Segway New Product Planning

New product planning

THE SEGWAY PERSONAL TRANSPORTER (PT)

      Segway scooter was   a technologically advanced scooter that was launched in 2002 by a private company called Segway. According to Dean Kamen, the inventor of Segway, this scooter is to be an alternative to automobiles. Segway was a product that was created with the intention of revolutionizing the transportation industry but it failed to leave up to its expectations. The general public had higher expectations for this product due to the over hyping of this product a year before its release. There are a few reasons why the product launch of the Segway scooter failed in the marketplace. These reasons include 1) Poor pricing strategy 2) Lack of demand/no target market for it 3) overhyped the Segway before its release and 4) poor distribution strategy

      The price point of the scooter was too high for the average consumer in the market. When Segway was released, the price tag was $5000 per unit, which was too expensive for the average consumer to afford to make a purchase. The price was not appropriate when compared to other cheap alternatives such as walking, bicycling and riding buses. Consumers felt that the price of the Segway is higher than the perceived value. The high price for the Segway condemned it to a product failure in the market. A probable solution to obtain a fair pricing for Segway is to have conducted an in-depth market research, which involved prospective customers to determine the appropriate pricing for the Segway. Also, Segway could have iterated its development   processes with its prototypes until the desired cost for scooter is achieved.

     A second reason why the Segway failed to entice the market was the lack of demand for it and a wrong target market. Even though Segway was a revolutionary product, there was no market for it. The Segway tried to offer a solution to a problem that was non-existent to the consumer. The Segway could not find existing customer need to satisfy, hence, its failure. The marketing team hardly thought about who will buy their products or what will be their target market. They created a product for the whole market without taking a segmentation approach. A product created for the whole mass will be doomed from the beginning. After its release, the Segway failed to catch on and consumers had no real interest in the product. Thus, causing the Segway to fail in the market. A likely solution to this problem is for Segway to validate the idea of releasing a technologically advanced scooter into the market with prospective customers and also involves customers in the early development process of the product. This could have helped eliminate some obstacles that would be encountered on the way. This would have helped them know earlier on that the government and commercial companies would have been their primary target market.