Question

8-5 What kind of product is Petnet's Smartfeeder? How should this type of product be marketed? (AACSB: Communication; Reflective Thinking)

Answer 1

Petnet's Smartfeeder is used for cats and dogs and is connected via Wi-Fi to your smartphone which can be used to supplement the nutrition of a pet at home, primarily when the owner is away at work and the pet has to be left alone.

Such products are niche products which only cater to the needs of selective people who fulfill the conditions of being someone who works and has lesser time to take care of their pets.

Marketing of such products is extremely tough and wrong measures would mean that such products fail to sell since the target audience is often not correct.

Often, companies that produce such products enter into markets where product demand would be relatively lower and turn non profitable in the long run.

Following are the strategies required to turn such products into being profitable for the owners and have a higher rate of return respectively.

1) Selecting an Appropriate Target Audience:-

The first and foremost step in marketing such products is active and proper selection of the target audience. In relatively poor or developing countries, such products would not be able to sell. Pets though are kept in these countries, yet people do not have enough money to allow such products in their houses.

These will primarily sell in metropolitan states with people earning good and yet wanting to take care of their pet dogs or cats actively.  

Thus, having a key idea of the demographic look of the target audience, their earning etc. is actively required in order to sell the product in an appropriate manner.

2) Selecting The Medium of Marketing:-

Once we have selected the target audience, the next is an approach to sell the product. How would one market such goods which are being sold by the company? It is not easy to reach out to the potential customers since they are already very few.

Appropriate marketing techniques in this case would be selecting high end pet stores that sell cats and dogs and produce to the customer and also an online mechanism can be selected in which people finding pet food can be given popup advertisements about the product and its uses.

In this case, much more than the cost of marketing, selecting an appropriate channel through which one reaches the end customer is extremely important. This involves both selling the product at an appropriate area, and making sure that that the product is widely available to the target audience respectively.

3) Research and Development and Feedback:-

Companies that produce niche products must always have an element of research and development within their working culture to allow for products and services to sell in a better manner and evolve over a period of time.

Niche product customers get easily used to the offering of a company and want changes and accommodation in the long run to allow for feedback to be part of the final product.

Thus, spending on research and development and on collecting feedback is extremely important for the products marketing respectively.

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section if any.