Sterling Morrow, a fashion brand known for casual dresses, is launching a new product line: Carry Tu, a line of women’s fashion bags. The Carry Tu line will include a satchel, an overnight bag, a laptop bag, and a card-holder keychain. The Carry Tu line will compete with Grazzi, a popular brand of bags. The sale of women's bags has seen an uptick in recent years. Consumers are willing to spend discretionary money, if they see good value for the money.

As a junior marketing strategist, you must recommend to the marketing team the appropriate pricing strategies for each of Carry Tu's bags. The pricing strategies must allow you to make a profit while still competing successfully with Grazzi.

Required:

Determining the target market and selecting appropriate pricing strategies for each of the product items in Carry Tu's line of bags.

Answer with Explanation:

If the company desires Carry Tu product line to breakeven within first 8 months then my recommendation would be to target working class women. This is because working class women spend most of their earnings on fashion bags, clothing, shoes, satchel, makeup, overnight bags, cell phones, jewelry, etc. So if we are targeting a customer who has higher purchasing power then it is more likely that our quality product will breakeven very quickly. A working class women roughly owns 2-4 bags which means their is huge market for Carry Tu, especially in the case of working class women. Other items like overnight bags, satchel, card holder key-chains, laptop bags, etc will be adding value due to growing demand of quality products and shopping habits of working class women.

Satchel is usually used by both students and working class women, now again it will be one of the most value adding product among the Carry Tu product line.

Laptops bags are rarely used as the companies that sell their products has a laptop with bag in a package offering. So it will be less value adding item. Likewise card-holder key-chains are also rarely used by students and working class women.

Overall assessment shows that the best customer segment that the company must focus should be working class women.

Pricing Strategy for Carry Tu Line:

The pricing strategy of the company must be increasing sales oriented which would increase the demand of the product if the purchasing power of the customer is not much high. If the product is differentiated and quality oriented and also that the customer's purchasing power is high enough then the company must charge higher cost to reflect its brand and quality product.

The satchel is widely used by the students and working class women who work in small organizations, hence the company must follow penetration pricing strategy. This is the strategy that will help in covering the fixed cost by earning small contribution on each product. It will also increase the sales which means the total contribution will be enough to cover fixed cost of the organization. This pricing strategy is mostly followed to increase the market share and as in the case of Carry Tu, it is a new entrant in the market, hence pricing low would be helpful in developing customer relation and covering the fixed cost so that the company breakeven in first 8 months of operation.

Overnight bag and laptop bags are mostly used by the working class women who prefer differentiated and quality products. Which means that the product will be differentiated and quality product to compete with Grazzi. The company must follow Competitive pricing strategy so that the customer perceives similar value that Grazzi is offering in the market.

Card-holder key-chains are rarely purchased by working class hence it will also follow penetration pricing strategy to increase its sales and increase the total contribution earned on its sales.

The pricing strategy are based on the market condition of Carry Tu as it is a new entrant in the market and is based on Grazzi brand valued by customers.