WHY RANDOM SAMPLING IS IDYLLIC FOR INTRODUCING NEW PRODUCTS
New startups in business abhor competition; a stiff one at that! It gives the entrepreneur goose pimples and since he is unsure of the next move to make when faced with daunting challenges about sales prospects for the new product. He is aware that those who were there before him have been able to identify and utilized the opportunities in the target market. Nevertheless, his product must be sold as retreating from the battle of competition is not an option.
Introducing a new product into the market is not as easy as it seems in certain situations. Many goods and quality products have undergone premature demise because the owners could not adequately publicize and bring the products to the threshold of the direct consumers. While bigger companies have the financial strength to finance publicity/advertisement, smaller businesses can hardly gather enough funds to finance production not to talk about exploring elaborate and expensive publicity.
In spite of this, there are options such businesses can activate to their advantage. One of such options is the manufacturing of goods and sending them to the consumers as samples. Consumers will use them, send a feedback of his impression in terms of the quality and benefits therefrom. This information will not only help the manufacturer to re-strategize and come out with an improved product, but also ensure that consumers acquire more of the items arising from the ready market that has been created.
For instance, Bennyman Ventures is a company owned by Chief Obinna Nwachukwu, a food technologist. When he manufactured his green soap using natural herbs, he didn’t go straight to the marketplace to sell them. He produced some quantity, gave them to some of his colleagues, family members, neighbors, and associates. Their enthusiasm about the product gave him the impetus and belief that a ready market has been created. He did not only have a ready market available, but also an enlarged word of mouth advertisement.
Nova Scotia Enterprises Limited is another company that fully exploited this method to retail its animal and poultry feeds products. When the company commenced business, the importers of poultry feeds were selling theirs at exorbitant rates. Moved by patriotic zeal, Alhaji Musa Hassan, the proprietor, shipped in his products which were sold at half the price of competitors, yet there was no patronage.
He assembled the farmers for a meeting, gave them the product provisionally on the basis that if the result does not meet their expectation, no payment should be made. However, because he was convinced of the quality of the product he was offering, the farmers were thrilled and a floodgate of product demand was opened after few months because of the assured quality and low price regime.
You may ask, “Why were these two companies successful?” It is because they made direct contact with consumers of their products which created unpredictable patronage through affordable advertisement.
You might assume the strategy was costly and risky. Yes because there is no business decision without an underlying cost and risk. The bigger the risk, the higher the reward. It must have cost the companies appreciable funds to manufacture the free goods, but it wouldn’t be as much as they would have expended in advertising the same product in the print or electronic media, which is the threshold of the giants in the industry. The good news is that they were able to identify their ready markets through the sampling strategy.
Distributing product samples to consumers has numerous advantages. First, it gives the first feel of the market. At this stage, not much of the product will be produced; improvements will be made and the initial loss of income to the company will be minimal. When free products are offered to consumers, their interest is aroused with an expectation of appreciable response. Free publicity will also be achieved through the dissemination of positive evidence of the product to other likely consumers. These will help to spur the craving of consumers to also have a feel of the product.
However, initial feedback from consumers after the experimental stage should be scrutinized to ensure their genuineness as some of them might hold back their emotional state about the product to prevent ill-feelings. The truth, however, will be easy to decipher when majority of consumers express positive outpouring of satisfaction of the product. Finally, special attention should be given to negative feedback from consumers to ensure its objectivity.
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