25A - What's Next?

Existing Market

          1) The future of our business includes an initial product launch to attract consumers to our business. This initial product will be our guide to parents and grandparents dealing with teen pregnancy. Our business will also then offer support for this product as well as experts to help parents one-on-one with their situation. These meetings or sessions can occur over video call or in person. I think our success will come from being the best in a very specialized field.
          2) I interviewed 3 people that may be apart of my current existing market. When I spoke to each of these interviewees, I made sure that I did not spoil them with what I had in mind for the future of my company. This way, they were able to be creative and unique with their answers, and that they were. One interviewee mentioned how the business should evolve into a large organization that has a website with Q&A's, free information to help people, as well as paid offerings such as the things mentioned previously. Another mentioned how it sounds like this business could become a non-profit, in which it helps people and finds funding from outside sources. This is an interesting idea and it makes sense for what I am trying to offer to my customers. We could work with planned parenthood to be the support system for the families of the people utilizing planned parenthood's resources. The last interviewee thought that we could just continue to come out with more and more informational guides to sell to consumers about different information once credibility is earned.
          3) All in all, these interviews sparked a lot of ideas for the potential growth of this business. I see this business going in a direction in which the community would see us more as a socially responsible, helpful organization rather than a normal for-profit business. This includes offering free services as well. I think these free services may act as samples for our paid products and services as well as general help for problems. I don't think it's fair to limit the expectations of my company. Therefore, I will reach for the stars. I believe this company can eventually become a household name in the area of teen pregnancy and the relationships between children and their parents. This can be done through extensive product offerings and service offerings as well. These products will include more guides and brand merchandise, while the new service offerings may be therapeutic sessions with experts, general online advice, free online information, and possibly abortion or medical services.
             These new services will help expand our existing market. We need to establish a strong reputation and encourage the spread of our company through word of mouth. I think we can implement a loyalty and referral program as well to assist in these efforts. After all these new products and services are offered and our reputation is solid, I believe our existing market will gain significant size.

New Market

1) I think a new potential market can be in Africa, or other locations that suffer extreme poverty and population issues. I think that if we were able to expand our services into Africa, possibly in the form of a non-profit, we will be able to find a whole new market. Not only that, but I believe that putting in good work in these locations will bring back a strong reputation for our company.
2) As mentioned in the paragraph above, I think that in order to serve people that cannot pay for the services we would need outside funding. Our organization would operate as a non-profit in some aspects and as a profit-driven company for some. Our services would mainly be motivating change in these communities so that people may be less inclined to have children for the sake of having children and start considering that child's future.
3) After interviewing two people about extending my company's market, I found that it would be incredibly difficult to provide services to these people because of their way of life and religion. One interviewee mentioned how it's how the culture is in some parts of the world that drives early pregnancy and that it would be incredibly difficult to convince them to change their ways. I mentioned to the second interviewee what the first interviewee said and she had a different opinion about the situation. She believes that even though it is apart of some cultures if change is necessary then we should strive to be the change in the world that we seek. However, I am not trying to bankrupt my company providing probono services to people who don't want the help.
4) I learned that this idea of targeting poorer markets that might be too expensive and not viable. However, if my company did become a large organization with a lot of capital, then this opportunity may become more viable. So, for the sake of this post, let's pretend my company has the capital to help these people. Each new market would have it's own different challenges. That is one thing I did not seriously consider when thinking of this new market. Different cultures are more receptive than others for things like this and I think we would have to ween ourselves into this program and earn credibility before we extend into some of the markets that are less receptive to the program.
    The other aspect of this is that the people of these countries have different life goals. To put this into perspective, salmon are known to swim upriver for miles just to mate, spawn babies, and then die. This is their natural instinct; people in these countries may have different natural desires out of life including making new life as a high priority. So it would be hard to convince these people that the thing they are living for may not be the best thing to live for in order to get the most out of life. All in all, I am not sure how this would look considering to them it might seem like we are pushing some sort of religion onto them, even though that is not the case. Maybe instead of trying to change people, we can try just support them in the situations that they are already in.