3.1. Target Market
The target market chosen for Solo is distinguished through a combination of geographic, demographic, social class and behaviour characteristics. In relation to geographics, Australia and New Zealand presents a strong market for security equipment, as the customer section of the trends occurring in the micro-environment and reiterated in appendix a, illustrated that both Australia and New Zealand have the highest burglary rates within the developed nations. The size of this market represents over 27million individuals (World Bank, 2014), this market is substantial enough for effective marketing activities to be adopted to ensure profitability.
Within this geographical region, further segmentation in terms of social class is identified. The most vulnerable groups within Australia and New Zealand tend to be lower socio-economic households, thus Solo will be positioned within this segment as they are most likely to demand a method of preventing burglary (Prenzler and Townsley 1998). Demographically, these households represent single parent families; stereotypically the adult figure is presented as young urbanised uneducated individuals who reside in high crime areas (Trickett et al 1995). The typical behaviour and nature of the target market involves being frequently being away from home due to their need to work double shifts to support their family. Cromwell et al (1991) revealed that the majority of burglary occurs when dwellings are unoccupied.
Although, studies have revealed that lower social groups are more susceptible to burglary, breaking and entering occurs in socio-economic levels. Those within the upper classes of society tend to have higher wealth, and therefore more valuable assets, which creates a larger temptation to skilled burglars (de Frances and Titus 1993). Therefore, Solo is able to target across all sectors within the Australian and New Zealand region, although to maximise the resources of marketing activities, Solo should be primary aimed at lower – middle social economic groups.
3.2. Products
Archerfish primarily offers two product lines: the Archerfish Solo and the Archerfish Quattro 4, where a comparison of the two products is located in appendix b. essentially the product length line of Archerfish is short, therefore the products can be mass marketed towards consumers, where only a limited marketing mix or strategy is necessary to maintain profit maximisation. Archerfish Quattro 4, is regarded as an upward stretch, as additional features add value to the basic intelligent surveillance equipment. Quattro 4 is marketed at a more prestigious price, approximately $200 mark up from the basic Solo model (Amazon, 2014).
The addition of the Archerfish Quattro 4, is seen to increase profit as it is essentially targeted at a different market to the Solo model, and therefore is not regarded to reduce sales from the Solo model. Quattro 4 comprises of a professional-grade system with four mini cameras whereas Solo is a more generic compact video camera. Quattro 4 is able to reach the higher market that Solo is regarded as too basic for, such as businesses and larger residential property.
3.3. Pricing
Pricing is the fundamental aspect of marketing, as it determines the overall success or failure of a product, influencing both demand and profitability. As Solo is the first interactive video monitoring system in the surveillance market, it is able to charge a relatively higher price due to low competition and essentially “monopolistic power.” As with majority of new technology products, prices in the introductory phase of the product life cycle (refer to appendix c) is relatively high as companies aim to recoup their research and production cost, representing a product quality leadership strategy as the marketing objective.
As the micro and macro environmental research in section 1 indicates, Solo has relatively low market share when compared within the