Market Research Zymo Research products, distributed by Baseclear
Patrick Koning on his internship at Baseclear, April 2009
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“Baseclear is a DNA service laboratory based in Leiden, and is also exclusive distributor of Zymo Research products in The Netherlands. Zymo Research is a company based in Orange (USA), which produces products for DNA and RNA isolation and purification. Although Baseclear is distributor for Zymo Research for several years now, they have never done active marketing of its products. As an internship student, I was responsible for setting up a market research to determine the market position of Zymo Research products in the Netherlands. Based on the results of this research, I had to think of a strategic and tactical plan to improve the sales of Zymo Research products.
Qiagen is the market leader in products based on DNA and RNA isolation and purification, and there is a wide range of smaller companies (for instance Zymo Research) competing with Qiagen. The market research I had set up showed that most researchers choose their products in this category based on the quality of the products. Second most important features were the ease of use and the total processing time of the products. Pricing was rated as least important; most researchers did not even know the price they paid for their products.
Free test kits were sent to participants in this market research. A test report was send afterwards, to rate these test kits. The quality of Zymo products was rated equal or better than competitor products, and the ease of use and total processing time were rated much better than others. These should be key points in targeting potential customers. Since Zymo products are also cheaper than Qiagen products, it could be stated that quality is at least the same, but that they are faster, easier and cheaper than the market leader.
Another bottleneck was the directed targeting of Zymo Research products. Since most customers are located within universities and academic hospitals, where employees and departments are changing rapidly, an up-to-date CRM system is essential. Another responsibility I had during my internship was therefore to map these institutes in our CRM system, so targeted marketing would be possible. Payment systems in organizations (for instance centralized or decentralized), are also important in targeting, so these had to be mapped also in order to target successfully.What I mainly learned of my internship, is the process of a successful market research. Since I was responsible for all steps in the process, I have developed myself in the field of marketing. Because I had to give several presentations, call with (potential) customers and visited customers and conferences, I have also developed at a social level. I had a fun internship at Baseclear, also because of nice colleagues working here. Since both me and my supervisor are satisfied with the process and the result, I can consider this internship a successful one, which also resulted in a job opportunity for me within Baseclear.”
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