Target Market Segment Strategy
- Our initial day care market will consist of medium to large day care organisations, consisting of twenty or more children. Organisations such as Kindercare and La Petite Academy represent very attractive opportunities for our products.
- Organisations of this type are attractive because they are well managed, successful, health conscious and nationwide. Within these organisations we will target decision level managers with the power to implement use of our product in those locations.
Market Needs
According to a study published in the medical journal, Infectious Diseases in Children, researchers in hand washing recovered fecal coliforms from the hands of one out of every five staff members, citing that more than 33% of day care facilities “had poor hand washing techniques and no policy for hand washing before eating or after playing outside.
In spite of all the studies about the benefits of hand washing, improper or infrequent hand washing continues to be a major factor in the spread of disease in day-cares.
Hand washing in child care facilities is an ideal initial target market for several additional reasons:
- Child care facilities have rampant illness and germ problems that can be directly reduced through frequent child and worker hand washing.
- Child care facilities have strict, government mandated rules that require frequent hand washing.
- Parents are particularly interested in reducing child illness, making them one of our strongest advocates for the use of CHILDassure in environments they cannot directly monitor.
In a study cited by Family Practice News in 1996, “Scientists had kids wash their hands when they arrived at school, before lunch then again after lunch time, recess and one more time before heading home every single day.”
As a result of these ‘scheduled’ wash times, researchers found that “a month later, these kids had 24 percent fewer days off from colds, sniffles and flus and a whopping 51 percent fewer sick days because of gastrointestinal complaints like stomach cramps or diarrhea.”
With nearly 12 million children in child care facilities across the nation there is a clear need for CHILDassure, our first product, that can both encourage and help monitor child and employee hand washing to ensure a safe, clean environment for children.
Additional future target markets also have significant need for fading dye products:
- Hospitals:“In health care, nurses and doctors wash only 30% of the required time between patient contacts and procedures. Each year, an alarming 2,400,000+ nosocomial infections occur in the U.S. alone. They are estimated to directly cause 30,000 deaths and contribute to another 70,000 deaths each year. Nosocomial infections cost over $2,300 per incident and $4.5 billion annually in extended care and treatment.”
- Restaurants:“Food borne illness kills over 10,000 people each year. Over 70% of all outbreaks originate in food service operations and, as many as 40% are the result of poor food service and cross-contamination. Each year over 80 million estimated cases of food poisoning occur in the United States alone. The U.S. spends between $7.6 and $23 billion annually on health care and lost productivity resulting from food borne illness. The average incident costs the food service company over $75,000 and results in significant future sales losses.”
Market Trends
There has been a recent effort by the Food and Drug Association, the Centre for Disease Control, the National Restaurant Organisation, and others to promote education to increase hand washing compliance in target markets.
The focus of these programs is to educate and encourage preventative control measures for children and workers to help reduce diseases and lawsuits. This has led to greater awareness in our target markets about maximizing cleanliness and minimizing preventable illness.
There is an additional trend in both our target markets and industry towards organic based soaps. Organic products have become increasingly associated with safety and health in a variety of different markets. Our completely organic soap is complementary to this growing market trend.
Market Growth
The demand for child day care services will continue to grow. As the labor force participation of women between the ages of 16 and 44 remains high, parents of preschool and school-age children are expected to seek more day care arrangements.
As parents continue to work during weekends, evenings, and late nights, the demand will grow significantly for child day care programs that can provide care during nontraditional hours. School-age children, who generally require child day care only before and after school, increasingly are being cared for in child care centres.
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