A Marketing 2101 project

1. Marketing 2101. Dennis Paris. Final Project. 4/17/2018
Keds Backspin
Jake Hofmann
Valarie Jones
Samuel Loch
Sonam Rota
Zheng Li
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2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section 1.1
Executive Overview ………………….………………………………………….……….3-4
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………...4
S​imulation Experience…………………………………………………………………..5
Section 2.1
Company Name……………………………………………….…………………………6
Mission Statement…………………………………….…………………………………6
Objectives………………………………………………….……………………………..6
Tagline…………………………………………………….………………………….…..6
Brand Name………………………………………………………………………….…..7
Target Market……………………………………………………………….……….…..7
Positioning Statement………………………………………………………………....…8
SWOT Analysis……………..…………………………………………...........................8
Section 2.2
Decision Periods………………………………………………………………....……….9
Decision Period 1………………………………………………………………....9
Decision Period 2………………………………………………………………....9
Decision Period 3………………………………………………………………....10
Decision Period 4………………………………………………………………....10
Decision Period 5………………………………………………………………...11
Decision Period 6………………………………………………………………...11
Decision Period 7………………………………………………………………...12
Decision Period 8………………………………………………………………...12-13
Integrated Communications Marketing Plan…………………………………...….14-18
Section 3.1
Reflective Summaries……………………………………………………………............18-21
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3. Section 1.1
Executive Overview
“New shoes simulation” is an online simulation which helps users to improve their
decision- making skills. During the simulation we had to learn how to analyze the market and
discover the relationships between various variables. You are given the rule of a decision maker
who runs a shoe company. We then were given a company and had to make a new sub group
brand. There are several small groups who compete with you for the same purpose. The
processes each team need to analysis include:
- Promotion plan
- Distribution plan
- Product development
- Revised strategy
- Segmentation/Targeting strategy
- SWOT analysis
There are eight main periods to make decisions. The variables you can change includes
price, advertisement, product development, dealer promotion, customer promotion, sales people
and so on. Each variable will cause changes to the result of the following period. What’s more
there are two market at first: Domestic and Home. The foreign market will open later as an
opportunity. The variables mentioned above can be very different in these market. You can get
useful informations from income statement, market description, dashboard and even purchase
competitors’ data to make better decisions. Besides, the logo, advertisement and the shoes can
also be designed to make the program more vividly.
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4. To make better performance, teams need to find the potential relationships between those
variables in each period’s practice and find a balance point at which the team can gain:
- Lowest cost
- Best customer satisfaction
- Highest net profit
- Most market share
- Most return on sale
The market changes rapidly so that the decision made in each period can let the team
surpass your competitors.
Section 1.1
Executive Summary
Keds Backspin is a women's and girl’s only athletic store dedicated to serve female tennis
athletes. We are based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This report provides an in depth
analysis of our Product Development and our marketing strategies that was used in the
simulation. We have included our Mission Statement, Objectives, Tagline, Target market and
much more.
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5. Simulation Experience
The NewShoes Simulation provides each team with a realistic experience in building a
brand and making the right choices in the marketing process. During each class the teams would
go through two decision stages as well as a third stage between classes. In making these
decisions, each team would be determining the success or failure of their brand.
Each decision made is a learning experience, and adapting to the outcome of decision
stages is key to having success. Sometimes a team must suffer losses in a stage in order to make
a profit in the next. For example, spending large amounts on product development is necessary
whether it results in a loss that stage or not. How would you expect to gain customer satisfaction
without developing a high-quality product?
In order to gain a larger customer base, one has to take into consideration advertising,
consumer promotions, price, and dealer promotions. With the right timing and depending on the
market, investing in each of these areas can result in significant growth for the brand. It is not all
about making the right decisions, though. The timing of these decisions is critical to their
effectiveness.
The simulation as a whole displays that every little decision in marketing a new product is
vital to its success. Making small adjustments throughout the course of the project was key to
maximizing profit and finding the sweet spot for each market and their demands.
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6. Section 2.1
Company Name
“Keds”
Mission Statement
“We relentlessly strive to provide female tennis players with the best possible footwear to
improve their performance on the court.”
Objectives
- We plan to achieve a 4% market share within one year of launching Keds Backspin
- Improve productivity by 15% within 6 months
- Increase revenue by 10% within one year of launching Keds Backspin
Tagline
“What girls need to play”
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7. Brand Name
“Backspin”
Target Market
When we were deciding who we would target when selling our product, we decided that we
would target women because the Keds brand is specifically devoted to women. Then we decided
that we would target female tennis players between the ages of 18 and 60 in the middle to
middle-upper class. The women who buy our product are active and competitive athletes who
are goal oriented and concerned with their overall performance. These players participate in
tennis competitively and recreationally. We defined these segments by conducting a research
survey on whether or not the participants play tennis competitively or recreationally.
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8. Positioning Statement
“Durability: Long lasting and incredible performance on and off the court”
When we thought of our positioning statement, we wanted to come up with something that
described our product while showing athletes how we can improve their performance.
SWOT Analysis
Strength:
- Specifically designed for women and girls
- Affordable price
- Great product quality
Weakness:
- Doesn’t attract male customers
- Not a dominant athletic shoe brand
- Small current target market
- Technical problems
Opportunity:
- To come out with a light-weight sneaker made for female Tennis players that will have
them competing with comfort, stability, and durability.
- To provide a tennis sneaker that is made specifically for female consumers.
- Try to research older demographic
- Increasing popularity of tennis
Threat:
- Competitors such as Nike, Adidas and Asics are brands that are our biggest competitors
because they are the most commonly used tennis shoes.
- Our brand is a female sneaker brand, where other companies are for both men and
women.
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9. Decision Periods
Decision Period 1
- In Decision Period 1 we depended on the market description and the prior price, we made
small adjustments to each of the options in order to see how each of the markets would
react.
Decision Period 2
- In Decision Period 2 we increased our prices for both markets. This was because we had
sold a large amount of units in Period 1 but had not made as much profit as some of our
competitors. We also increased consumer promotions for both markets as well as product
development in order to begin to produce a superior product compared to our
competitors.
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10. Decision Period 3
- For our decision period three, we kept the same price as period two, however, we
increased the home advertising by $100,000. Our home sales were less than our domestic
sales, which why we increased advertising for home. This then resulted an increase of
$480,800 increase in home sales. Unfortunately compared to period two, period three’s
net profit decreased by $86,456. This was a result of an increase of expenses, which rose
up by over $740,000.
Decision Period 4
- ​Our customer satisfaction and unit sales were below market average so we purchased
some market research in order to see what prices our competitors were selling at. We
found that the two most profitable groups set their price 20 dollars lower than us. So we
decreased the price in home market from $100 to $84.99 and the price in domestic market
from $85 to $75.99. We also joined the foreign market during this decision period. We
chose our price and expenses based on the market description that was provided for the
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11. foreign market. The foreign market is less concerned with price so we chose a starting
price of $94.99 per unit in the foreign market.
Decision Period 5
- In period five, we increased our home consumer promotion and domestic consumer
promotion. We also added extra sales employees in all three of our regions. The results
were a decrease of $3,284,122 in revenue. After conducting some research, we were able
to determine that this loss occurred because of a decrease in sales in our domestic region
by over $3,000,000.
Decision Period 6
- In Decision Period 6​ ​we keep price the same as Period 5. We made small changes such as
reducing the number of salespeople in the Home market and increasing the consumer
promotions expenditures in the Domestic market in order to try and remedy the decrease
in sales in the Domestic market for the last period.
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12. Decision Period 7
- In Decision Period 7, we found that our cost per unit decreased by about $1. So, we
decreased our price by $1 in all markets to attempt to generate more unit sales. We also
increased our product development expenditures by $350,000 because we believed that
being able to obtain a level 4 product before the last decision period would be extremely
beneficial for us, especially in the foreign market.
Decision Period 8
- We made the most net profit in Period 7, so we only increased the consumer promotions
in home and domestic markets by $100,000 and increased dealer promotions in foreign
market by $100,000. We only made incremental changes because we were clearly
making the correct decisions in prior periods and we did not believe that it would take a
lot to push us to the top. We were also very risk averse in the last decision period because
we knew that we did not want to make any drastic change which could reverse the work
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13. that we had done the last 7 periods. These decisions in the final Decision Period helped
us to be the top team at the end of the simulation.
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14. Integrated Marketing Communications Plan
Magazine Ads
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15. Sales and Promotions
Price Deals
Special/Bonus Packs
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16. Sponsorships and Spokespeople
Serena Williams
Dominika Cibulkova
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17. Ads and Billboards
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18. Reflective Summaries
Jake Hofmann
The New Shoes project and simulation was an interesting learning experience. The initial
process of building the brand from the ground up gave me an idea on how in-depth the marketing
process is and how important each portion of it is. I learned that creativity, specificity, and a
clear message are all key components in building a brand. When modeling our product we had
to keep in mind our target market, as well as how we would go about selling our product.
The simulation really showed how cohesive our group was, as well as our collective
knowledge and group decision-making skills. For every decision we made, we took into
consideration every opinion. Reflecting on our strategy in the simulation, I feel as if we made all
the right choices. In the beginning, we took few risks and focused only on increasing our
customer base by providing an affordable price and spending very little money. Once we had a
solid customer base, we increased the price and began spending on product development,
advertising, promotions, and salespeople. We made sure to pay attention to market descriptions
and make changes specific to each market. I believe this is what lead to our group leading in net
profit for the simulation.
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19. Valarie Jones
Over the course of completing this simulation project, I have gained some very valuable
skills which I think will help me in my future endeavors. I will admit that the simulation
experience was confusing because I tried to figure it out on my own, but my group members
helped me figure out how to work the system. At first the simulation portion of the NewShoes
project was not as important as the product development part, but once our product began
generating revenue and became successful in the foreign market it instantly became more
exciting to me.
Due to my limited background in marketing and sales, I did not understand what major
decisions that our group was suppose to make, but we worked together to decide how much we
should sell our product for in the home, domestic and foreign market. I think that my team made
some very good decisions when it came to expanding our product by penetrating the foreign
market. After we did this, we began to see better results which resulted in a drastic increase of
revenue. Our team won the simulation project which was pretty exciting and this showed that
we had made some pretty intelligent decisions.
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20. Samuel Loch
Over the course of this semester’s New Shoes Marketing Simulation, I learned a great deal about
marketing and how conducting market research helps you to understand your target market and
to be able to sell your product to them in the most effective way possible.
During the course of the simulation, our group was able to achieve the highest net profit
among our competitors because of how well we understood each of the three markets we were
selling to. By reading each of the in-depth descriptions of the market carefully, as well as seeing
how each market responded to slight changes in prices and advertising expenditures, we were
able to determine what the best prices and marketing mixes were for each market. Our team
never made any huge changes from period to period. We took the knowledge we had and made
small tweaks to our approach in order to see if these changes would have a positive effect.
Because we were able to make these small changes and continue to grow, we were able to
compete with the best of the competition in the later periods and eventually, come out on top.
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21. Sonam Rota
After completing this simulation project, I have learned a lot about how companies
choose and decide on what to invest in order to make the most profit. This project has increased
my understanding on marketing techniques, and how we can use these techniques to sell more
products.
By the end of the simulation, our group was able to achieve the highest cumulative net
profit amongst our competitors. We were able to achieve this goal because of our descriptive
analysis that was taken. For our decisions, we made sure to look at its descriptive background,
and include the best viable solution for that specific situation. Whether that round we focused on
selling more or increasing our customer satisfaction.r We did face a few hiccups through some
periods, however, we used our mistakes and used it for out further decisions. Our team overall
never made any drastic decisions, which caused us to be in the top 3 highest cumulative net
profit at most times. We also took into account all of our decisions and took each other's
opinions on how we could improve our overall growth. Whether that growth was in net profit,
customer satisfaction, or gross margin, we all took into consideration. Overall this project was
helpful in teaching us and putting us in a situation in creating a company.
‘
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22. Zheng Li
During New Shoes project, I have gained an overall understanding about how a product
is sold from its designing to its selling process. I recognized how earlier designing and
positioning will affect the later success of selling.
In the simulation, I mainly focus on pricing and customer satisfaction. The rule I played
in the team is just like an adviser. At first, I only used the information from market description
and former pricing. We did not do quite well in the first several period. Thanks to my teammates,
they quickly locked the change of other effects like advertisement and sales people. Since I’m
not a native speaker, they explained some of the results to me patiently and helps me to locate
the price. With their help, I started to find how competitors’ price, variable cost and different
markets will affect the price. At last, we successfully reached a balance between price and
customer satisfaction. Finally, our net profit shows that we have made a good selling simulation.
However, there are still some limitations. Firstly, because we were doing well in the last
several periods, we did not choose special decisions because we didn’t want to take risk. What’s
more, we only had a blurry concept about the relationships between these variables. We could
not set them accurately.
Anyway, I have got a detailed overview about what marketing involves and what do
marketers depend on when they make vast decision.
At last, I really want to thank my teammates for helping me improving my marketing
skills during this course.
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