I still remember as a kid, lying down on the grass watching the night sky. I was amazed by the sheer size of the universe and how each glimpse of light could be a planet, a star, or even a whole entire galaxy. I had a sudden realization how minute we are compare to such beautiful objects hanging in the night sky. I wondered as a kid if I will be able to go a step closer to the space and see the stars that I dreamt of. In a recent blogpost by natures.com, Virgin Galactic scored a contract for NASA’s research programs which will bring additional funding to Virgin Galactic to continue its development of the spacecraft. The future of the company looks very promising. You might wonder, how is company so successful in building its client base to seek funding for its program?
In March of 2010, VSS Enterprise of Virgin Galactic completed her maiden flight. This was a major step for the company and the possibility of space travel in the near future looks promising. According to the Virgin Galactic website: A flight costs $200,000, and deposits start at $20,000. When a client pays the deposit, they become a member of “the world’s most exclusive club with privileged access to all aspects of the project as it progresses”.
Virgin Galactic attracts its customers with very unique marketing campaign and strategy and make them feel they belong to a very exclusive and elite class that something money alone cannot buy. Virgin Galactic uses niche marketing, targeting a very elite class of clients. For the maiden flight of its fleet, only hand picked clients are invited to the viewing where the majority of the media were blocked. The clients were flew to the future site of the spaceport by helicopters for the viewing and were treated like astronauts. The company gave the clients a tour of the facility, the build of the spacecraft, as well as make go through some training of an astronauts to not only train them for the space experience but also to build the hype for the day of the real flight into space.
So far over 500 people have paid the deposit and willing to pay $200,00 for a few minutes of weightlessness including actor Ashton Kutcher who is the 500th astronaut. Despite the high development cost, Virgin Galactic is also to find funding through unique marketing strategies to attract customers, allowing its dream fly high into the clouds.
not compatible on the Macintosh. As a Mac user myself, I had many unpleasant experience in transferring files from a Mac to a PC. Files have to be extracted and converted before it can be accessed on a PC, which is a painstaking process. The impracticality of Apple’s products will inevitably hurt the customer relationship and soon the consumers will lose patience and trust.