Question

More and more adults are considering commuting to work by bicycle rather than car, but few bicycles currently on the market have been designed with the commuter's needs in mind.

Imagine that you are a marketing executive for a bicycle manufacturer who wants to enter this potentially expanding market with a new lightweight, easy-to-store bike with safety features that combines the speed of a road bike and the sturdiness of a mountain bike. You have moved through most of the stages of new product development, including formulating a national marketing strategy and working through a series of prototypes.

You have decided to test market the bike and marketing program in one or two urban areas with large commuting populations before you begin manufacturing, promoting, and distributing the bike on a national scale.

In an essay, explain the possible advantages and disadvantages of this decision. Describe the information that you would hope to gather through test marketing and explain how having this information would make a national launch more successful.

To ensure immediate feedback, please submit a response between 100 and 1000 words. Essay length alone will not necessarily result in a high or low score.

Answer 1

As you have decided to test market the bike and marketing program in one or two urban areas before its national launch, it will have many benefits and few limitations as well.

The advantages would be-

• The feasibility analysis can be done in the urban areas to test that whether the manufacturing of bicycles is a profitable decision or not.
• The decision to test market in urban areas will show any weaknesses in the production and usage of bicycles, which can be improved to make national launch more successful.
• Detailed information about the manufacturing and other relevant factors can be obtained by employing small amount of resources (labor, capital and material).

The disadvantages would be-

• This decision could significantly delay the national launch of the bicycle, which would instill the competitors to enter the market.
• If urban places are not chosen carefully, they might represent wrong samples. To site an instance, the people in the urban cities might show negative responses due to risk of crashing associated with bicycling, as the city has more highways but this might not be on the nation level.

Overall, the decision seems to have more advantages and it is recommended to go with this decision, as the company can get a good insight about the level of customer acceptance of the bicycles.

The following information should be obtained through test marketing:

• The responses of people of the cities and whether they are in agreement with the idea of commuting to work by bicycles. This will help to know whether people will have favorable preference in national launch.
• Whether the advantages of commuting to work by bicycle (e.g. Health benefits, environment friendliness) has been accepted by people.
• The demand of the urban cities and the expected demand nationwide. This will help to make production and other budgets when the company goes for national launch.
• The problems that will be faced by the people if they start commuting to work by bicycle. Examples could be the risks associated with bicycling, time constraints, not suitable for far workplaces, fatigue, shower needs, etc. The company can endeavor to solve those problems.