Summer Shoe Launch Project: A Comprehensive Market Analysis and Plan

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Project Plan For Creating and Launching A New Summer Shoe
Managing a Successful Business Project

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................2
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN (1)...........................................................................................3
A) PROJECT AIMS, OBJECTIVES, AND TIMEFRAME...................................................................3
B) PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN (2).......................................................................................5
SMALL SCALE RESEARCH.......................................................................................................... 9
C) CONDUCTING THE RESEARCH..............................................................................................9
D) ANALYSIS OF THE DATA..................................................................................................... 13
E) PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT.......................................................................................20
F) RECOMMENDATIONS.........................................................................................................22
G) PERFORMANCE REVIEW.................................................................................................... 23
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................... 25
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................... 26
APPENDIX............................................................................................................................... 27
1: LOG BOOK.......................................................................................................................... 27
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INTRODUCTION
Shoes were brought into existence as a matter of need by the humans since in those days
the primary mode of conveyance was walking on uneven terrain. Shoes provided the
comfort of walking long distances while protecting the wearer's feet. The shoes have come a
long way from such humble beginnings. Now not only are they a matter of comfort but also
a matter of style, luxury, and societal standards. The preconceived notion of the women
being the avid buyers of footwear and men inconsequential for the footwear market has
seen a drastic change. In the UK, the young men aged 16-24 were the biggest footwear
buyer with 95% of them buying footwear in 2017 while women seemed to be stuck at 86%.
However, the overall percentage of women is still greater than the overall percentage of
men buying footwear that’s at 78% (Mintel, 2018).
The majority of the men's footwear market is focused on the casual footwear indicating a
steadily growing market in casual footwear. The potential of future growth in the UK
footwear market presents an opportunity to shoe companies to gain customers and
profitability by making timely additions to their product range. The fashion company
“Unique” has decided to exploit this opportunity by creating and launching their latest
summer shoe “Alpha Sneakers” during the London Fashion Week to be held between 16th to
20th February. The focus of the Shoe launch will be on the industry representative as
potential buyers.
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PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN (1)
A) PROJECT AIMS, OBJECTIVES, AND TIMEFRAME
A business project will ensure the timely creation of the “Alpha Shoes” in the predefined
time limit of 10 weeks so that it can be marketed and launched during the London Fashion
Week scheduled between 16-20 February. The project will focus on testing the market so
that suitable marketing strategies are devised as well as the shoe is designed as per the
customer requirements. The first step of a project is the creation and establishment of
project aims and objectives (Zikmund et al., 2013).
PROJECT AIM (Zikmund et al., 2013)
To design and produce a “Sneaker” summer shoe that’s able to compete with established
brands like Nike and Adidas in the premium segment.
OBJECTIVES (Zikmund et al., 2013)
 To investigate the brand awareness of the “Unique” brand To conduct market analysis through research to determine the current market
scenario and customer needs. To facilitate the effective designing of summer shoe “Alpha Sneakers” To devise effective ways of launching the “Alpha Sneakers” in the London Fashion
Show (16-20 February) To ensure the creation and production of the “Alpha Sneakers” prior to the London
Fashion Week (16-20 February)
TIME FRAME (Milestone Schedule) (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015)
Milestone Time
Creating the Aims and Objectives Week 1
Completion of Data Assessment Week 1
Creation of Gantt chart and Work Breakdown
Structure.
Getting the board approval
Week 1
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Collection of the required data Week 3
Data Processing Week 4
Data Analysis and conclusion Week 5
Finalising the shoe design Week 5
Initiating the Shoe production Week 7
Coordinating with marketing to provide
customer-centric data
Week 8
Completing the packaging of the shoes Week 9
Finalising the launch event Week 10
Table 1: Project Timeframe (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015)
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B) PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN (2)
PROJECT SCOPE
Establishing a premium segment summer shoe brand “Alpha Sneakers” that can effectively
compete against established brands like Nike and Adidas through the determination of the
customer expectation from a high-end sneaker and ensuring that the product meets the
requirement of the target market. The project is focused on devising a suitable premium
sneaker and launching it at the London Fashion Week (Bell et al., 2018).
PROJECT COST AND TIME
The time required for the effective and successful launch of “Alpha Sneakers” is 10 weeks
that’s the duration of the project. The cost of the project involves utilisation of various
resources such as machinery and equipment, manpower, Management Resources, IT
infrastructure and resources etc. The total project cost will be £40000.
PROJECT QUALITY
The quality of the project is an important consideration in this instance since the project
outcome is the launch of new summer shoe and its quality, as well as the effectiveness and
success of its launch, will be dependent on the project quality. Hence, the highest level of
quality will be maintained during the project execution to ensure that end product quality,
as well as the launch event quality, is impeccable. This will include the focus on the collected
data quality through effective execution of tasks like data collection, data assessment, and
data analysis (Bell et al., 2018).
PLAN OF COMMUNICATION
Effective communication between the project stakeholders is a crucial part of the effective
execution of every project. This ensures the flow of communication from and to the project
leader to other members of the group. The necessary communication can be categorised as
per their utility, mode and frequency.
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Objective Of The
Communication
Addressed To Mode Communication
Frequency
Updating/Communicating
The Plan And Relevant
Changes
Project Team Emails As And When
Required
Project Status Senior Management Emails/Meeting. Every Third Day
Reports Participants Email/Meeting Daily
Observations, Findings Senior Management Letter Project Completions
Shoe Design Design Team Email/Report/Meeting Thrice During The
Project Life Cycle
Shoe Production Production Team Email And Meeting Thrice During The
Project
Table 2: Plan of Communication during the project life cycle (Bell et al., 2018)
RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk
Statement Probability
Impact
Score Response
Scope Quality Schedule Cost
Product launch
at a premium
level
associated risk
0.2 0.5 0.3 0.4 0.3 0.037 High Quality and
properly marketed
product
Monetary
Risks
0.1 0.3 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.055 Product quality
The risk
associated
with
advertising
and promotion
0.6 0.4 0.7 0.1 0.5 0.297 The Fashion Week
launch, as well as the
research, can help
mitigate the risk
Production
risk
0.6 0.8 0.1 0.4 0.3 0.200 Timely availability of
resources, shoe design
Table 3: Risk Management for the Project (Bell et al., 2018)
PROJECT RESOURCES
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The resources utilised during the execution this project will include the relevant human
resources, online data resources, the designing team, the production team, and the project
team.
WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE
Task number Task Description
Task 1 Planning The Project
Task 2 Devising Aims And Objectives
Task 3 Assessment Of The Data
Task 4 Developing Gantt Chart And WBS
Task 5 collecting data
Task 6 Application Of The Collected Data
Task 7 Documentation
Task 8 Assessing The Study
Task 9 Execution (Product Launch)
Table 4: The Work Breakdown Structure of the on-going Project (Collis and Hussey, 2013)
Figure 1: The Graphic representation of the Work Breakdown Structure (Collis and Hussey,
2013)
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The work breakdown structure allows and facilitates the breaking up of the project into
smaller and easier task thereby simplifying the complexity of the project. These smaller
activities together constitute the execution of the project and facilitate easy monitoring of
the project progress.
GANTT CHART
Time/Tasks Week 1 Week
2
Week
3
Week
4
Week
5
Week
6
Week
7
Week
8
Week
9
Week
10 -11
Planning The
Project
Devising Aims
And Objectives
Assessment Of
The Data
Developing
Gantt Chart
And WBS
Collecting Data
Application Of
The Collected
Data
Documentation
Assessing The
Study
Execution
Figure 2: Graphic Representation of the Gantt chart (Collis and Hussey, 2013)
Gantt chart is an effective and efficient project management tool. It allows task scheduling
and monitoring as well as an information tool for the project team.
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SMALL SCALE RESEARCH
C) CONDUCTING THE RESEARCH
The primary objective of the project is the launching of summer shoes “Alpha Sneaker”
during the London Fashion Show. The existing market structure indicates that the new shoe
brand will be experiencing stiff competition from existing established players like Adidas,
Nike, etc. There are a number of ways of conducting a research project such as qualitative,
quantitative, etc. The current project employs a research methodology that allows the use
of the combination of both Qualitative and quantitative research methods. The Qualitative
Method chosen is the Literature review that will involve reviewing the existing secondary
data for the purpose of said research. The chosen Quantitative research method is Survey
that will employ a questionnaire specially prepared for the current study to seek data
through the response of the participants (Zikmund et al., 2013).
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH – LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Sweeney (2014), the advent of globalisation has brought with itself a number
of opportunities for people with resources and ambition to be successful in the trade world.
Globalisation has been the cause of rapidly decreasing trade barriers as well as increasing
interdependency of the nations on each other. This has allowed the emergence of various
organisations and individuals that have exploited these opportunities to establish
themselves. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the globalisation was the Multinationals and
many contents that Multinational was the driving force behind the rapid expansion of
Globalisation across the Globe. The Multinational is described as the business organisations
that have business operations and monetary interests in more than one country (Sweeney,
2014).
Michie (2011) explains that the globalisation is a process that promotes world trade by
allowing nations to trade under favourable terms for goods that are scarce in their own
countries while selling good that is in abundance thereby promoting businesses that
produce more goods through strengthening, introduction of new technologies and access to
cheaper raw material and manpower. This leads to the nations becoming inter-dependent
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and linkages arising out of the integration of aspects like manpower, technology, raw
material, employment, etc. The advancement of globalisation leads to the availability of a
range of products leading to changes in customer preference and expectations. Also, the
access to cheaper manpower and raw material as well as production supporting monetary
environment allows the companies to work through economies of scales and produce goods
at a lower cost than earlier while promoting variety and standardisation of goods (Michie,
2011).
Mort (2019) explains that changes in the trade environment and customer behaviour,
preference and expectation led to many changes in the business world. One of such changes
is in the footwear industry. The celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Tamara Mellon, and
Mariah Carey established their own businesses exploiting the favourable opportunities
presented by Globalisation and their celebrity appeal (Mort, 2019). The one thing that’s
common in all these celebrities is their foray into the footwear business. According to Mintel
(2018), the earlier trend of women being the biggest buyers of footwear’s is about to be
broken and it’s in fact broken by Younger men of the UK between the age of 16 to 24 years
where percentage of them buying footwear in 2017 was 94% as compared to women’s
buying trend of 86%. This indicates a strong opportunity for men’s footwear sellers and
manufacturers since even after the stiff competition the growing market ensures the
survival and growth of many (Mintel, 2018).
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH – SURVEY
Quantitative research will be employing the survey methodology. The technique being used
is the questionnaire method. The survey will be conducted on a random sample of 25 men
chosen from the people going to a shopping mall. These participants will be allowed to
anonymously answer the questions included in the questionnaire after trying out the
samples of Alpha Sneakers. Due to the anonymity of the survey, the Ethical issues will be
dealt with. Also, first-hand observations about Alpha Sneakers can be collected (Collis and
Hussey, 2013).
SURVEY - QUESTIONNAIRE TEMPLATE
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The questionnaire that will be employed for the survey is as follows:
1) What kind of shoes do you prefer?
a) Loafers
b) Sneakers
c) Slip-on
d) Boots
2) How old are you?
a) Between 15 to 20 years
b) Between 20-25years
c) Between 25 to 35 years
d) Over 35 years
3) What do you see in a shoe while making a purchase?
a) Look
b) Brand
c) Comfort
d) Celebrity Endorsement
4) Are the Alpha Sneakers Comfortable?
a) Most comfortable
b) Yes
c) No
d) Could have been better
5) Do you like the appearance of Alpha Sneakers?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Could have been better.
6) Do you consider the Alpha Sneaker to be premium and luxurious?
a) Yes
b) Maybe
c) No
7) How do you compare the Alpha Sneaker with the sneakers from Nike and Adidas?
a) Better
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