Trap-Ease America: the Big Cheese of Mousetraps Essay Example
Trap-Ease America: The Big Cheese of Mousetraps
Synopsis
A group of investors has purchased from an inventor the U.S. rights to sell a patented, innovative mousetrap. The group has hired Martha House to manage the company that includes assuming responsibility for sales and marketing.
Trap-Ease America has targeted the trap to housewives, whom it believes will be attracted to the safety and cleanliness that its trap offers. The trap lures the mouse into a square tube in which it finds itself trapped alive. Thus, there is no danger in baiting and setting the trap, and there is no “mess” resulting from the trap’s operation.
Martha is marketing the trap directly to large retail store chains such as Safeway and Kmart. The traps are sold in packages of two and are priced at $2.49—about five to 10 times the price of the traditional, spring-loaded trap.
Martha has been promoting the mousetrap through trade shows and personal selling. As the case opens, she has just returned from a trade show at which the mousetrap received the award as Best New Product of the Year.
Despite the innovativeness of the mousetrap and its success at gaining public attention, sales are disappointingly slow. Martha finds herself wondering why the world is not beating a path to her door, as Ralph Waldo Emerson would have predicted.
Discussion Questions
1. Martha and the investors in Trap-Ease seem to face a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” What information do they need to evaluate this opportunity? What do you think the investor group would write as its “mission statement?”
The case paints a very typical picture of a group of businesspeople who believe they have an outstanding product that will be readily accepted by the market. There is little evidence in the case that the investors have done any real thinking about customer needs or have followed the marketing concept as it is introduced in the chapter. The investors believe they have a mousetrap, which will
Synopsis
A group of investors has purchased from an inventor the U.S. rights to sell a patented, innovative mousetrap. The group has hired Martha House to manage the company that includes assuming responsibility for sales and marketing.
Trap-Ease America has targeted the trap to housewives, whom it believes will be attracted to the safety and cleanliness that its trap offers. The trap lures the mouse into a square tube in which it finds itself trapped alive. Thus, there is no danger in baiting and setting the trap, and there is no “mess” resulting from the trap’s operation.
Martha is marketing the trap directly to large retail store chains such as Safeway and Kmart. The traps are sold in packages of two and are priced at $2.49—about five to 10 times the price of the traditional, spring-loaded trap.
Martha has been promoting the mousetrap through trade shows and personal selling. As the case opens, she has just returned from a trade show at which the mousetrap received the award as Best New Product of the Year.
Despite the innovativeness of the mousetrap and its success at gaining public attention, sales are disappointingly slow. Martha finds herself wondering why the world is not beating a path to her door, as Ralph Waldo Emerson would have predicted.
Discussion Questions
1. Martha and the investors in Trap-Ease seem to face a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” What information do they need to evaluate this opportunity? What do you think the investor group would write as its “mission statement?”
The case paints a very typical picture of a group of businesspeople who believe they have an outstanding product that will be readily accepted by the market. There is little evidence in the case that the investors have done any real thinking about customer needs or have followed the marketing concept as it is introduced in the chapter. The investors believe they have a mousetrap, which will