symbolize that HOME company is aware and thoughtful.

Projected Cost of Promotion Strategy

The products sold by HOME kit come in different sizes. The medium-sized container is sold for sixty dollars, and the cost of a large container is comparatively more that is ninety dollars as it contains additional products. The evaluation of all the prices in which the products are being sold and the profit the companies get from the products accounts for the promotional prices and determines the budget at which the company will promote it. Each product sold by the HOME kit will make a sixty-dollar profit and subtracting the manufacturing of products sold in each Kit will give a total of thirty-five dollars. For a single sale of Home Kit Plus, which is the large-sized carrier bag of the tool kit, is sold for ninety dollars, and after subtracting the prices for the manufacturing of the tools, it gives a total of forty-five-dollar profit to the company.

The profits made by the company on a single sale of the products will determine the budget company will keep for its promotion. The home kit is making a considerable number of profits from a single sale of the Kit and therefore can promote it through online ads on Instagram, Twitter is also promoting the products on television. Keeping the budget for promotion in consideration, the company will also take bigger steps of promotion like hiring people for advertisements.

Product	Selling price	Manufacturing price	Profit made
HOME kit (Medium)	$60	$25	$35
HOME Kit Plus	$90	$45	$45

References

“Promotional Budget.” Investopedia, 2021, www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promotionalbudget.asp.

Alston, J., Carman, H., & Chalfant, J. (1994, January 01). EVALUATING primary Product promotion: The returns to generic advertising by a Producer cooperative in a small, open economy. From https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/279601/

Galina S (2018). Using Modern Information Technologies in Product Promotion. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-90835-9_69

Things to add:

SMART goals, the promotional objective followed those rules. How do you know if a promotional campaign is a success or a failure? How will you know which marketing activities provided a good return on investment and to continue in future time periods?

---These should read something like: In TIME PERIOD, the engagement/awareness/ market share goal is...

Your packaging and marketing strategy should align with and be directly influenced by the promotional objectives.

---These should read something like: The marketing strategy objectives for product X are...

A mockup (example) of packaging would be helpful.

The various advertising activities (i.e., prior to purchase, social, and in-purcahse) should align with and be directly influenced by the marketing strategy.