Introduction
It is important to note that product assessments and subsequent marketing processes are heavily reliant on one’s ability to utilize a wide range of available tools to create an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of the prospects. The most critical and foundational concepts include the strategic planning process, SWOT, market segmenting, target marketing, product positioning, and offers. The newly created and proposed product is a salivary testosterone device designed for both athletes and hypogonadic men.
Definitions and Explanations
The strategic planning process is a critical framework under which organizations allocate their resources within specific conditions and circumstances to retain or improve their competitiveness. It is stated that “the strategic planning process includes conducting a situation analysis and developing the organization’s mission statement, objectives, value proposition, and strategies” (Tanner & Raymond, 2013, p. 25). The process is conducted in four major steps, which begin with a thorough analysis and evaluation of both external and internal factors impacting a particular business. External elements might include political and legal environments, competition, or the economy, whereas internal ones might involve an organization’s human resources, financial resources, or technological capabilities (Tanner & Raymond, 2013). After these evaluations are properly conducted, the mission is developed as the core foundation of the newly selected strategic direction. On the basis of the mission, objectives are outlined and sorted in accordance with their strategic importance and priority. The final step involves the value proposition and strategy formulation.
SWOT analysis is a form of situational analysis, which is a highly useful method for conducting a systematic and comprehensive assessment of a business. It is stated that SWOT is “an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the SWOT analysis is a tool that frames the situational analysis” (Tanner & Raymond, 2013, p. 26). In other words, S and W or strengths and weaknesses represent internal factors of a company, which highlight the presence or the lack of resources and capabilities. However, O and T or opportunities and threats are part of the external environmental elements, which could be useful or harmful to the organization. SWOT analysis is useful since it allows one to be able to connect an organization’s inner resources to external forces, where strengths can be used to both capitalize on newly emerging opportunities or minimize the risks associated with the core threats.
Whenever a business, organization, or individual offers a product or service to people, not all of them respond equivalently to it. In other words, the mass of consumers should not be treated as a homogenous one but rather a complex mix of diverse groups and individuals with specific interests and needs. Thus, market segmentation is “the process of breaking down all consumers into groups of potential buyers with similar characteristics” (Tanner & Raymond, 2013, p. 95). Therefore, market segmentation is a process in which the market is divided or segmented into several groups in accordance with specifically selected metrics and division factors. The latter might include age, culture, location, religion, ethnicity, race, disability status, marital status, parenthood, gender, and many other measures.
The effort of marketing can take two distinct forms, which are mass or undifferentiated marketing as well as targeted or differentiated marketing. In the former case, the product or service is offered to all equally without a specific focus to attract some segment. However, the targeted marketing wants to focus on a certain market segment with greater precision. A company can engage in multi-segment marketing if several segments are of prime interest. A more concentrated version can take the form of niche marketing, one-to-one marketing, and micro-targeting (Tanner & Raymond, 2013). Niches are a highly specific set of consumers, whereas micro-targeting uses several data sources.
Product positions are an assessment effort designed to understand how consumers view a particular product in relation to other competing ones. For example, a product A might rate higher on the positioning conceptual matrix as higher on luxuriousness, whereas its alternative product B can have better scores in affordability. Therefore, businesses must be aware of the positioning of their products, from where they need to either double down in the current position or aim to reposition. Offerings are “the entire bundle of a tangible good, intangible service, and price that composes what a company offers to customers” (Tanner & Raymond, 2013, p. 119). A product is a good that is also tangible, and it needs to be capable of being bought, owned, and sold. A price is a numeric representation of the value of an offering, which is exchanged to extract the value of a product (Tanner & Raymond, 2013). However, unlike products, services are perishable, variable, inseparable, and intangible (Tanner & Raymond, 2013). Thus, a service is a form of commodity, which contains a value, and, thus, can be priced and exchanged.
Product Assessment
The proposed product is a salivary testosterone measurement device called SpitTest. It will utilize a concentrated version of targeted marketing, such as niche marketing. The consumers interested in the product will involve both high-performance athletes and individuals with hypogonadism, where the vast majority will be comprised of men. Therefore, it is a niche product that would truly stand out in these niche groups compared to more invasive and standard blood-based testosterone assessment methods. SpitTest will be positioned as a cheaper and more convenient alternative to blood tests.
Analysis
The modern digital information world brought new opportunities, capabilities, and issues to the marketing measures. Marketing no longer takes place on physical signs or television ads because it has expanded to the internet through more precise and targeted ads. These are driven by sophisticated algorithms designed to collect data about each user and learn his or her consumer behavior. Security and privacy are interconnected because modern digital marketing involves collecting vast amounts of data (Srivastav & Gupta, 2021). These collections might contain personal or even sensitive information about users (Sachdev, 2020). Therefore, these data units need to be stored safely, which creates a security challenge due to cyber attackers and hackers, and subsequently, the users’ privacy is endangered.
It is important to note that there are certain ethical and moral boundaries, at which point digital marketing efforts might be perceived as evil and immoral. It is evidently unethical to use a person’s health information for marketing purposes, where a business exploits an individual’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Thus, with the presence of many ethical considerations and ‘grey’ zones, legal interventions are unavoidable. Although the legal systems tend to lag behind technological innovations, they are the most effective measures for preventing the abuse of digital marketing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, product assessments and relevant marketing processes are mostly reliant on a marketer’s ability to utilize a number of available tools to create an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of the key prospects. The most significant and foundational concepts include the strategic planning process, SWOT, market segmenting, target marketing, product positioning, and offers. The newly created and proposed product is SpitTest, a salivary testosterone device designed for both athletes and hypogonadic men.
References
Sachdev, R. (2020). Towards security and privacy for Edge AI in IoT/IoE based digital marketing environments. 2020 Fifth International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC), 341-346. Web.
Srivastav, P., & Gupta, H. (2021). Role and applications of digital marketing in digital era: A review. 2021 9th International Conference on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and Future Directions) (ICRITO), 1-8. Web.
Tanner, J. F., & Raymond, M. A. (2013). Principles of marketing, version 2.0. Flat World Knowledge, Inc.