SWOT analysis, by labeling the different strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by this business venture with regard to the sports calendar offering that you are working on. Typically, strengths & weaknesses are factors internal to the firm, while opportunities & threats are factors posed by the external environment.
Strengths- The rising number of students each year are going to contribute to the growth and sales of the student calendar. There is a 7% annual growth rate, which would allow for the calendar to grow and increase sales each year. 6% of the dents that showed interest in purchasing the calendar were freshman. Since the majority of the 7% growth rate is contributed to incoming freshman, there is a large growing market of consumers. The campus bookstore only sells 2 types of calendars. Both of these calendars are not school spirit related, and they are not a school year calendar. Since the students plan to create a school year calendar with student/ school spirited photos, there isn’t any competition with a school calendar within the bookstore.
Weaknesses- The students have a limited time frame in order to develop and market their calendar. They are only given 9 months until the start of the fall semester to develop, create, and market their calendar to the students. Also, the students only have around 20 hours per week to dedicate to the project. With a limited start up budget of $8,000, the students need to use their money wisely. Since they need to sell the calendars in order to pay for their grad school, they are starting a high-risk project.
If the calendar does not sell well, they are losing the $8,000 they raised and are not generating profit to pay for their tuition.
Opportunities- Since FAA has 8 campuses; there is an opportunity to sell to a broad rear of all 8 campuses. With the start of the new football team, there will be an increase of school spirit and school related pride. Parents of students may purchase the calendar for themselves if their son/daughter are pictured in the calendar or if parents want to know the dates for certain school functions.
Threats- Since the book store already sells 2 types of calendars, there is competition of calendars are the bookstore. Also, freshman students receive a free calendar when they start at FAA. * Then, proceed toward doing the Market Segmentation and Targeting for this sports calendar offering. Explain the manner in which you have segmented the market, by explicating the variables you have used for segmentation, as shown by the research in the case itself. This determines which of the segments will constitute your prospective target market for the calendar.
The main target market will be a student. Although parents and family members may purchases a calendar, 73% of those who said they would purchase a calendar lived on campus or attended classes on campus. Also, 68% of the students who said they were likely to Marketing Plan By Coffman 1 showed greater interest in purchasing the calendar, it would be profitable to market awards all class levels of students. It would be more difficult to differentiate marketing between sophomores, Juniors, seniors and grad students so marketing to all students would be best.
The target market for the calendar will be students of all class levels attending FIJI, focusing on female students. * Now, you enter the phase of designing the marketing strategy for this business. The task calls for setting and implementing the suitable combination of your marketing mix elements (APS) to target your prospective market, as follows:
Product – the offering here is naturally he sports calendar; so, the nature of the product choice lies in you figuring out the most suited “size (dimensions)” for the calendar as you Judge its market demand as seen in the marketing research done by the partners in the case.
The calendar size that you pick will then determine its unit variable cost in terms of the production cost for each calendar that the printer will be charging the business. Based on the focus groups, most students prefer the larger sized calendar in order to write notes and reminders. Since most students showed interest in the larger size, it makes sense to create the 12″ex.” calendar size. Using the lightweight paper would make the calendars less expensive to produce.
Based on the information from U of O, producing a larger calendar with lightweight paper will allow the price of the calendar to sell for less, hopefully attracting more students.
Price – here, you determine the unit selling price for the calendar picked by you. The selling price per calendar will depend on your chosen marketing channels and modes of distribution. If you choose to use the bookstore wholesale route (for a certain lot of the inventory as given in the case), the unit selling price will be set as the described percentage of ark over the unit variable cost of the calendar size as picked by you.
If you choose to ignore the bookstore offer and engage in personal selling (retail) directly by yourself, you would naturally be picking a unit selling price that you feel the target market would be comfortable paying; the marketing research done by the partners in the case would be helpful in determining this. An ideal option would be to utilize both wholesale and retail; your pricing will vary accordingly as per the two channels. Selling a large lightweight calendar would cost $1. 50. The campus bookstore would purchase 3,000 out of the 5,000 calendars produced. This would generate $6,750.
The production cost however would be $7,500. If the students purchased all 5,000 for $7,500, it would leave them with $500 left from the $8,000 they had raised for star up costs. If they sell 3,000 calendars to the bookstore, they are at only $7,250 and are left with 2,000 extra calendars. After subtracting the $3,000 charger from the photographer, the students only have $4,250. This does not seem like the best method for producing a profit. If the students purchased 5,000 12″ex.” lightweight calendars for $1. 50, it would cost them $7,500. With terms of net 30, the dents can wait to pay the production company.
After paying the photographer $3,000, the students are left with $5,000. The bookstore told the students that calendars are a perishable item and do not sell after about 2 months of the starting date of the calendar. Based on this information, the students would only have around 2 months to sell their calendars. Based on the information, a majority of the students would not purchase a calendar if it was more then $8. The bookstore sells their profit of $6 per calendar. If they sell all 5,000 calendars, there is a potential profit of $30,000. By subtracting their initial $8,000, there is a potential profit of $19,000.
In order to pay for tuition, the students need a total of $10,000. This would leave an extra profit of $9,000. If the students are able to sell at least 1,000 within the first month, they are also able to then pay the production company according to the terms. With a $500, the students can start to set up booths around campus. This would allow the students to buy 50 booths. By buying 4 booths a day for the first 12 days of school, the students can sell to the students for $480. With the extra $20, the students can print out 400 flyers to hang around campus. By selling the calendars for those first 12 days there should be an income.
With the produced income, the students can rent more booths and pay the production company. Based on that, selling the calendars at $7. 50 seems like the best price. That way they are priced at least $1. 00 less than the book store and according to the survey most students aren’t willing to pay above $8. 00.
Place – here, you lay out your channel intermediaries and the functions they perform; so, the bookstore wholesale channel (if you choose that), and the retail direct channel where you do the personal selling, using retail toots or other outlets as creatively thought of and picked by you.
Accordingly assign those options and the fixed costs associated with those channels; these costs need to be planned and budgeted for from the working capital. By selling retail, the students will be able to produce more of an income. Although they are restricted to 20 hours a week, the students can also carry 12 of the calendars with them where ever they go. By selling directly, the students will make more of a profit as shown above in the ‘Price’ category. The booths they purchase can be in high traffic areas of campus allowing for the most visibility. F the students could also make trips to the other campuses in order to set up booths there to sell the calendars. The students could also set up an online store in order to reach students on other campuses and parents as well. The students could set up an Ebay or Testy account where they could sell the calendars. Customers could pay via papal. In order to reduce costs, the students could charge a $1. 99 shipping fee in order to cover costs of packaging and postage.
It is only a small fee in order to set up an online store with Ebay or Testy so the students would still be producing a profit.
Promotion – here, you allocate the different promotional elements of the communications mix that you plan to utilize for pushing sales of the calendar. Determine the suited advertising/promotions activities and chosen media outlets as given in the case as well as creatively thought of and crafted by you, along with those associated fixed costs for the promotions to be planned and budgeted for from the working capital.
The students need to promote the calendars in the least expensive way possible. By advertising with 400 flyers, the students can hang these flyers around campus. The flyers can include the dates and actions where the students will be set up selling, their emails in case someone wants to inquire about the calendars, and the information about the calendars size, type and, photos. There was also an opportunity to be featured in the school newspaper.
By getting interviewed by the newspaper the students are being advertised for free. Another free source of advertising is social media. By setting up a Faceable event page the students can inform people when and where they will be Faceable page, they can share all the information they need to about the calendars. They can also ‘invite’ their friends and other FAA students to the event.
