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Trap Ease American

In:

Submitted By valentinaraga
Words 1579
Pages 7
Marketing

Company case
Trap ease American: The Big
Cheese of Mousetraps

Presented for:
Luis Fernando Correa

Presented by:
Andrés Felipe Doblado
Paula Andrea Buitrago
Luis Miguel Ramos
Valentina Ramirez

University of La Sabana

Febrary 07 of 2014
BACKGROUND
In 1987, a group of investors had formed Trap-Ease America in January after it had obtained worldwide rights to market the innovative mousetrap. 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 House to serve as president and to develop and manage the Trap-Ease America organization.
Martha had initially forecasted Trap-Ease’s first-year sales at five million units. Through April, however, the company had only sold several hundred thousand units. Martha wondered if most new products got off to such a slow start, or if she was doing something wrong. She had detected some problems, although none seemed overly serious. For one, there had not been enough repeat buying. For another, she had noted that many of the retailers upon whom she called kept their sample mousetraps on their desks as conversation pieces and she wanted the traps to be used and demonstrated. Martha wondered if consumers were also buying the traps as novelties rather than as solutions to their mouse problems. In these first few months, Martha had learned that marketing anew product was not an easy task. Some customers were very demanding. As Martha sat down at her desk, she realized she needed to rethink her marketing strategy. Perhaps she had missed something or made some mistake that was causing sales to be so slow.

UPDATING * You must know your business
Allow people to be quiet without the discomfort of seeing a rodent a product that provides safety and it is clean.

* Better define market

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