The Trap-Ease Case

By saying there's an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I assume they are talking about the chance for potential growth. It seems that Martha hasn't done much thought and research with her potential market to properly assess whether the demand for her product would be there. I would first focus on what the customers want and need. Marta and the investors are too focused on how amazing their product is and not the actual needs or wants of the customers that would be buying it. In my opinion, they should take the concentration off of their product and concentrate on their customer. The company's current mission statement probably sounds like "our company is making new mousetrap that traps mice easily." A better mission statement would sound like "to get rid of rats in the easiest, cleanest and safest way- you can achieve it with the Trap-Ease mousetraps."

Martha has decided to target women for her product. She feels that the best target group is women because they don't like to deal with the mess or the risks created by traditional mouse traps. The other market segments the firm might target are animal lovers, environmentalists, families. The Trap-Ease is re-useable and therefore has a less of a strain on the environment which would make it very appealing for people who care about the earth.

The current positioning of the company is that the Trap-Ease "traps mice easily". In my opinion, that statement is way too broad and not catchy. The product has been proven to be very innovative and well-engineered by winning awards from shows and magazines but this is useless if you don't have customers. They could position the product as being re-useable or they could decrease the cost so it's more affordable. By making it "the most affordable, innovative mouse trap" on the market, they could possibly gain some demand.

The successful marketing mix of a company needs to consist of the four P's: product, price, place, and promotion. Trap-Ease only currently has one product, their mouse trap. They could possibly create different versions to offer more variety for their customers. That way they could offer a wider range of prices of the different models of their mouse trap. They're currently trying to distribute their product through big chains like Kmart and Safeway. A much better market to focus on would be the internet. People shopping on the internet, me for an example, tend to be more often interested in quality and innovativeness and don't mind spending a couple extra bucks to get what they want.

Trap-Ease competition would be any company that makes or sells mouse traps. They are unfortunately facing a much higher large volume of low quality low cost mouse traps sold.

The first step I would take is to change Trap-Ease's marketing strategy is to increase the amount of people on their marketing team. I've read that the most important