Imagine that you are a member of management at a successful

Imagine that you are a member of management at a successful high-end adult clothing and accessories retailer that is considering launching an exclusive line of high-end children\'s clothing. This is a new venture for your company, which has until now been focused completely on the adult market. Before committing resources to fully developing a marketing plan for the proposed children\'s clothing line, you have called for research that will help you better understand customers\' wants and needs as well as the competitive environment.

In an essay:

Describe the issues that the market research should explore. What would you want to know?

Explain why this information would be needed to help develop a marketing plan for the proposed line of high-end children\'s clothing. How would this information be used to make better decisions?

Solution

In order to stay relevant and competitive in a global marketplace, companies must be able to be innovative and inventive. Therefore, new products and services need to be launched in order to keep from losing market share. Though most of the ideas for new products and services never see the end user, the ones that do have been through an intensive process in which the company lowers their risk of investment. For a high-end adult clothing line to launch a high-end children’s line, the idea must pass through proper screening in order to justify moving it forward to development. In order to create the parameters, the R-R-W (“real-win-worth doing”) new product screening framework should be implemented using market research as answers to key question.

The first parameter of the R-R-W framework involves the customer’s needs and wants in the market. In the case of high-end children clothing, the question becomes, what the parents are looking for in a high-end piece of children clothing. This information is pivotal because the products must be designed to fit the needs of the consumers. By doing so, the company will spend less money changing the product to fit the customers. Also, by knowing what needs exist in the market, the company can evaluate whether this need can be realistically met.

Next, following the framework, the company must evaluate whether the product will be successful. Researching the company’s competition as well as the average market share could give insight to whether certain styles of high-end children’s clothing would be successful in the current market. Also, researching potential threats to business will be useful in designing a product that, both, fills the needs of the customers and offers features that can be protected by either a patent or trade secrets.

The final section of the screening framework is the question of whether the product is “worth doing”. In order to develop a product that is worth while for the company, it must be proven to fit within the growth strategies of the company. Also the product must have a sufficient return-on-investment (ROI) that makes developing the product worth the cost to the company. Research on the potential earnings and buyers can offer insight on whether a company can realistically reach enough sales to satisfy an acceptable ROI. In the market for high-end children clothes, the amount of parents willing to pay for the clothes must be large enough to justify the production of the children’s line.

Following the R-R-W framework, companies are able to save time and money that would otherwise be wasted on products that had no place in the market. Company executives have an easier product decisions because ideas that passed screening are already cleared to be profitable and beneficial to the company. This information can also be used as the base of a marketing plan because pinpoints the target market as well as the expected market share. Also, this information tests the viability of the product in the current market conditions. The marketing plan is simply the plan of action following the screening process and production of products.