Ping Remote Controller Locator 1

"Ping" Remote Controller Locator

By:

Finny Mathew

&

Divya Pillay

&

Lianna Riveira

Presented to Semiramis Amirpour for MKT 3300.013

University of Texas at Dallas

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Table of Contents

Title Page.....................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents ..........................................................................................................2
Introduction..................................................................................................................3
Marketing Objective.......................................................................................................3
Market Research ...........................................................................................................4
Product/Service Design ..................................................................................................5
Pricing Strategies ..........................................................................................................7
Channels of Distribution ................................................................................................9
Promotion Strategy .......................................................................................................9
Works Cited ...............................................................................................................11
Appendix/ Survey Questions..........................................................................................12
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Introduction:

Dont you just hate it when youve finally gotten comfortable on the couch ready to

watch the football game, but the remote that was in your hand a minute ago seems to be missing?

In this day and age people seem to be misplacing everything thats important to them, such as car

keys, cell phones, wallets, and especially, the television remote. Plus, with hectic lives and

schedules we really dont have time to look for all of these things. Now you have to start

searching for that pesky remote by removing sofa cushions, looking under coffee tables, and just

tearing the house apart. With the Ping Universal Remote you will now, with just the simple push

of a button, be able to hear where your remote control is located . It allows you to easily listen for

your lost remote, by playing a tone and vibrating to lead you straight to it. This new product will

reduce the amount of time spent searching for your remote and give you more time to do

something simple and for your benefit, like watch television.

Marketing Objective:

Ping remote locator is to aid in finding lost television remote controllers. This product is

something that will benefit consumers a great deal and reduce wasted time of searching for the

remote control. The target market for the Ping Universal Remote is teens/young adults, ages 12-

20, who, according to our survey, tend to watch the most television in the households. We

figured that because this age group typically watches television the most, they would be more

likely to lose their remote and be interested in our product. The built in wireless and Bluetooth

features that this device carries enables it to be placed anywhere in the users household. The

Ping comes with its own universal remote, enabling users to keep a simplistic one remote for all
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remote controlled devices. Having the stereo, DVD player, entertainment system, and of course

the television controlled with one remote helps keep life simple and free from confusing and

cluttering remote controllers. Also, the Ping device, with its universal remote helps keep that one

remote from being lost. Just attach the Ping device to any surface and press the button then its

wireless capabilities will make noise and vibrate to help locate the remote . The Ping is a

technological advancement in aiding in the ultimate enjoyable entertaining experience .

Marketing Research:

In order to collect our data, we conducted a survey of ten questions . While conducting

the survey, we thought about what questions we should ask and how we should ask them . The

questions dealt with consumer views on television remotes and their opinions on pricing, such as

how much a consumer would pay for a product like the Ping Universal Remote. We sent out the

survey to ten individuals from teens to adults . From the survey we were able to gather

information and get an idea of how to price our product.

When the results of the survey came in, we were able to analyze the data to help us come

up with the details of our product. The majority of the survey takers were in the age range of 18-

30 years old. From the survey we found that most of the survey takers also have three or more

TVs in their house, so from that we were able to see that most people still watch television, or

own TVs at the least. We continued our survey by asking how often they watch television or

which age group watches television most often. By looking at the results, we used this to find

our target market. From the survey, it was clear to see that our target market would be
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teens/young adults. The responses showed that everyone thought a remote control locater would

be useful and all preferred a simpler and traditional remote, which helped us with the design of

the Ping Remote control.

In order to figure out what the cost of our product should be, we asked in our survey what

price range potential consumers would be willing to pay for a universal remote locator. We had

the highest number of answers in the $20-30 range and we did our best to tailor the pricing to the

consumers needs while also being able to keep our profit margins high.

Product/ Service Design:

The Ping universal remote will be 9 inches in length with a width of 3 inches and a depth

of inches, the button will be an inch in diameter. The remote will have ordinary features:

volume changing, channel changing, power on/off and other features you would expect, with the

added benefit of being universal. This is only a couple of inches larger than some similar remotes

on the market today. The button will come with a sticking capable back for residing onto a

stationary object. The button will be an ordinary push button that can be set up via Bluetooth or

wireless. The choice will be the consumers.

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Superior Value:

The remote will come already programmed with a locating platform that will be activated

by pushing the button that has previously been set at its stationary location. The key section of

our remote is the locating feature, it separates our product from the larger universal remote

companies. There has yet to be anything exactly like this product on the market so that will give

us a head start with consumers. The remotes that are similar to ours may offer a bulky charging

station that may or may not come with a locating application on the remotes and is not ideal or

compact. Our button is relatively small and can be located anywhere you chose to set it. The

remote also has easy learning capabilities and is more in the category of continuous innovation

with a low degree of new consumer learning needed. The button will have wireless capabilities

using the Wi-Fi in your home or you can use the Bluetooth. Either of these choices are easily set

up through the remote. Once the button is set to the Wi-Fi or through Bluetooth it will be ready

for locating uses. The next step to follow would be to set the remote to the television which is
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easily done according to the given instructions. This is a normal key feature with new remotes

and takes no time at all.

Pricing Strategies:

The best strategy for our product would be penetration pricing. Offering a lower price for

our product would allow our more price sensitive customers a better opportunity to try our

product when first coming out. It would be a new company name and offering a lower price than

that of our competitors for a comparable product would benefit us . We would like that our lower

price would discourage any other competitors to enter into the market that we have opened . As

another favoring condition of this strategy the unit production and marketing costs would drop

because of the inevitable increase in production correlating with the increased demand for our

product. With the decrease of these costs or markup percentage would increase yielding us a

larger profit that could be invested back into the company to grow our research development .

Cost of Goods/ Selling Price:

Element of Price Dollar Value

Selling Price $37.99

Cost of Goods Sold $15.36

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Markup/ Gross Margin $22.63

The Ping Universal remote would cost approximately $14.36 to produce since the raw

materials are fairly inexpensive also that includes the button that is included in the stated cost .

The selling price would be $37.99 per unit for a 60% markup. This price is an estimation based

on prices of other remotes that are similar to ours .

Breakeven Analysis:

We estimated our fixed cost by the cost of employees, we have 25 employees part time,

that work 20 hours per week for about 50 weeks out of the year at $12.50 an hour. So for profits

to be zero we would have to sell 13809 units of our product. We hope to sell 300,000 units of our

product in the first year of sales. Selling 300,000 units would give us a profit of $6,476,500.

Channels of Distribution:

In regards to our different channels of distribution for the Ping Universal remote, we

believe that our best approach would be to first try to get stores with a lesser variety of selection

of remotes such as Walmart, Sears, or Target to sell our product. This would be in an effort to

introduce our product to consumers prior to selling in more competitive electronic stores such as

Best Buy or Frys Electronics. After our product has been introduced to the market we would

like begin to infiltrate the electronic stores market more proficiently. By doing this, we can sell

to Walmart and Sears and then prove those sales to Best Buy that way they will want to sell our
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product. Of course we still like to keep our distribution to the other stores as well as the

electronic stores. Also we would like to be available online as a convenience to our customers,

ideally we would like to be in contract with Amazon or have our own website to sell through.

Promotion Strategy:

From our survey, we can see that teens or young adults watch TV the most, which means

that our product would be geared toward that age group. Since this is the case, we will use the

internet, television ads, and public relations strategies to promote the Ping Universal Remote .

Most young adults/ teens use the internet for Facebook, Twitter, You-tube, etc., which is why it

would be easy to advertise our product this way, as well as with the television ads . We can also

use public relations to promote our product.

Because Facebook and Twitter have so many consumers, it is most likely the best way to

advertise something. There are millions of people that are constantly logging on to these sites

which means that millions of people will also see the ads . To get started with the social media

ads we will send out some test ads to small groups in order to see which ads get noticed the

most. We will then send those ads to bigger groups. Each social media site will advertise in a

different way so by researching each site, we will be able to effectively promote our product

through them. There are a lot of benefits to social media advertising which include interaction,

reach and followers. Interaction means that users can see your advertisements on the homepage

of the social media site. Reach means that these users are able to comment, like or share these

ads for even more potential customers to see and be interested in . Finally, followers are
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increasing for different brands because of social media advertisements . Using this type of

promotion strategy helps us get our product out to the majority of potential customers .

Television ads would also be effective, but more expensive. For one 30 second ad, the price

would range from about $200 to $1,500.

We will also use the public relations strategy to promote the Ping Universal Remote,

using a few different steps. We will write a press release or an announcement that describes our

product and issue it to the media. We will have to offer interviews with the media so they can

have the opportunity to gain more knowledge about the product. We will also provide product

images and descriptions of the product in the press release. This is how we will get reporters to

publish our product material.

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Works Cited

"A Beginner's Guide to Social Media Advertising." Hootsuite Social Media Management. N.p.,

26 Nov. 2014. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

"How to Use a Public Relations Tactic to Promote Products or Services ."Small Business. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

"The Social Media Advertising Guide for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn."Buffer Social. N.p.,

30 Sept. 2014. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

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Appendix:
Survey Questions

1. How often do you lose your television remote?

2. From 1 to 5 how often do you watch T.V?

3. Name a popular TV brand?

4. Who watches T.V?

a. Kids
b. Teens
c. Adults
d. Elderly

5. How many televisions do you have in your home?

6. What is your age?

a. 18-30
b. 31-40
c. 41-50
d. 51-60
e. 60+

7. How likely are you to buy a remote in the range of $30-$45?

a. Not likely
b. Somewhat likely
c. Likely
d. Very likely

8. Do you own a universal remote?

a. No
b. Yes
c. Prefer not to say

9. Do you think a TV remote locater would be useful?

a. No
b. Yes
c. Dont care

10. Would you prefer a traditional simple remote control or a more modern high tech remote
control?