Springfield Case Analysis

Executive Summary

Springfield Nor’easter is a new minor league baseball team that aims to be based at Springfield, MA, inorder to take advantage the city’s distance from any major league game venue, and a moderatehousehold income, thanks to recent boom in healthcare, financial sector and other small businesses.Besides being a development ground for youth players, the owner of the team wants the team to earnits revenue, and be able to run itself, other than some fixed expenses that are paid by its affiliate majorleague team.In order to make the decision on pricing therefore, a survey is attempted, but that could achieve aminimal response rate at best. Even though an optimal pricing plan can be arrived from the surveyresponses, the problem is due to very low response rate, the survey results carry little statisticalcredibility. Therefore what appears to be marginal break-even for the first season of play, could easilyturn into a sizeable loss, if it turns out that the percentage of people not participating in the surveyactually are not interested in a minor league game, for whatever reasons.Nor’easters marketing director, Larry Buckingham can therefore take further steps in increasing theawareness of the new team, run campaign to generate publicity among local residents, possiblyhighlighting the fun facts and family-oriented wholesome entertainment side of the minor leaguegames. He should also run similar survey, may be a bit shorter and easier for people to respond, andtake time to collect responses, from at least 50% of sample population.Once more credible responses are recorded, then Mr. Buckingham can go forward validating the pricepoint measurements as done in this analysis based on first survey data, and if the result shows net profitafter fixed and variable costs, can hold a big launch party and start selling season tickets from next fall.But Mr. Cortez is right, he need to work with the artist to finish the logo design, otherwise no publicitycampaign can...