CRP is entering their first year of business. Marketing will be critical to develop sufficient business to achieve profitability. The company offers high quality event planning for two specific areas, corporate training and product release events. The basic market need is for a competent service provider offering high quality event planning at a price that is cost effective relative to a company trying to plan the events themselves.

Market Summary

CRP possesses good information regarding its typical customer. This includes customer needs, the general circumstances from which the needs arise, and the difficulties the customer would face if they tried to satisfy these needs themselves. This information will be leveraged to better understand who is served, individual customers' specific needs, better communication channels, and how CRP can satisfy those needs.

Market Analysis

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Market Needs

CRP is providing its customers with a high quality event planning service that specializes in both corporate retreats for training purposes as well as product launch events. CRP seeks to fulfill the following benefits that are important to their customers:

• Professionalism- This is imperative as the service CRP provides is, in effect, a representation of the client corporation itself.
• Competitive pricing- The pricing scheme must be competitive to offer an incentive for the customer to outsource these services.
• Customer service- The customer must get the sense that all of their needs are being met, regardless how small or inconsequential it may seem.

Market Trends

The market trend for event planning has seen a surge within the last four years, a response to corporations' impetus to outsource non-essential tasks. This industry space has gotten more competitive for several reasons:

• Increased demand has increased the number of competitors.
• With the increase of general event planner service providers, there has also been an emergence of specialized event planners that only offer one or two types of event planning services.
• The trend for outsourcing is not specific to the event planning industry, but can be seen in many industries like IT assistance, accounting, payroll, and design work.

Market Growth

In 2000, the event planning market had $453 in annual revenue. This market space is forecasted to grow at 6% for the next four years. This growth can primarily be attributed to companies tightening their focus on their core competencies and abandoning in-house support of activities that they do not excel in.

SWOT Analysis

The following SWOT analysis captures the key strengths and weaknesses within the company, and describes the opportunities and threats facing Corporate Retreat Professionals.

Strengths

• Superior, specialized service offerings.
• Well-trained, enthusiastic employees.
• Strong relationships with complementary service providers.

Weaknesses

• The concentration of a small niche of the market that will limit the potential size of the market.
• The difficulty of generating awareness and visibility of the company in its first few years of operation.
• The inability to rapidly scale to meet large, unexpected increases in demand.

Opportunities

• A growing market of companies that are outsourcing event planning activities.
• Being one of the first service providers concentrating on this specific niche.
• Relatively low overhead.

Threats

• A slump in the economy that could have a ripple effect on service providers.
• Future competition from existing service providers competing in different but complimentary market spaces.
• The inability to find qualified, high quality employees.

Competition

Currently there are three other companies that offer event planning specifically to corporations. They, however, tend do events that are more general in scope such as parties to reward customers or employees, or events to change the company's image. There is no company that specializes in event planning of corporate training and product release events. There are companies that offer corporate training, but these companies provide the actual training and do not do any of the actual event planning/ logistics of the entire event.

There is also no company that specializes in product release events. There are companies that do provide this service, but they do not specialize in it. Because event planning is a tight market, CRP will benefit from specialization.

The buying pattern for the larger corporations was, in the past, to have an in-house solution. This pattern is disappearing in favor of outsourcing as there is the constant drive for gains in efficiency, something outsourcing can offer.

Service Offering

CRP will offer event planning for the corporate market. CRP will concentrate on two types of event planning:

1. Corporate retreats- These events are typically used for two different reasons. They are either leadership training or team building training where employees of the corporations are sent to develop these skills. In addition to the planning of the events, CRP will be able to host the event as well. While CRP's core competencies are not in hosting, CRP will align itself with a well-respected host of leadership development/ teaming skills programs and have them assist CRP in the hosting aspect. Using a strategic partner in this case allows CRP to stick with a narrow focus but still offer the service to our customers.
   
2. Product launches- These are events where the corporation is releasing a product and they have an event that is open to people outside of the corporation, such as industry press, distribution partners, or current key customers. The purpose of the product launch event is to create visibility for the new release.

Keys to Success

The keys to success are:

• Generate repeat business.
• Achieve sufficient market visibility.
• Accomplish benchmarked customer service.

Critical Issues

CRP is still in the speculative stages as a start up organization. It faces the following critical issues:

• Continue to take a modest approach toward expansion, expanding not for the sake of expansion in itself, but because it is necessary to meet the needs of their customers.
• Establish CRP as the premier niche event planner of the Seattle corporate market.

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