Overview
The target market of our business is the universities and colleges that have difficulties in parking includes the limited parking space and terrible road or weather condition make students waste a big amount of time in searching for an available parking space, which decreases the student satisfaction. Our smart phone application product: NCparker, our parking analytic system: sensors, and our installation and maintenance service will be profitable to every customer to increase the satisfaction of the students.
Primary Market
Niagara College
Currently, there are two parking lots available on Niagara College Niagara-on-the-lake campus which made up with nine separated blocks. There are approximately 1200 parking spots. Limited parking space on campus as well as the heavy snow makes parking a difficulty, and some students have to drive through the parking lot line by line to searching for an available space, which is partially the reason for some of them to be late for class. Besides, Niagara College enforces permit parking and offer one month to eight months length parking permit for students to purchase. Currently there are 1500 students registered for a permit. Niagara College uses data from parking lot monitoring to determine the number of permits that can be sold for each campus. Since September 2014, the most of the permits had been sold in December (275). In the past three years, 1300 parking permits got sold averagely in April. In addition, the number of parking permit sold will have lightly increased for the next fiscal year according to the increasing of number of students.
Secondary Market
Niagara College Welland Campus and Broke University
For the future market expansion, Welland Campus also needs to improve the performance of the parking lot. As the main campus of Niagara College, we will run our service and product depends on the operation situation at NOTL Campus. Additionally, there are more parking lot sections in Welland Campus, so we will run our product and service one by one instead of put it together at once.
Broke University Parking Services is responsible for all administrative functions relating to the management, maintaining and planning of campus parking; the issuance of parking permits; the enforcement of parking regulations; the collection of enforcement charges; the acceptance of appeals from such violators; and the processing of refund requests upon withdrawal from the University. Brock University provides parking facilities to faculty and staff either on a permit (term/annual) or a pay-per-use basis. Parking fees apply to all persons who park their vehicles, including casual visitors and long-term guests to campus. Parking regulation times and rates are posted on parking meters and at the entrance to parking lots. Parking Services is committed to providing excellent customer service. We continually review our regulations in order to provide the best parking options and customer experience.
Tertiary Market
Universities and Colleges in Ontario
We are looking forward to spread our parking product and service to all the universities and colleges in Ontario. While the concept of customer satisfaction gains its popularity and attracts people’s attention to the school. Parking lot real-time occupancy system is going to be necessary to every school to improve the parking lot performance and increase students’ satisfaction; moreover, parking lot technology will become the competition between the schools, and the schools with NCparker will have advantage of the competition. Also, the Ontario university and college ranking system makes each school aims to be the No. 1 ranking in student satisfaction, which makes them cares more about how students feel about their on-campus experience. All of those factors suggest that this is a right business to be introduced at this particular time. Moreover, there is no competitor currently approaching to educational institution like Niagara College, while most of competitors’ emphasis more about commercial market such as shopping mall and casinos. The competitive advantage is not only the experienced technology support from our powerful corporation but also the customized design special for serving college needs.
Territory
Based on our 3 market segments, the geographical boundary of our customers and business is from Niagara region to whole Ontario. We are mainly focused on the universities and colleges in Niagara region, in the future, we will provide our business to Toronto, and then from Toronto to Ontario.
Promotion
In order to reach our market and according to the limitation of start-up capital, we will use trade show as our main promotional strategy.
Trade show is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products, service, study activities of rivals and examine recent market trends and opportunities. They are held on a continuing basis in virtually all markets and normally attract companies from around the globe. For example, in the U.S. there are currently over 10,000 trade shows held every year, and several online directories have been established to help organizers, attendees, and marketers identify appropriate events.
The specific trade show we are going to choose is Trenchless Technology Road Show. Trenchless Technology Road Show is a 3 day event being held from 11th May to the 12th May 2016 at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls, Canada. This event showcases products like water products, utility solutions, pipes, electronics, construction materials etc. in the Computer Hardware & Software, Business Services industries.
Costs include space rental, design and construction of trade show displays, telecommunications and networking, travel, accommodations, and promotional literature and items to give to attendees. In addition, costs are incurred at the show for services such as electrical, booth cleaning, internet services, and material handling.
Budget for the Actual Trade Show Display
The industry average to purchase individual portable trade show displays is $100-$150 per square foot for larger displays. For example, 20x20 displays would cost between $40,000 and $60,000. Exhibit Rentals are about 35% of the hardware purchase cost.
Your event budget allocation will vary, but according to EXHIBITOR Magazine, here’s how the average trade show budget breaks down:
• Space = 33%
• Trade Show Booths & Graphics (construction/refurbishment) = 18%*
• Travel & Expenses = 18%
• Show Services (electricity, cleaning, drayage, I&D) = 12%
• Shipping = 9%
• Promotion = 8%
• Miscellaneous = 2%
In addition, you can estimate your total event budget by multiplying the cost of your space by three. For example, the average floor space costs $21 per square foot. So, for a 20x20 floor space rental expect to pay around $8,400. The budget for that event would be $25,200.
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