市场学case2strategicplanningandthemarketingprocess.doc

Company case 2 (strategic planning and the marketing process) TRAP-EASE AMERICA: The Big Cheese of Mousetraps One April morning, Martha House, president of Trap-Ease America, entered her office in Costa Mesa, California. She caused for a moment to contemplate the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote which she had framed and hung near her desk. If a man [can] …… make a better mousetrap than his neighbor …… the world will make a beaten path to his door. Perhaps, she mused, Emerson knew something that she didn’t. she had the better mousetrap – Trap-Ease --- but the world didn’t seem all that excited about it. Martha had just returned from the National Hardware Show in Chicago. Standing in the trade show display booth for long hours and answering the same questions hundreds of times had been tiring. Yet, this show had excited her. Each year, National Hardware Show officials held a contest to select the best new product introduced at the show. Of the more than 300 new products introduced at that year’s show, her mousetrap had won first place. Such notoriety was not new for the Trap-Ease mousetrap. People magazine had written about the mousetrap in an article, and numerous talk shows and trade publications had featured it. Despite all of this attention, however, the expected demand for the trap had not materialized. Martha hoped that this award might stimulate increased interest and sales. A group of investors who had obtained worldwide rights to market the innovative mousetrap had formed Trap-Ease America in January. In return for marketing rights, the group agreed to pay the inventor and patent holder, a retired rancher, a royalty fee for each trap sold. The group then hired Martha to serve as president and to develop and manage the Trap-Ease America organization. The Trap-Ease, a simple yet clever device, is manufactured by a plastic firm under contract with Trap-Ease America. It consists of a square, plastic tube measuring about 6 inches long and 1 1/2 inches square. The tube be