Segway - Strategic Marketing

The Segway “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy” (Heilmann, 2001).   That is quite a bold statement to make, and the claim entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen made in Time magazine when discussing his invention.   From the media hype and the amount of venture capital investments the company received, one would think a perpetual-motion machine was going to be produced.   As the details of this new revolutionary invention were not initially released to the public, some actually believed in the release of such a futuristic (if not impossible) machine.   Kamen actually waited some time before letting the media in on his creation. The fact that information about the product was leaked to make a splash in the media was thought to be a marketing strategy on his part.   Let just enough information out to intrigue the public, but not enough for the competitors to know what you are doing – not an uncommon marketing strategy.
Nevertheless, Kamen thought he had found the “solution to urban congestion, air pollution, and dependency on fossil fuel” (Rivlin, 2003).   If this were to be true, then Kamen might have just as well have found the Holy Grail.   These three issues are some of the biggest that plague modern society, and they will just keep on growing exponentially as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries develop.   Unfortunately, Kamen’s vision was certainly premature but also too optimistic.   In this paper, we will briefly discuss the product he tried to develop as well as its strengths and weaknesses.   More importantly, we will present a detailed marketing plan for a proposed product launch within France, showing an implementation plan, a SWOT analysis (Appendix 1), a market analysis (Appendix 2), as well as a financial analysis for the targeted markets (Appendices 2-4).
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION AND PAST FAILURES

When someone is able to raise $90 million through venture capitalists (Kemper), they must have a business plan that is...