Choose a product or service. After conducting secondary research, estimate the market demand for the product or service within a defined geographical area. How does the demand compare to the competition? Identify one target marketing for this product or service, including a brief demographic and psychographic profile of this market segment. How is the product or service positioned to this segment? Is it effective? Why or why not? Prepare a 700-1,150-word paper that addresses these questions and summarizes your analysis and conclusions.
Introduction This paper (formatting reference; http://www. why4u. com) will estimate the market demand for the seasonal service of contracted snow plowing for the localized suburban area of East Amherst, New York. Following this introduction I will break down the assignment’s specific requirements and supply the information needed for each section. The last section will summarize the information supplied and address my limited analysis and conclusions / recommendations pertaining to the continued service operations in my local area.
First I will share the definitions of market demand and product (service) positioning as I understand them: Market demand – For the purposes of this paper, my understanding of the market demand for this service is the total expected volume that would be contracted by “a defined customer group in a defined geographical area in a defined time period in a defined marketing environment under a defined marketing program” (Kotler 2001, p. 63).
Market positioning – The company’s individual development of services that will be offered to a predefined geographical and “psychographic” area. The paper focuses on one target market, an estimated 585 homes (local U. S. Postal Office, E. Amherst station) in an area occupied by “lower upper” and “upper middle” social classes (as defined in our text (Kotler 2001, Table 3-1, p. 135)). The subject of this paper is RC Landscaping Company – a small privately owned business, operating in the E. Amherst area.
A brief service description is followed below by methodology and an estimate of market demand and company position supported by both primary and secondary research data of the residential and commercial snow removal market in E. Amherst, NY. Service Description To aid the research, one local company was chosen as a model (see note below) to interview in order to expedite the retrieval of research data (I also employ the services of the company), RC Landscaping Company (RC’s). RC’s supplies a service to both residential (suburban) and commercial property snow removal service.
For the purposes of this paper only the residential portion of the business is examined / discussed. Snow removal is a seasonal service that provides plowing of the driveway and walkways to homes in the target areas for the sum of $200. per season The service stipulates that snow is removed when levels reach 2″ or more prior to 7 AM weekdays and at the earliest possible time thereafter (guaranteed). Starting and ending dates of service are between the first fall of 2″ or more of snow until the last..
The snow removal business is just a portion of the total services provided by RC’s and other companies investigated for this paper. The others aspects of these businesses are Landscaping and Hauling, which will not be discussed in detail in this paper. Methodology Note: Calculating the market demand and positioning for a snow removal business is difficult without knowing finite details of operation costs expected to operate this type of service, so what I have done is use RC Landscaping as the model for the basis of my responses to the assignment.
