Field Case - Entering Child Care Market

Expanding into the Child Care Market

Field modular office furniture, a product line of Stone Corporation, is looking for way to expand their sales as well as considering expanding into other markets. One market that Field is looking into is early childhood institutions, such as day-care centers, preschools, and kindergartens. It was estimated that there were over 150,000 ECIs in the United States, and Field wanted to explore and research if this was the next market to expand into. They wanted to see if this was a good opportunity to serve the child-care market. The frame work around this problem definition would be to conduct researches to determine if it is worth it to sell furniture in that market. There are two groups who have come up with different proposals that will conclude if Field will branch off or not.

Proposal one stated many points and was easy to understand. I believe that it was comprehensive for many reasons. One thing that proposal one mentioned, in a clear delivery, was the problem definition of Field, which stated, the idea of expanding into the day-care market. It also did a great job at stating their objectives, such as finding the price points, the structure of the market, and the purchase frequency. It listed alternative courses of action that they would take in order to obtain information needs for the research. Proposal one would conduct two focus groups and put the gathered information from the groups into a survey which would be given to 100 ECIs directors. I think the research method is well put, however, one downfall is the data seems it would not be enough to make an absolute conclusion. Lastly, the timeline of this research seemed that it could be done in a reasonable amount of time given that the participants are not very large. Even though proposal one was complete and met all the proposal guideline, I think that it still lacked data and depth.

Proposal two is not fully comprehensive because it did not mention...