Week 3, Discussion Question 1

We are planning to provide clothes renting service through an online platform from where people can
order branded, cultural, as well as formal clothes at affordable rent for limited days. Some people have
so many clothes to wear no more than once or twice a year. Therefore, RentO will also provide
opportunity for those individuals want to make money by lending their rarely used clothes. However,
fashion and garment stores will be the key retailers on our platform.

Target Market for RentO:

Most of us prefer to wear a variety of clothes for each event or special occasion to look unique and
different. However, most students and the middle class people have inadequate budgets to afford new
clothing on regular basis. Of course, some clothing stores are offering rental services, but they are much
expensive and we have to physically visit their stores to rent and return the clothes. So, our target
market will be teenagers, students, and middle-class people who do not have enough budgets to afford
branded and formal clothes on each occasion. Similarly, we will also be targeting the fashion stores,
designers, and individuals who want to make money by giving their clothes on rent.

Market Segmentation:

Market segmentation is the process of categorizing potential customers' markets into homogeneous
segments or groups on the basis of their attributes. The segments or groups consist of customers who
will react correspondingly to marketing strategies and share common characteristics such as needs,
interest, or location (Sinivashan, 2007). The foundation of any marketing strategy is a deep
understanding of true needs and value of customers, and then delivering compelling messages that
show how our product or service can deliver value by addressing their needs. To understand our
potential customers, we must recognize their values. It will enable our venture to customize and guide
our products or services in order to meet customer needs. We will segment our potential customers on
the basis of end users (demography) and clothing styles. Based on demography, the target customers
will be segmented into men, women, and children. Based on clothing styles, the customers will be
segmented on the basis of ethnicity (Newar, magar, tharu, etc), westerners (formal and branded fashion
wears), and casual wears. By dividing our potential market into multiple market segments, instead of
targeting each potential customer separately, we can use our money, time and other resources
efficiently.

Marketing Approach:

As our business model is naive in the context Nepal, it will be a challenging tasks to aware our potential
customers about our services. We need to properly address their doubts and misconceptions regarding
rental procedure, return issues, specifications issues, delivery issues, cleanliness, and authenticity. We
will constantly focus on adding value to our customers, instead of lowering the price of the services. So,
during our initial phase, we are planning to expand media relations with media influencers, vloggers,
celebrities, sportsmen, etc. We will be focusing on maintaining good communication with all the
stakeholders. We will be constantly monitoring and implementing social or digital media activities.
Moreover, campaign development, paid digital advertising, content generation, promotion performance
analysis, and community outreach will be our core marketing tasks.

Reference:

Sinivashan, V. (2007). A simultaneous approach to market segmentation. Journal of Marketing Research

and Management ,  7(1), 69-76.