TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Borono-198
New Product Marketing Strategy
Ayesha Akram 4/10/2012

CASE 3: BORONO-198 NEW PRODUCT MARKETING STRATEGY INTRODUCTION:

There is a limited growth of new product introduction in the organization Agro Limited which requires aggressive strategy to meet up the expected growth. The product provides remedies against harmful fungus in cash crops, oak trees, and fluid tanks.

BACKGROUND:
The CEO of Agro Limited, Kathy Lewis, was concerned about the marketing strategy of the company to introduce its product Borono-198. Kathy discussed the situation with the company COO Jon Shantz to review strategy and come up with some concrete action plan. Kathy obtained her PH.D in Bio medical organic Chemistry and joined reputed institute in South Texas as Assistant Professor in Chemistry department. She combined different samples of benzene boronic acid with chloro contents and came up with a product named Borono-198. Boronic-198 has a strong anti-fungal properties and is an effective against harmful fungus in cash crops, oak trees, and fluid tanks. Kathy patented its product and used the funding provided by the institute to prepare product in batches. The expected target of the first year was 2500 boxes and company was able to sell 50 boxes in its first three month of operations. Through due to limited resources Kathy came up with an idea to commercialize its product and generate cash flows for its future research resource requirements. Kathy consulted one of her old friend that deals in consultancy to help people to develop a strategy to make Borono-198 a commercially viable product.

MAIN PROBLEMS
Kathy used funding provided by the institute to setup her research laboratory. This includes buying instruments, glassware, chemicals, training lab technicians, and setting up research stations and lab protocols. Beside the expense of 40,000 $ Katy havent addressed the biggest expense 10,000 $ of purchasing the power shaker hydrogenator. Another issue the companys CEO is facing to increase the borono-198 sales to expected level of sales, which requires an immediate action plan to kick start the business operations.

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The idea of commercializing borono-198 requires a comprehensive management team, which in case of Agro limited lacks the business background and required knowledge to start the business venture. Jon Shantz is Katys old friend and provides consultancy in helping startup business to develop business plans and to procure venture capital funding. Katy asked Jon to be companys COO, and start working as soon as possible, which identifies that both Katy and Jon, lack the business operation knowledge and the experience of starting up a new business. The product itself lack traits provided by the retail stores in terms physical properties such as color, smell, solubility, concentration level and customizations as requested by the customers These issues contributed to the main problem faced by the Agro limited of acceptability of the borono-198 in the market and the limited sales.

ISSUES:
Effect and reach are the two different phenomenas that are used in Marketing to

assess the target market and to reach the market effectively; this was missing in the case of borono-198. There were no such unit which can take calls from the people who want to know about the product and its attributes. Company faced no. of issues as the sales force wasnt trained; secondly they spent substantial time in day trips to prospective buyers in their respective territories. The product information wasnt disseminated properly. The product comes in one SKU, and there was no differentiation. There was no such room for customization, as to change product composition as per the requirement of the customers.

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PROPOSED SOLUTION & ACTION PLAN

A detailed and thought out proposed solution and the action plan is mention below: STEP 1: The company has to come up with a different segment to cater all those markets that have been mention above, and this can only be done through providing different SKUs in the market. STEP 2: Another concrete step that Agro Limited has to take is the division in sales staff. There should be complete and dedicated staff whose responsibility would be to deal in the calls of the customers and to deal in the queries asked by the customers. STEP 3: Strong presence in the online media, as there would be potential buyers who require supporting information from other sources to complete the buying behavior. STEP 4: Customization is another factor which results in stagnant sales. Agro need to come up with a customization feature to attract the potential buyers. STEP 5: The product feature need to be improved as there are customers who rate the solubility property of borono-198, poor. So require adjustments need to be made. STEP 6: The cost is the most potential feature of borono-198. Due to its low cost and a competitive edge it can gain a huge chunk of market share on its cost effectiveness. So there is a need for concrete measures to be taken to gain lions share in the market. A well drafted price mechanism need to be made for:

Customers Wholesalers Retailers

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