Team Market Project
Heather Fallon, George Cottrell, Alfonso Espinoza, Arisara Kiusasap, and Nathan Dick
MKT/571
April 23, 2014
David Cicerone
Team Market Project
Target Markets
Target Market Profiles
Parents Portal primary target market is for any smart phone using parent or guardian with school age children from kindergarten to High School. After age 18, a parent would continue to be able to access their student’s data with a FERPA release from the school ("Family Educational Rights And Privacy Act", 2013). Since the app is designed to translate information into different languages that would not be a barrier. Parents Portal’s secondary market is the school districts themselves that understand that more parent involvement means increased testing scores and individual results. The company is in a unique situation in that although the primary target market is parents, the school districts are the ones purchasing the product.
Key Buying Behaviors
The app is designed in mind for the busy parent. One survey indicates that 46% of parents feel they don’t spend enough time as they would like with their kids (Oxlade, 2010). In addition, as of the beginning of 2014, at least 58% of adults own and use a smartphone ("Pewresearch Internet Project", 2014). Thus, busy parents will able to help their children through the “push” notifications on the smartphone because they will always be notified of their children’s performance in school.
School districts have indicated they want to provide the technology necessary to produce successful classrooms and students. For example, school districts annually spend 30% to 40% of their budget on technology, curriculum, and other classroom support. Nationwide, this is $70 billion annually across all school districts (Levy, 2013). School districts have also recently indicated a willingness to invest more in mobile devices to benefit classrooms. For example, in late 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District implemented a $50 million plan to equip 30,000 of their students with an iPad (Leonard, 2013). Thus, this is an enormous opportunity for Parents Portal to earn a large portion of the market. School districts are ready to spend and invest in technology.
Decision Motivators
The biggest decision motivator for a school district to select a new technological platform is how much is available in the state budget. This can be restricted by political factors. However, as of early 2014 in California, Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed state budget would provide a budget increase of 11% (LBUSD, 2014). Another decision motivator for the school district is determining if Parents Portal will be an upgrade or an improvement over the technology they are currently using. This is also another term for Return of Investment or ROI (Kotler & Keller, Chapter 20, 2012). School districts will be pleased to see presentation of Parents Portal because it will potentially increase school attendance and grades through consistent parental exposure, resulting in additional district funds.
Product Place Promotion Price
Product
Parent’s portal will be our introductory product. We will have 100% of our resources concentrating on the launch and working with the school districts to integrate our system into their classrooms and educate the teachers on the use of our programs as well as the functions available to the parents of the children. We understand that the introduction of our product must go smoothly and a smooth launch can almost guarantee a success for our company. As we will be the first in the marketing of progress report generators for parents, we want to launch as soon as possible. Kotler and Keller tell us that “the market pioneer gains the greatest advantage” (2012).
Our growth stage may take a few years to occur, we may have a few additional consumers join each year but due to the nature of our consumer’s industry, we will likely have to wait for the a few years for the growth period. We