Question 1
One important part of evaluating this opportunity is for the investors to do the due diligence on their competition. If they find that there are other companies with more inventive mouse traps, then they will need to hit the drawing board again. If they find that there isn’t really much competition, then this opportunity becomes more appealing. Their mission statement might be something like this, “Trap-Ease offers innovative products to deal with pesky mice in an efficient manner.” I would stress safety and cleanliness as well. “Trap-Ease offers the most efficient and cleanest way to safely dispatch mice.”
Question 2
I would think that the target market might be your average supermarket shopper. I would check for research on whether mice are more likely to be in cities or rural areas. I would think that suburban households would be a good target, this could mean that the target is the typical homeowner or person taking care of the house. I would market this to exterminator companies as wewll. They will likely use third party traps, as they are selling service and not necessarily a specific product. They could use Trap-Ease during hose calls.
Question 3
The company claims, as the name of the product implies, that Trap-Ease is capable of trapping mice with ease. I would add something in here regarding the more hygienic route that Trap-Ease has taken (cleanliness is appealing).
Question 4
Product is the Trap-Ease mousetrap and it sells for $2.49 for two traps. It is sold at grocery store chains, superstores like Walmart, and hardware store chains. Promoting involves $10,000 in magazine publicity and $50,000 trade shows and cold calling (Kotler, 2014).
Question 5
Competition for the Trap-Ease company would be the manufacturers of the standard spring loaded mouse traps.
Question 6
I would concentrate more on selling to the customer on the cleanliness. Possibly appeal to people’s dislike of dealing with dead animals. They won’t mind so much if they are more removed from the dead mouse. The should control the customer service aspect and make sure that the customers are actually happy with the new traps. It is important to consider the customers actual thoughts, not just what management thinks they might be thinking. I would consider focus groups during the marketing process too. This would help define language that would be useful in marketing adds (find the words that people use to describe the situations dealing with removing mice, and plaster the product with such verbage).
- Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2014). Principles of marketing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
