Essay on Test Marketing

Testing marketing before rolling out the product to the consumers is essential. This permits the business to find out the characteristics required of the product, establish the customer targets, and investigate the possibility of sales, as well as profits. On the whole, test marketing is often done to identify the chances of success of the brand in the market. So, it may come in the form of letting a segment of potential customers to test the products without pay. In this scenario, testing includes more than two urban areas with high traveling demands to work daily. Therefore, this paper seeks to describe the information that should be gathered from the market and how this data can be used to make a national launch successful. Also, merits and demerits are discussed to investigate whether test marketing can be feasible. Test marketing is a reliable technique for sales prediction as it allows the company to gauge whether to launch the newly created product on a large scale or not.

There is a lot of information that should be gathered during test marketing. Noteworthy, collecting much information about the marketing mix elements is often given top priority. First, finding the data about bicycle use in the chosen urban areas would be useful. The information collected in this scenario entails the need for bikes and target adults. It is important to determine whether the new brand of bikes will be beneficial to the customers. Second, finding information about the price is important. So, the data about the customer’s potentials to purchase such products would mean that it is feasible (Tager, 2015). Otherwise, it would not be logical to produce expensive bikes and sell them cheaply. Third, investigating possible distribution channels is important. It may include retailers or wholesalers. On the whole, having known the price, products targets, the perceptions of users about the brand, and channels of delivery, it would be easy to make a national launch because by then it shall have been predetermined as to whether there will be sales, and that profits are realistic regarding the manufacturing versus selling cost. This analogy is based on the fact that all businesses are set up in order to gain profit.

Test marketing, undoubtedly, has numerous merits, most of which outweigh demerits. Noting that the data that is used in the planning is often retrieved from actual target customers, and this strategy makes it easier to be sure whether to launch the product or not (Cooper et al., 2017). Second, risks of full-scale launching are minimized in that if a failure occurs during the testing process, money that would have been used during the actual launch is saved. Also, other improvement features can be included in the full production to improve the customer’s experience. Last, the company will be aware of the competitive awareness in the market. This aspect takes the form of price, target market, and features of the bicycle.

However, demerits are often involved in test marketing. The main competitor may learn about the new strategies about the brand, and then create a response just before the full launch. So, this may put the company in jeopardy. The inappropriate decision may be made as a conclusion from the chosen area of testing, which may backfire considering the national needs – a case involving desires deviating from the conclusions made during testing. Last, if the full launch is delayed during testing, rapid changes may occur, to mean, one competitor may establish a replica with an improved design, which would then render the original item impractical.

Conclusively, test marketing is crucial before a new brand is unleashed in marketing. It helps in finding out the target market, price, sales, and distributional channels. Merits of conducting test marketing include minimizing costs risks, enhancing competition awareness, and improving the brand’s design. However, competitors may take advantage of the company by using the results to counteract the company’s plans.

References

Cooper, T., Oxborrow, L., Claxton, S., Goworek, H., Hill, H., & McLaren, A. (2017). New product development and testing strategies for clothing longevity.

Tager, J. (2015). Pre-market testing of nanomaterials in food is both practical and necessary. Nature Nanotechnology, 10(4), 285.