The Product Marketing Research Plan

Adaptive Sports Global (ASG) Corporation*

This brand new ASG startup company has just hired you on as one of three new marketing product line managers reporting to the marketing director. Several years in the planning, the start-up is now becoming operational. The founders are engineers and managers who are sports enthusiasts that wanted better clothing and gear to pursue their sports passions. Besides hiring based on specific qualifications for the particular job, they only hire athletes and weekend sports enthusiasts who use various types of sporting gear and clothing in their personal lives and can therefore relate to the user.

They allow the first two weeks at the company for intensive training and using the gear to become thoroughly familiar with the product. Whatever feedback they get from users they funnel into the production and design to make improvements. All production is done within the United States (U.S.) The founders want to keep the company relatively small in staff but with a global market. The headquarters is located outside of Pittsburg PA. The headquarters building as well as their production facilities (which predominantly uses robots for actual production work) and large warehouse are Green Seal and
LEED certified*(Green Seal; BuidingGreen, 2019). The company is committed to planting the amount of trees each year to offset their carbon emissions generated from production. The majority of products are currently sold directly to customers through the
company website.

The mission of the company is: We make quality clothes and equipment that we sell to active people anywhere, that adapt to the terrain and climate in a sustainable manner.

The objectives, according to the executives of ASG, are:
? Create sustainable clothes that adapt to temperature variations and weather conditions in a sustainable manner.
? Design and produce sports equipment that will adapt to (1) differing terrains and climates as well as (2) adapt to different sports and (3) provide excellent performance.

The department has hired you as one of three new marketing product line managers (you can read the general product manager job duties).

Product line 1. Sports Equipment: Winter sports (skiing, snowboarding, winter climbing, skating, ice hockey, etc.) and shoes or boots that apply.
Product line 2. Sports Equipment: All other sports: Sailing (and parasailing), surfing, tennis, golf, rock climbing (and indoor gym/parcourse, etc.) and footwear that fit those sports.
Product line 3. Apparel: All sports clothing lines, starting with hats, helmets, vests, and jackets (male and female lines).

All equipment and apparel is either compostable, or can be recycled. All equipment comes with a free return label when the person has finished with the equipment so that it may be recycled.

For instance, wooden surf boards that are cracked from impact on rocks etc. can be sent back to ASG. The company then recycles the components to make new surfboards or repairs them and donates them to third world areas or poorer countries where sports equipment might be considered unattainable economically.

*Disclaimer: The organization and characters depicted in this exercise are fictional. Any resemblance to real organizations or individuals is purely coincidental. This exercise may include actual companies and brand names solely for instructional purposes; this exercise is not associated with any such actual company or brand name. All trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.

Reference
BuildingGreen, Inc. (2019). LEED. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/leed
Green Seal. (2019). Make healthier, greener choices with confidence. Retrieved from https://greenseal.org/

ASG Company Structure:

Description

Research is becoming much more critical to all aspects of business as competition gets more intense, and as consumers can choose between a wider array of products online. You will address just the first two steps of the market research planning process to better understand what is really involved in marketing research.

The following Course Outcome is assessed in this Assignment:

MT450-2: Develop a marketing research plan for a product.

Scenario: After your first couple of months as a product line manager with this new successful startup, ASG, you are called into the conference room. The marketing director announces that she has a product idea you need to research.

Make sure to complete the Learning Activity in order to be more successful in completing this Assignment.

View the introductory ASG simulation, view the simulation research tip and the ASG Customer Service Representative (CSR) database, and then address the checklist items.

Instructions: Below is your task checklist. Respond to all the items in a 2- to 3-page paper (minimum 600�800 words) with additional title and reference pages in APA format and citation style.

Checklist: (Steps 1 and 2 of marketing research planning)

• Define the problem and research objectives you want answered in line with the company s mission and objectives.
• Determine how to go about getting answers to those research questions in the most time- and cost-efficient way while getting viable and significant data (i.e., determine the means of obtaining the data).
• Explain what type of data you will you need, primary or secondary.
• Explain what type of research you will pursue. Will you use quantitative or qualitative data? Explain why.
• Describe the sampling plan:

A) Who will you survey?

B) Sample Size: Knowing that all the people you intend to survey may not respond or may respond with an incomplete survey, how many people will you survey?

C) Sampling procedure: How will you go about finding your sample population? What will be a statistically significant measure?

D) How will you contact the subjects? Will you email them, phone them, etc.?

• Determine how to ensure the data is significant enough to make a decision as to whether or not the product development engineers should proceed with product development.

Submit your 2- to 3-page paper (minimum 600�800 words) in APA format and citation style with additional title and reference pages to the Unit 3 Assignment Dropbox