Trap-Ease America - the Big Cheese of Mousetraps

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Trap-Ease could also position the product as initiating fewer waists because it is re-useable or they could minimize its cost which makes it more affordable. By making it “the most affordable, innovative mouse trap” on the market their product would be more demandable. Another technique they could make a good customer service team that could deliver services to their customers that were facing problems to use the product. Having a good customer service team they could maintain good relationships with their customers.

4. Describe the current marketing mix for Trap-Ease. Do you see any problems with this mix?

-The marketing mix of a company consists of the four P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Presently Trap-Ease only has one product and that is mouse trap. They probably could create a couple different versions of their mouse trap in order to make more variation. The higher price of their mouse trap looks to be reliable with a strategy but they probably could offer a wide range of prices on the different models of their trap if they chose to different prices. Currently they are trying to distribute their product through stores like Kmart and Safeway. Internet would the best option to highlight and distribute their product. People on in the internet are often times into quality, ease of use, and innovativeness and don’t mind spending a little more money to get what they want. It is also a high profit market because it lessens transportation costs and there are no middle man costs. The promotion of the Trap-Ease mouse trap appears to be one of their largest problems. They should promote over the internet for certain on sites that they think their target market will be browsing those sites and they should also think about putting out ads on TV. At present high tech environment magazine ads aren’t enough for promotion of any product.

5. Who is Trap-Ease America’s competition?

-Trap-Ease America’s competition is like a competition that any company could make mouse traps. They face a market in which large volume of low quality low cost mouse traps are sold. These conventional mouse traps are causing danger to pets and animals as well as the mice they are supposed to kill. Traditional Methods (pesticides and spring loaded traps), cats and any company who creates mouse traps are the competitor.

6. How would you change Trap-Ease’s marketing strategy? What kinds of control procedures would you establish for this strategy?

-The first thing I would try to change Trap-Ease’s marketing strategy would be to increase the amount of people in their marketing team. Even though Martha was probably trying to limit costs without hiring anyone for her marketing team and I think it was her one important mistake. One of the most important things when launching any new product is the market it is compulsory task to communicate the benefits of the product with customer for increasing the demand. Her entry into the market was too small scale and chances are that with such an innovative product that the company will do better in the long run with a larger scale entry. She should have asked for a larger budget and hired more people for the marketing team. She should utilize them to do the Analysis of her target markets and perhaps expanded her scope of target markets while increasing the segmentation. This would allow her to better segmentation of product.

I would put in operating controls and strategic controls in order to monitor the marketing team’s progress and make sure that what they are doing is consistent with the company’s goals and strategy. These controls would very significant for accumulating the information that would form the strategies in the coming years. It would also perhaps help to do a market review at some point during the first year just to make sure that things are running smoothly and it shouldn’t cost that much to do one at such an initial stage in the company’s growth because of the smaller volume of papers to review.