Pacific Gas & Electric Marketing: New Product that Would Appeal to your Market

PG&E to Launch a New Product
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Target Market of the New Product
PG&E has decided to launch a new line product. To meet consumer needs, PG&E will seek to identify groups of consumers who are likely to be interested in the product. PG&E will, therefore, direct its marketing efforts majorly to such groups of consumers. According to Ferrell and Hartline (2014), target market refers to a group of people whose preferences and needs match the product and PG&E will market such product to those consumers. Grigsby (2012) stated that the first PG&E will have to identify its target market by understanding what its product will offer to the group of consumers or businesses. To achieve this, PG&E will identify its products’ benefits and features. PG&E is one of the biggest natural gas and electric utilities in the US. It provides electricity and natural gas to about 15 million people living in Central and Northern California (Grigsby, 2012). PG&E’s target market is residential consumers who need to use electric utilities and gas energy for domestic consumption, agricultural, and business use.
The New Product
PG&E has established a new product line known as Solar Choice program to enable its consumers to obtain half or 100 percent of their electricity from the sun. The program is tailored to consumers who cannot or do not want to place solar on their roof, for example, residents in high-rise buildings (Pyper, 2016). About 50% of U.S businesses and households are unable to install rooftop solar due to shading, space, or ownership limitations.
The new product created appeals to the market because the recent survey shows that 50% of PG&E customers claim that they want to use solar systems for energy consumption. The Solar Choice program will enable customers to purchase solar power from completely new, locally generated projects that most residents living in California want. Pyper (2016) explains that PG&E’s Solar Choice program aims to give customers more control and choice over their energy and to bring the benefits of using solar to the residents. With the Solar Choice program, now PG&E will enable customers to contribute to bringing more renewable energy onto the electric grid, which is a win not only for PG&E’ customers but also for California.
To take part in the program, customers will be expected to pay a premium. Residents will have to pay an additional 3.58 cents per kilowatt-hour to participate in the community solar program. For small and large businesses to take part in the program, they will be expected to pay an additional of 2.8 cents per kilowatt-hour and 2.85 cents per kilowatt-hour respectively. For ordinary homeowners who utilize 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month, obtaining 100% of their electricity through PG&E solar program will cost an additional $18 per month (Pyper, 2016). Strong demand is expected to arise from PG&E solar program. Already the California utility has connected at least 215, 000 solar customers to the electric grid, and it is expected that PG&E Solar Choice program will create an additional solar connection to 40,000 businesses and ho...