Assignment 25A

Existing Market

I believe that the future for this business is expanding beyond the local area that it will begin and serving new customers, as well as the original ones.

Once I talked with my potential customers, I felt that I was right. One person in particular's response strengthened this idea; he told me about a friend in a neighboring county that he felt would appreciate the idea and would be glad to buy the feed, if it were available near them. He also told me about the people in the area that this friend of his knew, and therefore the domino effect could take place in terms of new customers in that particular area beginning to buy the feed, if the opportunity was given to them.

This would be an example of growing the existing market because it would be the exact same product in both areas. Essentially, the goal here would be to establish a name for the brand. By mastering one type of feed for the state's climate and then moving to a county or area that has essentially the same climate and same needs, the feed will appear to do well from the start for any of those who have not heard of it before and try it. Doing this will give a good reputation to the brand and help grow it further in the future, by exploiting other areas of growth.

New Market

The new market that I can see becoming available for this company would be different species of animals, with sheep and chickens being the particular species that come to mind for me.

I found out through my interviews that this is actually not as much of a need as that of the swine and cattle industries. It turns out that most sheep feeds are not very expensive, and most chickens do not eat enough feed to make it necessary for people to worry as much about the amount that they spend on each bag. However, that does not mean that the market would be impossible to enter. Like the other two areas, there are a very select few options that are available to those who raise show sheep and show chickens.

Taking advantage of this area of the market, simply trying to enter the product in as something new that the customers have never seen before and keeping the price of the product just below that of the competition's similar feeds would make the feed something that could possibly sell. In my opinion, that paired with the (hopefully) good reputation that the company will have built from its swine and cattle feeds in the same areas will make it something that people would at least be willing to try. Pairing that with changing the formula and attempting to perfect it early on based on customer feedback, and I feel that this is a new area of the market that the company would excel in, in the long run. However, especially in the short run, the existing market will be more successful.