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Audrey Galloway Marketing 300 John Eaton Marketing SimulationJanuary 14, 2021Quarter One The decisions within Quarter One involve choosing a target market, analyzing the industry, and designing a brand. The primary segment I chose to target was speed. partly due to the nature of carbon bikes. Carbon...

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Audrey Galloway Marketing 300 John Eaton Marketing Simulation January 14, 2021

Quarter One The decisions within Quarter One involve choosing a target market, analyzing the industry, and designing a brand. The primary segment I chose to target was speed. partly due to the nature of carbon bikes. Carbon frames are intended to be a lightweight superior bike frame which enables speed. Previously carbon bikes were limited to expensive niche mountain bike market. With new moderately priced mountain bikes, customers with an interest in quality speed bikes can also enjoy the carbon bike. The name of a company should reflect the brand and Bodacious Bikes was one of the first few name ideas I thought of. The alliteration in the name was a bonus in addition to the positive connotation and memorable ring to “Bodacious Bikes.” Bodacious means excellent, admirable, and attractive, and this word is one I thought could appeal to the elitist market of the speed segment. Another reason I chose to place focus in the speed was due to the target customers’ willingness to pay: “the Speed segment is focused on speed, as the name suggests. It is looking for the lightest, fastest, most aerodynamic bike on the market… They take pride in how healthy they must be to be fast, strong, and competitive. They are willing to pay a high price and sacrifice comfort and utility to get an edge over other riders.” Because this segment is willing to pay the most, this appears to be an excellent target segment to start with. This will allow me to pay for quality materials and advertise plenty and still make profit. The brand logo I designed for Bodacious Bikes is displayed to the right. I thought the orange was in the spirit of the speed segment’s competitive and fiery nature while being flashy to draw in the eye. I coined “Wicked Speed” to be the company slogan.

New York has the highest potential demand projection for both speed and mountain. While the projection is slightly higher for mountain, I stuck with my decision to prioritize speed due to the demand sector’s willingness to pay the most. I plan to open the second store in New York, so I can sort of test the market with the much cheaper rent of Bangalore. I also wanted to start smaller because it seems smarter to pay less in rent while developing credibility for the brand. Additionally, I wanted to start small due to the following information: “It will take a few quarters for customers to learn about your new brands and their benefits. They might even be skeptical in the beginning. For these reasons, actual demand is likely to be much less than potential demand in the early quarters. The opposite could be true a year from now.” I might as well establish my presence with more affordable leases.

Quarter 2 I decided to open a second store in Amsterdam. While Amsterdam’s prospect for speed bikes is only 4,415 compared to the 4,833 of New York, the rent is far cheaper in Amsterdam. I thought again it would be an ideal option to pay less in rent given the significant price increase for New York and the fact that Bodacious Bikes could use additional time to build credibility and presence in the market. My original add for the original “Bodacious Bike” speed model appears to the right. I chose these components based on the customer segment needs. The original Bodacious bike model components include a Polymer gel racing seat, racing tires, precision breaks, and reflectors, intended to reflect on the needs of the customer segment. The entirety of features in both my original advertisement and Bodacious Bike Model can be seen on the right.

Quarter 3 My bike ended up being the best selling in its section. I changed my advertising to include this as brand importance and exclusivity are important factors to my target market. I also changed around the order of importance of my marketing points. I added the point “most successful in the speed segment” due to the speed segment’s elitist preferences and also “a tailormade bike just for you! 3D printing” due to my competitors ad receiving more interaction and them having this point for speed bikes. In addition to altering my ad for the Bodacious Bike, I altered its price. I raised the price to $1,400 because I realized $1300 was a more of a minimum price willing to pay. I did not want it to be observed as a huge price increase, so I only changed it $100. I decided to open a new store in New York because globalization creates opportunities in new markets and I feel within the third quarter, with a top of its segment bike in my brand, I had an established presence in the market. I also decided to create a new line of bikes. This new line of bikes would prioritize recreation. This way I was able to market to the sector of people that value a good price over an expensive quality bike and expand from my current niche speed market. I could also utilize the high market need for recreational bikes in my previously opened store in Amsterdam. I plan to price this bike at $900, as that is the price customers are willing to pay. I plan to offer a $25 rebate.

Quarter 4 To expand further into the market, I added an additional bike model in the Mountain segment. Components of this bike include high grip tires, front suspension and shock absorbers, standard disk brakes, and colorful thin brushstrokes. I included these due to the customers need for a durable, rough terrain handling, and stylish bike that can stop and turn with ease. I decided to alter the model for my original Bodacious Bike as well and called it “Bodacious 2.0”. I decided to remove the reflectors and add colorful thin brushstrokes instead, due to the supposed distaste the speed segment had for the clunky look of reflectors, and their preference for an artistic, exclusive look. I looked at my competitors and notice that Winged Wheels have the highest demand. I look at their pricing and they are priced at $650 with an $100 rebate. I plan to change the price of mine to $750 and offer a $50 rebate, changed from the $900 base price with $25 rebates in order to compete within the same price range as my competitor. My internet marketing for the quarter included running a web page for all three of my models and running a social media campaign for just my speed and recreation models, as establishing an online presence and brand value is essential for brand marketing success. I also displayed two local media inserts within New York City, Amsterdam, and Bangalore for my recreation and speed models. I also decided to open a store in Rio De Janeiro to complete my presence in the world market and build credibility for my brand. This quarter I also focused on hiring more staff for my stores, including at least two sales and service people per store and specialized training personnel depending on the local market demand.

Quarter 5 My competitor “Winged Wheels” is still beating me in the recreation segment with far more demand. I decide to make my basic recreation bike the lowest price on the market, pricing it at $595 with a $50 rebate. I created three new bike lines in Quarter five as well, one in each oof the different segments. These new bike lines served to be a superior version of the previous bike models I had created. New components that I added to both the mountain and the speed segment superior bike lines were bright colorful styled to each segment & frame, enriched – lighter, stronger carbon fiber material, and a performance bike computer. These components were all newly available during this quarter for the creation of bike models, and they were all considered premium resulting in a premium cost for the bike. Additions to my recreational model for the premium version included precision brakes and a large folding tote basket. This way, I could in a way complete my brand with a premium version of each bike segment, allowing my brand to cater to the widest amount of people and therefore generate more sales. The prices and sales priorities of my bake models are displayed below. I also decided to set my budget for paid ads to the maximum to allow the necessary number of clicks if my ads were to receive a lot of interaction. I thought it would be better to overbudget for ads than to run out of clicks.

Quarter 6 My advertisements consistently did not meet the required expectations within their segments. I originally thought that having more in my advertisement equated to appearing as more to the customer. I luckily realized within the final quarter that my competitors were only featuring 6-7 points in their ads while I was inserting the maximum number of points which was 9. I decided to simplify my ads to better correlate with competitor’s successful brand advertisements, and create less busy ads with less information packed in. Despite my unsuccessful advertisements, Bodacious Bikes was at the top of market demand in each segment during quarter six, as can be seen in the following depiction.

I hired additional service people for all of my stores, due to my expected increase in interaction as awareness for my brand grows. I continued to hire more specialized training workers in respective stores where market potential was higher for that particular segment. Due to my success within the last quarter sales wise, I decided to leave most the prices the same. I wanted to ensure I preserve my status for the lowest price on the market for my “Bodacious Basic” recreational model, so I lowered the price from $595 to $585, maintaining the $50 rebate. I did not alter the models within this quarter, due to my bike brands’ sales popularity within this quarter’s results. I maintained my high budget for ads in hopes that my improved ads will receive more interaction for the final resulting quarter.

Quarter 7 Unfortunately, Winged Wheels had the highest total demand in the final quarter. However, each of my premium model bikes were the highest rated brands in each of their segments; the Bodacious Basic upgrade scoring 95, the MountainMonster scoring 94, and the Rapid Racer scoring 93. I included the following graphic for a juxtaposition of competitor profiles.

The Brand Profitability of all my models is an important part to include in this summary for my final resulting quarter. The Bodacious Basic seems to be too far under market value, resulting in it being my least profitable brand. My goal for that model was to be the cheapest on the market within the recreation segment but it seems I could have lowballed it a little too much. I found it was much easier to maximize profits with both of my speed model brands, both the Bodacious 2.0 and the Rapid Racer are my highest scoring profit per unit models. It was slightly more difficult to maximize these profit margins with the mountain segment, who was willing to pay slightly less for the best than the speed segment, and then most difficult to create a large profit margin for the recreation brand, who was looking for the best price. So it seems that my decision to start out Bodacious Bikes within the speed segment and making that the brand’s first priority was the right idea.

The graphic to the right shows the ad copy judgement. I am very excited to report that all of my ads scored within the top 5 of their segments, all but one scoring 70 or higher. My Rapid Racer Bike brand was the highest rated speed bike but was the one advertisement that scored lower than 70. I thought that including “highest rated speed bike on the market” would attract the elitist speed segment customers but it appears I should have prioritized it less, due to my competitors’ speed adverts not having that and getting far more attention. However, my brand scored the highest ad judgment in both the recreation and mountain brand for my premium brands Bodacious Basic Upgrade and MountainMonster, so it appears that simplifying my ads to contain just the most important information was the right decision last quarter. Overall, my brand Bodacious Bikes has been wildly successful! There are some changes I would like to make to the recreation models in order to become the most popular bike in each segment – and beat out Winged Wheels demand wise – if there were additional quarters....