Outward Bound’s business model could use a more focused approach to problem recognition in order to motivate potential customers. I feel this because their services require a significant commitment of time, money, and potential exertion or even pain and danger I believe their target market has a degree of generic problem recognition. If they’re interested in Outward Bound courses, they likely recognize to some degree a need for growth and leadership experiences or, for their struggling youth program, the need to be set on a new course. Therefore, they need to focus more on techniques invoking selective problem recognition. They could do this by offering a greater emphasis on what makes their program unique — while they do provide a lot of information on what their courses do, they generally have less detail on why their courses are different from any other nature expedition or why someone should pay for their courses instead of taking up mountain climbing, kayaking, and so on for themselves.
They could also try to take advantage of the timing of problem recognition 7 instead of hoping that, for example, the parents of a struggling or at-risk teen and their programs, could attempt to work closely with school administrators or other youth programs and target their advertising specifically towards the people who are frequently in trouble or at risk of becoming repeat offenders. As for their non—intervention programs, they could market them towards high school and college outdoor sports clubs, for example, or even sponsor them as a way of increasing awareness of the brand among people who are most likely to recognize the problem they want to solve. Finally, they need to fix the apparent assumption that the problems their customers have are active problems. They purport only vague benefits that only someone who already actively perceives the need would appreciate; they should do much more direct, non—vague marketing to convince people of the existence of the problem before going on to how they are uniquely suited to fix it.
