02.COM: The Case of the Online Business—Part III

Continued from 02.com Part II

Sunglasses it is

After plugging in their findings into Amy's decision matrix that Trevor thought looked like it came from NASA, and after intense debate,  Amy, Joe, and Trevor decided to sell a certain type of sunglasses on their website.  They knew this was a very competitive market, but they all loved sunglasses, and they thought they could do something that current competitors were not doing and that the market wanted. 

Marketing Plan

All three had degrees in business management from BYU-Idaho, but Joe was the only one whose emphasis was marketing.  Oddly enough he wasn't the one who brought the idea of creating a marketing plan--Trevor did.  Trevor thought it was a necessary step, but Joe didn't think it applied to a company that selling on the web and driving traffic to their site with pay-per-click--well actually Joe just hadn't thought too much about it until Trevor mention it the day before their lunch meeting.  Since he knew Trevor wanted a marketing plan, he came to the lunch meeting with a basic marketing plan outline so they could decide whether they needed one or not.  Here is the outline the Joe pulled up on his laptop:

    http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/plan/

At first glance they all got a little depressed.  This looked like a lot of work and like it could take them another month to hammer out the details.  But after taking a deep breath and downing a few chicken quesadillas, they took heart and started discussing what parts of the outline they thought woud be necessary at this stage.  Trevor wanted the whole thing.  Amy thought they could get by with just a few things for now and fill the rest in as the business developed.  Joe still wasn't sure.   He wanted to move on and do very little marketing planning at this stage, but his educational experience made him worry about neglecting too much marketing planning now.  Some things didn't seem to apply like company strengths and weaknesses. Did they have a company?  Did it have any strengths or weaknesses.  How did market segmentation apply to their sunglasses business.  Did they have to worry about brand name or warranty?  They were going to have to price their products, but he wasn't sure about discounts.  Their website was the distribution channel--wasn't it?  Why worry about promotion?  They were going to use Google Adwords to drive traffic to their website exclusively--at least he thought they were.

Amy recommended they include the following

She thought the rest could wait or it was try touchy feely marketing mumbo jumbo.

Trevor still wanted a complete marketing plan with exception of some of the analysis of past company performance

Joe knew this was an important decision and that the other two would look to him because he was the "marketing guy."

What should they do?