Product & pricing (marketing management) Case Study

Product & pricing (marketing management) - Case Study Example TiVo managements, now spearheading a brand new sector of entertainment industry, did a lot on market development which involves marketing existing products, in this case services in new markets. In some degree product development was used but on a limited scale. Perhaps a lot of work on research and development made both market development and diversification attainable. Also in the area of diversification of TiVo services, there were a few brand names to take care of different sets of customers which new market strategy of Ansoff's growth model seeks to explain. More so, 0.04% penetration rate is abysmally low largely due to lack of awareness on the part of customers. A very good indicator, current quarterly subscribers of 14,000, needs to be sustained while means are to be devised through appropriate marketing channels to increase this number in the near future. Concerning product life cycle, one is of the belief that TiVo is still in its introduction stage - infancy probably heading to growth stage. A period of one year or thereabout cannot be safely considered to be in full growth or maturity or have dominating influence on the market. The net loss increasing progressively as shown on exhibit 3 tends to suggest that management must remodel and refocus its strategies in order to remain profitable. Frankly speaking, since the project is still in introduction stage, it will make economic sense if they could focus on TiVo's long-term prospects. Market Attractiveness As said earlier, TiVo has a cutting-edge technology that can impact greatly the entertainment industry if professional inputs are sought on most policy decisions. The market is really vast but the problems TiVo has include inability to relay what it can offer the public and tendency for the very marketers (including columnist) hired to promote the services end up confusing and dispelling customers. Also the model adopted by the co-founders and management are imperfect, this reflects in pricing policy, branding and marketing techniques. TiVo is highly innovative by featuring qualities like pause, fast-forward, rewind, play and record. Conventional TV can not boost of these qualities let alone recording in basic, medium, high and best modes. Important point about this innovative strength is that for TiVo to sell there is need to reach out to customers and let them understand TiVo's value proposition. New Product Development Process New product development process seems to be lacking or non-existent; diversification, an integral component of Ansoff's Growth Matrix requires that products or services be branded (segmented) to satisfy different customers. Differentiating TiVo's service from recording with different prices is one but inadequate service segmentation. Management should think of bundling different services into TiVo like gaming. A close study of customer's preferences for programmes can be another big clue. Brand Positioning Furthermore, TiVo branding has a huge price differential between the two main recording services defeating the whole essence of branding. Charging $499 for a black box for a 14-hour recording and $999 for the same black box and 30 hours of recording is disproportionately high. To make TiVo more attractive, more brands need to be created perhaps to keep competitors at bay even when partnering with