Circa Light: A Market Entry Strategy For NASA's Prototype Light Therapy Technology

CircaLight is a Barrett Honors Thesis Project that was conducted through the Founder’s Lab Program in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. A team of three students, each with different majors, came together to complete the project. Jackson Krug, Benjamin Sare, and Gabriel Zimm formed the team as part of Cohort 3 of the 2021-2022 Founders Lab Program. They are each pursuing bachelors degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Finance, and Business Administration, respectively. This diversity of schooling allowed them to approach this project from multiple, diverse perspectives. Due to their familiarity with sleep deprivation throughout college, the team chose to pursue a project centered around NASA’s Advanced Solid State Lighting System, which functionally mimics the changes in natural light that humans would typically experience on earth. This technology provides these same fluctuations to astronauts in space. A unique logo and branding were created for a potential product that would use this technology. Three different marketing strategies relating to this brand were developed and tested to achieve this project’s goal: determining the best prospective market for this technology. The three potential market areas we tested dealt with: general fatigue & lack of productivity, family sleep habits, and jet lag. Through our research, we found the most attractive market to be people who are looking to improve their sleep habits and productivity at home. Conversely, we concluded that while there is an audience for travel fatigue solutions, the market is not interested in this NASA technology.