Part 1:
Overall, as a team, we felt that we had a very successful product. At the beginning we were struggling, as we had little marketing knowledge. However, as we learned more throughout the class, we applied this knowledge and became a success. We had a gradual increase of profit margins throughout the entire game. We also had a gradual increase of units sold. Our m arket share was constant due to our high advertising campaigns and this helped us stay above the competition throughout the entire game. We feel we were able to have consistency within our product and this helped us be successful.

This target market was chosen because we felt that they would appreciate the quality and durability of the product and therefore would be willing to pay the price we had set. Also, we felt that this target market has more disposable income and therefore would be more able to spend the money on a higher priced good.

We were attracted to this market as we felt they would invest in our high quality product whereas the other markets available such as children or college students do not have the money to spend. Also, we felt this market would see the value in our product because it will last a long time therefore the consumers are able to get a lot of use out it.

Due to our target markets lifestyle, we acknowledged their specific needs and wants such as an eco friendly, comfortable and practical product. As well, we changed the color due to the customers feedback. Initially we put many features such as GPS, iPod dock and solar panel as we felt these were important to our target market. Due to the high cost of production, we had to remove them and we realized after removing them that it had little effect on our total sales. Our first major turn decision was when we had to lose many of our features due to the high cost of production. We felt at the beginning that these were important features to have, however we did not properly predict the profit margins per bag. Later on, we realized our product would still sell without these features and that it was a good decision to carry on without them. Another big decision we made and chose to keep constant throughout was the promotions on our product. We felt this got us the customer recognition we needed in the marketplace to have a successful product. Lastly, a big decision made was the choice of retailers who would carry our product. We leaned more towards boutiques, higher end sporting goods and outdoor enthusiasts stores. We tried to stay away from discount retailers so as not to tarnish our name and devalue our product.

Our strategy from the beginning was to have a high quality product with lots of features and all for a great value. We also thought it would be best to market to customers that have some disposable income to spend on our product. Throughout, we did not change our strategy other than to remove some features that we found were not being used based on our customers feedback.

We believed that pricing our product higher would be acceptable based on our high quality and many features. As well, we needed to sell the backpack at a higher price due to the high production costs, otherwise there would be no profit for us. Lastly, we felt that if our product was priced too low, it would devalue our name.

We tried to sell our product at stores that our target would already be shopping at for other items in order to get our name out there. Also, we chose not to sell our product in discount retailers because we did not want to devalue our product.

In regards to promoting our product, we felt this was the best way to gain customer recognition, therefore the best way to sell our product. We did this through trade shows and wholesale representatives in every major city in Canada as well as one in the US. As well, we chose to run product launch events such as contests on social media because they are free and easy. As newspaper is not a very useful means