The opportunity came to my attention when I would frequently set my alarm before bed, and always worry or be concerned as to whether I would be waking up on time. Then, as I went through life I realize that other students or young people, or even adults, have the same problem that I do. When I was thinking of the bugs list in this class, it came to my attention that one of the things that bugs me the most is waking up on time. I realized that there was an opportunity there to make waking up easier for people. I looked at the existing options that we have to wake ourselves up on time. And they all seem to be the same ones. A simple alarm clock that you set a time before bed and expect it to make noise in the morning waking you up. However, many people have to hope that this device wakes them up on time, many people have a very deep sleep that they experience during the night, and sometimes the deep state of slumber occurs in the morning hours. When this happens the sound of the alarm is not strong enough to wake you up. Another flaw in the current device that we use is that sometimes, it doesn’t always work either the time is incorrect or the alarm doesn’t go off at all. Sometimes, this is just a malfunctioning error, and its something that can cost people many opportunities. A third flaw with the current system is the fact that there is a snooze option, this gives a person the ability to stop the alarm, and not wake up. Sometimes people hit snooze for hours. Throughout all this, I have seen an opportunity to make people ‘s lives better and creating a new way of waking people up. The demographic that this widely those in the younger generation possibly going to high school, college, or new to the workforce. These are the people that are not as experienced and waking up early in the morning, and also have less sleep at night due to their social or academic activities. This is my target market for this product, I think that these people would find the most useful in this product. Customers are currently satisfying as needed by using the current products that are on the market. I interviewed many people throughout this class and all of them told me that the current alarm systems that they are using sometimes don’t always wake them up properly. They’re not loyal to what these current products are now, from the sample size in the interview, they’re looking for another alternative to their current products. Based on the interviews and research that I have conducted I’ve determined that this opportunity is fairly large and the window of opportunity will be open until someone fills it with the product such as the one I created. The product that I have, uses vibrations along with sound to make the person rise up in the morning. This new alarm system would not have a snooze technique, or just be one dimensional. There would be vibrations and noises to wake the consumer. Because of all of this, I believe that the customers will switch to this product, or at least give it a try because as my not many of the interviewers told me they have nothing to lose at this point. The competitors are the companies who are manufacturers and create alarm clocks however they are largely the same, and that the alarm clocks only have different features on and do not include assisting the consumer personally. They may have outlets that are charging cords, but not another way to wake the person. The competitors in this market are all the other alarm clock makers who are working to find innovative way to wake people up, to find a way to wake people up that has not been exploited before, and so the competition in this market is vast, I believe that this product has the potential to compete hand-in-hand with these competitors. The role of packaging in price points does play into this product however the biggest thing in this particular product would be the uniqueness of it obviously I would need pricing to be an affordable cost somewhere around below $100 because I am targeting a group that is not necessarily wealthy it is a younger age group, therefore, they do not possess the financial stability of those in the higher age group the employees of this company would be a large amount due to the fact that this product would have to be constantly manufactured on a daily basis. I also believe that the public relations and the marketing aspect in a product like this would be critical to having it succeed. Because I am aware that people are looking for this kind of product but if they are unaware that it is out there, then there would be no success in the business if I cannot exploit the consumers that I know are there.
The feedback that I got from the what’s next exercise was very positive and supportive of this product. The comments that I received were generally positive, but told me to appease more to the market I am targeting and explain more about why the current products out there do not provide the need. So this is the information that I added this time around.
