City of Atlanta Essay Example for Free

City of Atlanta Essay Atlanta, the center of higher education in the South East United States with more than 15 colleges and universities, has a student population of over 77,117. Major universities include Emory University, University of Georgia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Kennesaw State University, and Oglethorpe University, which are all situated strategically in and around Atlanta. With an adult population of around 4,536,323, Atlanta is a key location that CoViTek should target. The average household income is between $50,000 $74,999 which compromises 21. 3% of the total population of the city. Students age 18-34 have an income that is between $30,000 $74,999 which compromises around 113,362 households. Atlantas congested areas include Clifton Rd. , College Park, UGA Campuses, and the Midtown area. Market Data Credit Card Usage: Over 3 million people in Atlanta own and use credit cards. 84% of the population has a Bank Card, 29% have gas/department store credit cards, and 18. 7% of the population has at least some kind of travel/entertainment credit cards. Only 200,255 of the population of the city do not carry credit cards. With 5. 8 million students enrolled in 4-year colleges around the United States, they have an aggregate spending power of more than $90 billion. $30 billion of the spending is from personal earning and parents. Almost two thirds of college students in Boston carry a credit card while spending an average of $1,213 per month, with up to 10% of expenditures on some form of entertainment, including video rentals. CoViTek will have to hire a market research firm to indicate (in each city): 1. Average spending dollar per household on video rentals a year 2. Total number of students who rent videos (how many per year) 3. Total students with the relevant purchasing power 4. Entrepreneurial activity in and around the city 5. An overall business climate, which includes: consideration of transportation, banking, professional services, economic base, and growth trends Travel / Entertainment 425,723 13. 2% Bank Cards 1,912,341 59. 6% Gas / Department Stores 669,319 20. 8% No Credit Cards 200,255 6. 4% Credit card usage/ year in the city of Atlanta. Areas of Volume We will also need to negotiate with all kind of locations that drive a lot of traffic such as stores, buildings, and large apartment complexes. We are interested in any strategic location that is frequented by a high volume of pedestrians. We would also have to negotiate with them the same terms of revenue sharing agreements as with the universities. Nevertheless, we see a very interesting opportunity in negotiating alliances with retail chains that occupy strategic locations such as Starbucks. We would offer such companies with profit sharing plans in CoViTek, and in return, we would get the right to implement a machine outside their stores. This type of agreement would enable us to gain several key locations, saving us time and money. Metro Stations The T in Boston is the most frequently used method of transportation, which accounts for more than 695,000 passengers a day. Other forms of transportation include buses and taxis. A large percentage of professionals use the T every day for commuting back and forth from work. Marketing CoViTeks advertising plan will be based around the individual cities we choose to place machines in. Our first city, Atlanta, was selected because the CEO and COO live and work there. Advertising on college campuses can be very inexpensive, and we will focus our efforts there. At least one machine will be on each of the following schools campuses: Georgia State University, UGA, and Emory University. Our advertising methods for all of our campus locations will be similar. We will target residence halls and popular campus locations with posters and fliers posted on campus bulletin boards, distributed in residence halls, and advertisements in the schools newspaper. Campus advertising should not cost more than $1,000 per school, most likely less, depending on the schools population. We will also hire a full-service advertising agency, but not until we expand to other cities. We want to see how much awareness we can achieve in Atlanta without an agency campaign. Once we expand to other cities, we will need an agency to create a consistent and strategic brand image for CoViTek. All of our advertising will stress our convenience and value, to deliver a clear brand image in the consumers mind. In addition to our marketing efforts, CoViTek will employ a variety of other marketing strategies: Viral Marketing CoViTek will aggressively target and distribute e-mails to potential consumers featuring promotional deals, newly released videos, as well as a direct link to CoViTeks web page. Public Relation CoViTek will use a top New Media public relations firms to promote the company and secure write-ups in prominent Internet/Technology and business magazines. Online Advertising CoViTek will place online banner advertisements on popular B2C web sites that our profile user would frequent. Feedback We will encourage our customer to give us feedback on what they would like to see in our machines through our and offer them incentives to do so such as free rental or coupons. While our selection will be smaller than our brick and mortar competitor, our market will be more targeted. Rather than having everything, we are striving to provide our market with the exact products that meet their needs. Thus this narrower selection can be seen as an advantage for us as it demands that our company remains focused on our customers and our competitors, to ensure that we are providing our customers with what they want to see. We will also encourage our customers to give us feedback on what they would like to see in our machines. This will be done through our website by offering incentives and free rental coupons. Distribution Michel Khoury and Sina Mouloud will be in charge of the maintenance of up to ten machines at one point in time. We will hire students as our operation expands onto more universities across the US. Suppliers Video Vending North American VVNA is the creator and market leader in the production of video rental machines. Its system is exclusive in its combination of both VHS and DVD formats. VVNA has been manufacturing video-dispensing machines since the early 90s. VVNA machines are the most innovative and modernized in the market. To maintain the maximum market value of their products, VVNA manufactures sturdy, reliable machines, made to last many years and capable of providing thousands of rentals without requiring machine alteration. VVNA machines have been designed using a unique, patented technology proven to provide the markets most reliable and safe equipment, while reducing the level of maintenance intervention to a minimum. A central computer is used to remotely manage all the dispensers via DSL networks. Personalization of the Video Dispensers VVNA, the manufacturer of the video vending machines is willing to customize the design of the machine for us. Therefore we need to develop a design for our machine that will efficiently promote our company. The design and the logo must attract attention while being contemporary and functional. We want the machine to catch the attention of pedestrians who walk by the machine in order to drive more traffic to it. Production Companies Ninety percent of our videotapes will come from one of the six major production companies (Buena Vista, Warner Bros. , Universal, Fox, Paramount, or Columbia-Tri-Star). The power of these suppliers is very high, as they hold the rights of the movies they produce. We will be working with Video Bicicling. They will give us a competitive price on Videos and DVD. Our experience has shown us that it is better to own a rentable video in order to use it for resale after complete amortization. This system will allow us to sell the movies that are not in high demand after using their complete value in rental time. CoViTek may consider the selling of consumer information gathered from their database technology to research companies primarily dealing with entertainment studies.