Business 138

Marketing Plan – The E CAT

David Hicks

I. Introduction:

Sharpe Services works with the elderly, helping them to stay independent and in their
own homes. Our employees go to the clients home to assist in general housekeeping,
meal preparations, keeping doctor appointments, and general errands. We are local to the
King County area and pride ourselves on providing the best possible care for our
clientele. We are a relatively small company of 50 employees but have a strong clientele
base of recently retired consumers.

Because some of our 100+clients have expressed an interest in a compact,

inexpensive, and environment friendly vehicle to get around town in, we decided to
broaden our scope of services and invest in the development of an electric car. The
purpose of this marketing plan is to entice companies to invest in our electric car and help
make this dream a reality. We have been able to start production but are confident it
would be beneficial to have a brand name co-sponsor when it comes time to put them on
the market.

II. Product:

Our product is the Electric Car About Town (E CAT). It is a basic four door sedan
designed for the middle class or fixed income consumer to get around town in. Although
it will also have highway capabilities, we want to emphasis the ease of use to run simple
errands. With proper care the electric car can far out perform the combustion engine cars
in this aspect. Recharging will be easier for our clientele, they can plug-in at night when
rates are at their lowest and recharge while they are sleeping. Plus the move toward
environmentally friendly energy makes this an ideal product. It will be available in 5
standard colors, White, Black, Red, Yellow, and Blue but custom colors will be available
upon request. Our idea is to keep the vehicle as simple to produce as possible thus
making it more affordable to our target market.
 Some of the strengths of the E CAT are that it is less expensive to operate and
maintain than a combustion engine car. There are less moving parts so they won’t need to
be replaced as often. There are no emissions so they are environmentally friendly. They
can be recharged at home overnight, to fully charge the battery can take up to 8 hrs
(Carsdirect.com). Although all of these are important, the biggest selling factor among
ladies in the earliest version of electric cars, safety. There is no gas on board so no
catching fire or blowing up or whatever if you crash (Electric-cars-are-for-girls).

Even though there are several strengths to the E CAT, there are still weaknesses and
threats that must be addressed. Among the weaknesses is the fact that if the battery fails
there is no jumping the car to get it to start as with combustion engines. As to the threats,
the batteries are expensive to make and replace accounting for almost half of the cars
expense. At this time most of the batteries are imported adding to their cost. Although
technology is making progress in this area some experts believe it is still about a decade
away for the price in production to decrease (www.online.wsj.com). Another threat is the
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (www.hydrogencarsnow.com). The main reason for this
is that they have the benefits of both the combustion engine and the electric, although
with the recent rise in gas prices that edge is starting to shrink. Unfortunately our biggest
threat is larger companies with similar products. For example, there is the Nissan Leaf,
Chrysler TEVan, Ford Ranger EV pickup truck, GM EV1 and S10 EV pickup, Honda EV
Plushatchback, and Toyota RAV4EV (en.wikipedia.org). But we feel this is not what our
target market wants as these vehicles are either too large or too expensive.

III. Target Market:

We, here at Sharpe Services, plan to focus on a concentrated targeting strategy.A

concentrated targeting strategy is a strategy used to select one segment of a market for
targeting market efforts (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2011, p. 127). We believe this would
work best because our clientele have suggested they would be interested in this type of
vehicle. These factors we looked at are:

 Demographic: The demographic segment is young families, single parents, and

the elderly. These consumers tend to be on limited or fixed income levels, with or
without children, and would benefit by a low cost vehicle.

 Psychographics: The psychographic segment is consumers making a choice to

remove themselves from the dependency of oil and leaving a smaller carbon
footprint.

 Geographic: The geographic segment is consumers living in the suburbs of major

cities.

 Behavioral: The behavioral segment is those who do a lot of inner city driving
but minimal highway driving.
In conclusion, our target market would be young environmentally conscious parents
wanting a compact vehicle for running errands and elderly consumers who want to
get around independently.

IV. SWOT Analysis:

Strengths Weaknesses

Inexpensive to Operate & Maintain If the Battery Fails You’re Stuck

Environmentally Friendly Small Unknown Company
Recharge at Home
Safety – No Gas On Board

Opportunities Threats

Equip Cars With Solar Panels Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Link With Larger Company For Batteries Are Expensive to Produce
Production and Distribution Larger Companies
Work With Senior Living Facilities
About Vehicle Share Programs

The difference with the E CAT is the lower cost of $12,000 making it more
desirable to our target market. Another idea we have is to equip our cars with solar
panels on the roof to help with recharging costs and from completely running out of
electricity. We also have a plan to work with senior living facilities, such as
S.H.A.G., to develop a vehicle sharing program for their residents, making the
E CAT more desirable to seniors. Lastly, to be competitive, we are looking for larger
companies to invest in and back our product.

V. Marketing Objective:

Our marketing objective is to find a company to back our product and have our
first car on the market by the end of the year with an estimated sale of 10,000
vehicles.