OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS FROM SITUATION ANALYSIS
Nissan’s NTT DoCoMo is a self-healing iPhone case that repairs scratches or scrapes on the phone’s
screen. The iPhone case is made out of the same scratch-healing paint that is already being used on
Nissan Infiniti cars. Users may no longer have to resort to purchasing bulkier cases for the sake of
protecting their phone. The product will be introduced into the rapidly growing smartphone accessory
industry.
Our situation analysis included vital in-depth research, uncovered insights into the smartphone accessory
industry, outlined key competitors, analyzed customer profiles, and provided a thorough SWOT analysis.
This information has been critical in informing how we have moved forward with our strategy:
KEY FINDINGS:
Industry Analysis:
• Both primary and secondary research proved the widespread popularity of the iPhone and identified
Apple as the industry leader in terms of market share for the smartphone.
• The mobile phone accessory industry is on the rise, and was valued at $36 billion in 2012. The most
popular accessory was phone cases, which grew 69 percent in one year.1
• NPD conducted a study on reasons that people bought phone cases and the most popular were protection
and durability (85%), quality materials (73%), and low bulkiness (66%). 2
Competitor Analysis:
• Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of key industry competitors, Zagg and OtterBox, provided
insight into what makes these brands successful and also the weaknesses that they have that may provide
a market opportunity for our product.
 Specifically, although OtterBox (perhaps our most established competitor) has successfully
defined its product as the “extreme” protection solution, both primary and secondary research proves that
OtterBox is perceived as bulky and this discourages some consumers from purchasing the product. This
provides an opportunity for our product, which has a sleek, almost “naked” feel while providing
comparable protection.
Customer Analysis
• The information obtained from our customer analysis has helped us to define our target profile. Primary
and secondary research revealed that we should be targeting our marketing efforts towards iPhone owners
with active lifestyles, such as college students.
• College students (aged 19-22) highly value protection for their phone, according to primary research.
• In terms of major influencers in college students’ buying decisions, advertisements (online, TV), as well
as social media are important and relevant mediums in reaching this target market.
SWOT Analysis
Major findings from the SWOT analysis included:
Strengths: A respected brand name, along with the product being licensed to a leader who specializes in
cutting edge technology, along with the proven paint technology, are all among the product’s strengths.
1
Johnson, Kristy. "Smartphone Accessories Market Growing, While Feature Phone Accessories Market Forecasted to Decline."
Velositor, 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://velositor.com/2012/03/14/smartphone-accessories-market-growing-whilefeature-phone-accessories-market-forecasted-to-decline/>.
2
Arnold, Ben. "The NPD Group: Mobile Phone Cases Lead 32 Percent Increase in Mobile Phone Accessories Sales." NPD.com.
NPD Group, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
<http://tinyurl.com/97ror5z >.
Weaknesses: Possible weaknesses for the product may include possible complaints, skepticism for Nissan
branching into the smart phone mobile accessory industry, as well as the lack of variety (range, color).
Opportunities: Opportunities for the product include the increased demand for smart phone accessories as
well as the recent news that the iPhone 5 scratches very easily.
Threats: Possible threats include the existing, well-established competition along with the increased
competition overall in the mobile accessory industry.
The information obtained from our situation analysis has shaped our strategy moving forward with our
new product launch. We have chosen to target Apple iPhone owners, specifically college students with
active lifestyles. Through our research, we have identified the best ways to communicate and engage with
this target market. We have also chosen to highlight the protective, high quality elements of our phone
along with its sleek design.
PERCEPTUAL MAP:
Please see appendix for perceptual map.
POSITIONING STATEMENT:
“For college students who hit the bars as hard as they hit the books, BEARcase is the premier innovator
of phone cases, providing unparalleled protection that feels “barely there,” because only BEARcase uses
state of the art technology to completely erase any trace of last night’s clumsy mistakes.”
In words of customer: My BEARcase is the case that I can always trust, no matter how much I abuse my
phone. I know it has me covered, through the good times and the bad, and I love that I can barely notice
that it’s there.
TARGET MARKET SEGMENT:
Millennials, specifically college students, are the target market segment for BEARcase.
Today’s college students are members of Generation Y, otherwise known as the Millennials, Trophy
Kids, MTV Generation, Digital Natives, and 8095ers.
Who are Millennials?
Millennials are those born between 1980 and 1995. Life defining moments for the generation include the
Global Recession, 9/11, Asian Tsunami, Arab Spring, Facebook and smart phones. Millennials are the
first generation that may be worse off economically than their parents, and they are considered the most
diverse and educated generation in history.3
Why do Millennials Matter?
Millennials are the largest generation alive today. 1.8 billion of the 7 billion people that make up the
world are Millennials. Additionally, Millennials are unique in that they are the first inherently digital
generation and do not know a world without the Internet or smartphones.4
Market Trend Data
3
Edelman Insights. “8095 REFRESHED: The evolving role of brands for the world’s largest and most impactful generation.”
Edelman Berland. Dec. 2012. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
< http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanInsights/8095-global-external-final#btnNext>.
4
Edelman Insights. “8095 REFRESHED: The evolving role of brands for the world’s largest and most impactful generation.”
Edelman Berland. Dec. 2012. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
< http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanInsights/8095-global-external-final#btnNext>.
For the first time in world history, more people live in cities or suburbs than rural locales. Therefore,
Millennial identities will be closely tied to the cities they live in, and marketers need to customize and
target engagement.
The economy is forcing Millennials to delay purchases and demand a new level of value from the brands
they buy. Therefore, marketers must demonstrate how their products or services enable life experiences
and deliver value.
Millennials & Brand Interaction
Brand preference is the number one personal identifier that Millennials are willing to share online. 51
percent of Millennials consult four or more sources of information when making brand purchase
decisions. Additionally, eight in ten Millennials surveyed take action on behalf of their trusted brands,
and seven in ten are brand loyal and keep purchasing brands they like. A whole new level of engagement,
authenticity and purpose is necessary for brands to matter to Millennials.
It is important for marketers to realize it is not their brand anymore. Their brand belongs to their
customers, and marketers need to be agile, collaborative and prepared for the worst and best. Marketers
should focus on how their brand enables life experiences when marketing to Millennials.
Millennials & Their Values
The global recession created a mix of traditional and non-traditional values for Millennials, sparking a
new type of consumer.
Millennials most important life goals include having a job with a purpose that matches personal passions,
owning a home and getting married and having a family.
What Influences Millennials?
Although Millennials are seen as putting friends above all else, they actually trust strangers with relevant
information and experiences the most when it comes to making purchase decisions. 84 percent of
Millennials said social opinions influence their purchase decisions, and 51 percent said they trust
“strangers” more than friends. 5 Typically, Millennials seek out blogs, sites, and applications to gather
information or reviews on whatever product or service they are interested in at the time.
The best way for marketers to connect with Millennials is to encourage consumers who use a brand’s
products or services to share their opinions – then distribute this content far and wide.6
PRODUCT
We will make a few minor, yet very important changes to our product in order to successfully engage our
target segment. While our product already has technologically advanced innovations and extreme
superiority to all other phone cases already offered on the market with its self-healing paint, our minor
changes will mainly focus on the color and design of the case. In order to appeal to a much broader
segment of our college demographic listed at 18-22 years of age and prevent them from going to our
competition, we will offer our product in a broad range of colors and designs. In order to compete with
OtterBox and Zagg, we will offer variations of the existing colors along with adding many traditional
colors that outnumber our competitor’s twelve (and fourteen respectively), simple choices.7 Since our
5
Nelson, Erin Mulligan. “Millennials Want to Party with Your Brand But on Their Own Terms.” Ad Age. 2 Aug. 2012. Web. 3
Dec. 2012. <http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/millennials-party-brand-terms/236444/>.
6
Nelson, Erin Mulligan. “Millennials Want to Party with Your Brand But on Their Own Terms.” Ad Age. 2 Aug. 2012. Web. 3
Dec. 2012.< http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/millennials-party-brand-terms/236444/>.
7
http://www.otterbox.com/iPhone-4/4S-Defender-Series-Case/apl2-iphone-4s-set,default,pd.html
product can only come in one main color to keep with the actual paint design, in order to offer variations
customers can design their own case or choose from other customer’s designs.
This will take nothing away from the integrity of the product, but instead simply offer more choices to a
generation that is used to having everything customized and personalized.8 While color is a very
important change, design is extremely important to offer our consumer the “personalized” touch that they
crave. We will go into more detail about the design changes in the “promotion” section of this report, as
we are giving customers the chance to personalize their font as an element of our promotional strategies at
NTT DoCoMo. We will also offer a “BEARcase for the Bears” where 15% of the proceeds earned from
this particular design will benefit our foundation, which helps endangered polar bears in Alaska.
In terms of re-naming our product, our product is currently only know as the NTT DoCoMo Self-Healing
iPhone case. We wanted a name that stood out from our key competitors, Otterbox and Zagg, while also
exemplifying the strength and incredible technology that our product has. In order to combine both of
these elements, the name that we have chosen is BEARcase. This captures the essence of our brand’s
personality- a strong, capable brand that also has a crazy side. We chose “BEAR” because it is a very
gender-neutral name, and does not cater to one particular sex. Much like our target market of college
students, our tagline is “Work Hard, Play Hard.” Our brand “works hard” to protect and heal your phone,
while also “playing” hard by adding fun colors and designs to enhance our product. This ties in directly
with our brand’s desired positioning as a tough, yet playful and “healing” brand that works to eliminate
its customer’s mistakes. Our packaging will be simple and white, much like the iPhone, but in the shape
of a bear. Recognition and repetition are important to our brand and our product, so repeating the theme
of a strong bear is a way to relay the strength of our technology without inundating our consumer with
facts.
PLACE
For our target market of college students the Bear iPhone case will be distributed throughout the Internet
and in select retail stores. Our strategy is to use selective distribution of our product in carrier stores
where smartphones are sold (like Verizon Wireless and AT&T stores) and also through our college kiosk
service. Phone carrier stores will be an effective place of distribution because half of the people who buy
smartphones also buy an accessory during the same purchase.9 This is a major opportunity to get our
product in front of our target market and other consumers. The kiosk service will help bring the product
right to college campuses for our target market to see. To gain the attention of millennials, and in
particular college students, it is important to engage them in different ways.10 The kiosk service will
provide the opportunity to try the product on college student’s phones and if they are satisfied, to
purchase the case. College students (Millennials) are influenced by their friends when it comes to new
products and recommend products that they like, our kiosk service will help start this process among
students. For e-commerce distribution we will use Amazon.com and our own website to sell the Bear
iPhone Case. Amazon is an important part of our strategy because it has become one of the leaders of
aftermarket phone accessory purchases. The college student market wants the opportunity to customize
and express themselves through the brand. To fulfill this desire the Bear website will provide multiple
customization options for the phone case. We will offer different color options and allow customers to
design their own case. The website will also be connected to Paypal for quick and easy payment options
in order to reach out to more people through another e-commerce strategy.
8
Hobart, Buddy. "Understanding Generation Y: What You Need to Know about Our Millennials." Princeton One. Princeton
One, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. <http://www.princetonone.com/news/PrincetonOne%20White%20Paper2.pdf>.
9
Arnold, Ben. "The NPD Group: Mobile Phone Cases Lead 32 Percent Increase in Mobile Phone Accessories Sales." NPD.com.
NPD Group, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
<http://tinyurl.com/97ror5z >.
10
Edelman Insights. "8095 Refreshed." Edelman Insights. Edelman Public Relations, 3 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanInsights/8095-global-external-final#btnNext>
PRICE
When considering the money, time and work that goes into making our product superior to others, we
have decided to price our BEARcase at $39.99. Our desired pricing strategy is skimming, as we are
entering the market at a relatively high price. As the technology becomes older, we will gradually lower
the price. With the innovative self-healing technology our case uses along with the strong protection it
provides, $39.99 is priced directly between our two main competitors, Zagg and Otterbox. At wholesale,
based on the materials and technology used our product costs $29.99 to produce. Our desired revenue is
$4 million with a desired profit of $1,067,052.97 in our first year. These numbers are based off of
Otterbox’s initial earnings when they entered the smartphone accessories market. With potential profits of
$1,067,052.97 our P= TR-TC would look something like this: $1,067,052.97= $4,267,052.97$3,200,000. This means that we would produce 106,703 cases at a price of $39.99 while they only cost
$29.99 to produce, generating profits of over $1 million.
PROMOTION
In order to engage our target segment in communication that effectively interests them and solidifies their
buy in, we are going to launch a promotional campaign that not only provides useful content for our
buyers, but also allows our customers to completely customize their product if they wish to deviate from
our traditional offerings. Our strategy will offer both traditional and non-traditional media by engaging
our consumers both online and offline. As far as our offline strategy, BEAR on Campus ambassadors and
on-campus-kiosks with our product will be crucial to appeal to our consumer in a non-traditional manner.
BEAR on Campus ambassadors will appear on college campuses in random locations, creating awareness
of our product and generating interest about the strengths of our cell phone cases and our brand’s
innovative technology. On-campus kiosks will allow college students to compare BEARcase to
competitors, and even try out our product without ordering it first.
Our online strategy revolves around our customers uploading and submitting their own designs to
personalize their own cases. Our company website will offer many designs previously designed by our
own designers or past customers that current customers can choose from, along with the ability to upload
their own design or pictures that they so choose, much like that of creating your own t-shirt. This greatly
sets us apart from our competitors, who do not offer these services and have no current plans to do so. We
feel as though this plan will give Generation Y a reason to purchase only our phone cases because we
offer the personalized touch they expect from companies.
On our website, we will also offer “featured” artist designs that are the most popular, and allow the artist
to earn money and the potential to be one of our phone case designers. This encourages people to upload
their own customized, unique designs, and an incentive to do so. Recognized designers are not only
rewarded, but also encouraged to keep submitting.
We want to make sure that we also provide useful content for our customers, as that is now becoming a
mainstream way to attract clients to buy products, without forcing them directly to our website and
pushing our product on them. Our useful content will include articles about featured artwork on the cellphone cases, a way to purchase that is the right cell phone for you, and other articles that keep up with
featured trends in the mobile phone industry.
All four strategies (BEAR on campus ambassadors, on-campus kiosks, upload your own design, and
useful content) cater to the media habits and influencers of our millennials segment, and fulfill the way
we wish to engage with our clients through traditional and nontraditional approaches.
MARKET-PRODUCT GOALS
The Market-Product goals for the BEARcase are awareness, trial, and purchase. Awareness of our
product will be measured through multiple digital analysis tools. To create the initial buzz on social media
we will be using our kiosks and BEAR’s on Campus campaign. We will generate 750,000 mentions of
our product in the first 6 months on Twitter and Facebook combined through these two strategies. The
campus kiosk service will also provide trial of our product. We allow students to try the case on their
phones if they like the case they can buy it. In the first 6 months of our kiosk service circulating
throughout colleges 35,000 students will have tried the case on their phones. Our last market-product goal
is purchase, which will be measured in our online markets, carrier store market, and kiosks. The majority
of profit will be generated in our online markets while the other markets will share the rest of the profit.
The online markets will generate 70,000 first time buyers generating $2,799,300 in revenue and $700,000
in profit. Our kiosks will generate 25,000 first time buyers generating $999,750 in revenue and $250,000
in profit. In carrier stores we will generate 11,703 first time buyers generating $468,002.97 in revenue and
$117,030 in profit.
EVALUATION
In order to benchmark our progress in our first year, through digital analysis tools we will be tracking
awareness through our BEAR on campus ambassador programs and the overall successes of our kiosk
trial programs. By tracking brand sentiment, we can look to make sure that our campaigns are not only
successful, but creating positive interest. In order to measure the success of our kiosks, we will keep track
of how many students try the case while they are at the kiosks and compile this from all of the colleges
that we are present in. We will also track our purchases and sales from all of our different places of
distribution (online sites and cell-phone carriers) to make sure that we have attained our revenue and
profit goals for the year, while at the same time building our brand and staying competitive with Otterbox
and Zagg. We will exploit positive deviations by preparing our producers to make more cases to account
for more orders. In response to negative deviations, we will rework our kiosk service (which may be
outdated and costly) and discontinue if necessary. If our costs are outweighing our profits, we will rework
our marketing strategy and reposition our brand in order to appeal to the millennials market better.