Marketing Technology and Innovation

  Order Description Class Discussion for Week 1 re Rob, James, and Sophie’s Marketing Scenario Rob, James, and Sophie are planning a new venture together and have some money, but are worried that they could run out of it soon. They all have day jobs at this stage and plan to invest in their venture out of their personal savings. Rob is an electronics engineer, James works in the research department of a major advertising firm, and Sophie is a client manager at an accounting firm. Even at the very beginning of their proposed venture they are finding that everything is taking longer than they first thought, and that some of the costs seem to be much higher than they had figured. It’s taken a few months to get to some concept drawings after quite some discussion amongst themselves as to what customers might want and iterations of a proposed brochure so they could go and talk to some business customers that they think could use their product. They were shocked by the cost of printing a few thousand 4-colour brochures. They still want to be first into their local market with their technology product concept and so they have approached some people about raising money to give them a better chance to get a business off the ground. This has also taken more time that they anticipated for the great technology and concept they think they can put together, and they are somewhat confused by the responses. One person they approached, a certain Bill Smith, who has invested in other new ventures, seemed interested but asked a lot of question about who would buy the product and how much would they pay. He seemed to be stuck on that issue. The team thinks it’s a bit early to be expected to know this as they have not made any sales. However they think they can sell the concept at a competitive price that will be attractive to customers and get quick sales. A couple of other people who have sales and marketing experience at well known companies thought their product concept was interesting but wanted to know who the team would partner with to sell the product to the business customers locally as well as in other much bigger markets. They talked about preparing everything for a launch date and advised the team to get their accountant to help draw up a 3 year business plan and budget. They felt such a plan could be the basis of raising some capital to kick off the venture. You meet and talk with Rob, an electronics engineer and one of the venture’s team members, at a business breakfast event. He comes across as passionate about his venture’s technology and just wants to get on with it. When he finds you are studying entrepreneurship, he asks for your opinion on their confusion, and any ideas on moving forward. He says he would really like to get some feedback from you to discuss with his business partners and the business mentor they meet with regularly. As your first post, respond to the above scenario with your initial thoughts expressed in short form e.g. brief point(s) about what you think their key issue as portrayed in the scenario is. Follow this by succinct comment(s) on what you think their 'next steps' should be. Note: Rob, James, and Sophie will not gain much from complex or long responses, and in particular do not need slabs of text from a book or other sources put to them... they need things more in bullet point format to be easily digestible and discussed between themselves and with their mentor. These instructions also apply to the posts you will make in subsequent weeks. Your first post will start a discussion thread that others may join. Once you have submitted your initial post, you can read other's threads and join into the ongoing discussion on those threads as well as your own thread.