Our Product

The name of our product will be “Maple Dulces” which currently has no registered trademark (United States Patent and Trademark Office, 2020). We chose this name strategically, to be appealing and understandable to our target market of expats and to potential future segments we would like to expand into. First of all, the Spanish word “dulces” means sweets; Although, most expats will be from North America and may not be completely fluent in Spanish, “dulces” is a very common word and should be understood by almost all of this market segment. Second with “Maple” added to the title this will make it even more understandable to expats. The word “maple”, although not commonly used in Central America is still recognizable and widely understood, and if the word isn’t the iconic symbol of the maple leaf certainly is. We believe this name paired with our logo, which will be the Iconic maple leaf embroidered with the British Columbian flag, will make it easily interpretable, even to Costa Ricans who don’t speak English. 

How The Populace Will React to Our Product.

Costa Rica had a net import value of $236,516 USD in maple syrup during 2016 (United Nations, 2016) although this may seem like a large figure, for an entire country its not. As a comparison, the united states importation of maple syrup was valued at $177.87 USD in millions during 2016 (Bedford, 2019) This data, along with the appendix below, show that maple syrup is not a commonly consumed product in Costa Rica, and by default neither are maple sugar candies. Most Costa Ricans will have little or no idea of what real maple syrup or maple candies taste like, our product will be foreign, and unlike typical candies or treats in Costa Rica both visually and regarding its taste. Because of these reasons we believe there will be massive intrigue regarding our product and many consumers will rush to purchase it when they hear about it. This means two things, first: We will have to do extensive marketing to create awareness of our product, educate consumers of what it is & what it is made out of, and convince them that they should be eating it. Second: we will have complete extremely rigorous quality control when our product is first released; because consumers have most likely never tried maple syrup candies before, if the taste is poor due to a manufacturing error they will assume that all maple syrup candies taste that way and we will lose customers permanently.

Target Market

Our target market will be two-fold. The first will consist of expats from North America. There are currently 24,201 United States citizens living in Costa Rica and 3,639 Canadian citizens. This group is likely to be over the age of 50, have a disposable income of 2000-3000 per month, and be married with 2-4 children. The second market group will target upper-middle class Costa Rican families. This represents an ever growing population of Costa Rica. Costa Ricans in the middle quintile of income earners earn approximately $1,250 each month (Zúñiga, 2018). Upper middle class earns between approximately $2000 monthly.