Team:TAS Taipei/Entrepreneurship
Introduction
For our prototype, we envision a convenient spray bottle that contains a solution of our purified colored residue-binding proteins. Users will apply the solution to the surface of the produce, and if there are contaminants, the proteins will attach and appear as a patch of color.
Marketing Plan
To increase the realistic potential of our product and effectively promote it to the public we have gone through several steps. First, we conducted a survey asking consumers questions about their awareness of agricultural contaminants on produce and their desirability of our product: we obtained a total of 474 responses. We contacted 44 distributors and producers in order to create a product that would be ideal for them. The design of our product was based on the preferences from three defined sectors: distributors, producers, and consumers. Our product resulted in a prototype, which contains different contaminant binding proteins, packaged in two different ways depending on the customer. With our product synthesized and optimized to the desired degree of respondents, we drafted a marketing plan to describe the specifics and commercialize our product.
Click here to view our Marketing Plan
Survey
We created a survey for potential consumers to answer a variety of questions concerning the degree of consumer awareness about agricultural contaminants and the viability of our product. 474 people with ages ranging from 13~50 years old responded to our survey, helping us draft the marketing plan of our product. Our survey helped us confirm that consumers would desire our product as long as it has a “fast and easy detection” method (Figure 1).
Figure 1. TAS_Taipei survey results regarding whether respondents would use our product.
Since the detection methods currently used by the government require one to two weeks to validate, according to Chang Gung University Dr. Chiu, numerous consumers stated that they were not informed about the results. Thus, it is difficult for consumers to ensure whether their produce were actually safe to consume. As a result, we developed our marketing plan to focus on convenience for consumers, developing a consumer-targeted product so that consumers can self-test their produce at home. This would enable consumers to confirm the safety of their produce themselves.
We also targeted our product towards distributors and producers. Currently, producers and distributors must wait weeks to receive the test results of their produce. This is problematic as some distributors get results back after they have already sold their produce to the consumers, resulting in consumers purchasing potentially contaminated produce that is still waiting for test results. Thus, we were even more inclined to develop a product that serves as a faster and convenient method that would deliver results to producers and distributors before the produce is sold.
MUN Impact
Throughout our project, we reached out to several communities in order to raise public awareness on prevalent issues of agricultural contaminants and to promote our product. During a model MUN conference held at Taipei American School (TASMUN Conference), as part of the MUN Impact activity that encourages delegates to come up with a realistic project that can be carried out in correlation with the Sustainable Development Goals, we introduced our project and product. Through this opportunity, we were able to introduce and promote our product on a larger platform. Furthermore, we also participated in the Qatar Leadership Conference to introduce the concept of using the SDGs as a comprehensive goal to work towards in everyday activities and projects. Specifically, we highlighted the importance of iGEM in allowing high school students to make a profound impact on the SDGs. By reaching out to these MUN communities, we were able to influence a broader audience to effectively promote our product along with introducing iGEM to several MUN delegates to cultivate them as future impact makers of the world.
