E-Poster Presentation

Commercialisation - Blog 8

Commercialisation - Blog 8

The final stage of NPD is commercialisation, Commercialisation of a product or service is how that product or service is introduced into the market (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan 2009). The introduction of new products and services incur huge financial costs for an organisation (Mcdaniel, Lamb and Hair, 2011). There are two major decisions organisations must make to ensure successful introduction of a product, timing of the launch and where to launch the product (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012), this includes if you plan to sell directly to consumers or sell to retailers, and if you sell to retailers what retailers?, how many stores?, what areas of the country? During this stage of the process companies also need to make decisions on whether they are going to alter the marketing mix and also what they plan to offer with the product/service, i.e. warranties, warranties reduce consumer risk especially when it comes to a brand new product or service as consumers are given the guarantee of their money back if they are not satisfied.

An organisation that has used the commercialisation process is Rip Curl. They were the producers of the first ever power heated wet suit. In Rip Curls continuous search to advance wet suit they released a heated wet suit called the H Bomb. New materials were used to improve the performance; this technology enhancement significantly reduced the heat loss allowing the H Bomb to operate longer from its existing power source and this benefit offers considerable cost advantages in production. The Australian Institute for Commercialisation (AIC) was engaged to assist Rip Curl to find new technologies, the AIC also introduced Rip Curl to a number of private companies operating as technology providers. These businesses were identified as having complementary equipment; technologies and knowledge to achieve the development of a new product feature that Rip Curl had been seeking to develop. One of the technology companies was able to produce working prototypes using its existing manufacturing process and materials technologies. Bringing a product to market is very risky and expensive for a company so it is worthwhile them spending some time and money working with other organisations on research and using the information to build a campaign for the product/ service. (Ausinnovation.org, 2010)

Archball would be launched in May, the reason for this is that Archball would be predominantly marketed as an outdoor sport and that time of year is the beginning of the summer season, this will give the sport a fair chance to be successful. Also this month is the last of the conventional football season in the UK; this means people will still be attending games during this month. This is important because part of the marketing mix is to advertise as professional football games during the half time interval. Archball would concentrate its commercialisation to the north east region of the country, there three well known and strongly supported football clubs in the north east (Appendix A) whose home games we aim to use to market. If we concentrate our resources on the north east and the company is then successful, it will give us the foundation to branch out and travel south with our idea, into regions such as Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.

 

Appendix

 

A)

Geographical image representing out launch locations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B) Marketing Mix

 

	Marketing Mix
Product	Comes with 3 month warranty, Brightly packaged to stand out.
Price	To buy the board and ball set will retail for production cost + 75% mark-up, Facilities offering  the sport can decide their own price to play (i.e. hiring the equipment and area, approx. £15 per hour)
Promotion	Promoted at professional football clubs, during half time interval. (up to 50,500 people at NUFC)
Place	Local sports clubs (football teams), youth centres, schools, colleges, Public leisure / sport centres.

 

 

 

 

References

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M & Brennan, R (2009). Marketing an Introduction. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Ausinnovation.org, (2010). Australian Innovation: Rip Curl – Commercialisation of the first ever power heated wet suit. [online] Available at: http://www.ausinnovation.org/articles/rip-curl-a-commercialisation-of-the-first-ever-power-heated-wet-suit.html [Accessed 2 Feb. 2015].

Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (2012) Principles of Marketing 14th Edn. London: Pearson Education.

Mcdaniel, C.D, Lamb, C.W, & Hair J.F, (2011) Introduction to Marketing 11th Edn. Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning