Which Strategy Nokia Uses to Regain the Leadership in Global Mobile Market - Essay Example

NOKIA Contents Question 3 Product 3 Price 3 Place 4 Promotion 4 Marketing Mix of Nokia 5 Product 5 Price 5 Place 6 Promotion 6 Question 2 8 9 References 10 Question 1 Overall process of marketing covers many activities. It starts, where the organization searches its target group of customers whom they look forward to serve. After the target group is found, the product is to be launched in the market by providing appropriate required product, at an appropriate price, in the right place and with good promotional efforts.’ Marketing Mix’ is the perfect combination of all those communities in correct proportion as required for gaining the market position (Cho and Moon, 2000, pp. 36-40). According to Philip Kotler Marketing Mix is a combination of variables which can be controlled by the organization, and those variables which can be used to increase the buyer’s numbers and also improve the buyer’s response. The variables are the 4p’s of marketing mix which are the Product, Price, Place, and Promotion of every product launched by every company as every firm tries to create all these variables in the correct perfection to achieve the highest customer satisfaction (Burrow, 2011, pp. 172-177). Product This refers to the various goods and the particular services being provided by the company to its target customers. Customers do buy a particular product because of their needs and they look to get high level of satisfaction from the product which they buy and spend their money in buying. Price Price is the variable which refers to the amount that the particular product or service is been charged from the customers. It is one of the very important variables as setting up the right price for the product or service is very important, as it affects a lot on the buyer’s buying decision. Place The goods or services been provided to the customers must be at the reach of the customers, customers will always prefer a service or a product which is easily available to them. So deciding the correct place for the launch of the particular product and the chain through which it is been launched is very important decision to be made. Promotion Customers must have the knowledge about the products or services that are been developed by the companies. For making the products visible and creating its brand image in the market it is very important to pitch the product in the market in the correct way using the various platforms like advertising, publicity and sales promotion. This helps the company to make their products visible to the customers and make their message reach the customers (Belchand and Michael, 2005, pp. 75-82). Nokia started way back in 1865, it first started with the production of paper that was been exported in Russia, England, and other countries as well. It produced the first radio phone in 1963 and later on got the license for installing mobiles in cars. The production of mobiles started at a high speed and they started to come up with small and comfortable mobiles in the market by which they were able to capture a majority of market share. In 1991, Nokia launched the first genuine call in GSM in world market and in 2001 it launched its first 3G WCDMA voice call on a commercial market. Research is one of the key successes for Nokia as it has always come up with new ideas in the market (Nokia, 2014). Marketing Mix of Nokia To understand which strategy Nokia is using to again become the market leader in global market of mobile phone, the marketing mix of the company is been analyzed and studied. The marketing mix of the company will help to know the correct market strategy of the company. The various components of the marketing mix Product, Price, Place and promotion do help the company to differentiate itself from other companies. All the 4P’s of marketing mix for Nokia is been analyzed below one after the other (Jobber, 2012, pp. 29-33). Product Nokia has a variety of products in the category of mobile phones, where it has always looked to depend highly on the research as a result it always comes up with the latest technology, the normal traditional phones were enabled with the features of text messaging and games and they used to very bulky and unattractive but then with new research it has launched many varieties of smart phones like Nokia Lumia, Nokia Asha. These product designs also varies with user friendly features been enabled. Nokia phones are mainly known for its great quality and they offer better technology and advanced features which keep getting updated from time to time with better facilities that are mainly building to capture the market and achieve highest customer satisfaction. In the product category Nokia has also diversified itself from only mobile phones to also provide various accessories and carry case for the mobiles to create a good brand image in the market. Price The pricing of a particular product in the appropriate way is very important. Nokia looks to target mass customers in both high end and also low end with all its products. Nokia does the pricing on the basis of price penetration where it launches its product at a lower cost and then increases it gradually with the increasing market share. It does sets up the price taking its competitors price into consideration and looks to pitch the product at a lower price so that it can attract more customers and spread the market and then looks to increase the price gradually. It has high price variability so that it can cover every social class in the world population. Place Nokia launches its products and sells it in the market through distributors; it has a chain of retailers and mobile operator. Nokia also sells its other products like the accessories and carry case through the same distribution channel. Nokia has tried to capture the entire global market through its channel of distributors; though the company doesn’t has any shops in most of Europe other than in UK where it has a wide range of distribution for its products. Promotion Nokia promotes its products globally in different countries making use of television advertising, advertising in newspapers and radio and also put hoardings in the billboards. Nokia is looking to campaign its Lumia 920 in the market by a group of young consumers through an interactive marketing campaigns for launching it in this month and it is also aiming for the biggest ever marketing campaign in UK for mobile phones for its model of LUMIA 1020. The marketing mix of Nokia clearly shows that the company concentrates m ore on the product part among the others and looks to come up with varieties of products in the market which are user friendly and it looks to achieve customer satisfaction by providing different and better products (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman and Hansen, 2009, pp. 242-246). According to Nokia’s SEC filings its expense for advertising and promotion was $1.27billion across the globe in 2012 which decreased to an extent of 25% from 2011 Nokia’s business strategy is mainly to give the customers the top priority and become the most liked brand among the customers. Nokia looks to provide more facilities in the internet service to the customer and also provide more professional services. Nokia has looked to invest more on the research and design for coming up with high technology and better design phones to focus more on fulfilling customer satisfaction and create more brand image in the mind of the competitors. Nokia now has separate market strategies for separate segments so that it can occupy the majority of total market. Nokia has done its positioning well for its certain flagship products which are in high completion with Samsung in the present market (Cowan, 2005, pp. 51-55). Though Nokia has lost its position as the market leader with the increasing completion from Samsung because it loses its position in promotion of its mid segment products. The strategy used by Nokia is not helping it in regaining the position and market share and it is continually getting defeated by other mobile companies and specially Samsung. Nokia maintaining the same strategy across the globe and for different countries is affecting it in big way as the market for different places is totally different and people and their buying decisions differ a lot. Nokia as a brand has failed down the years because of its lack of value proposition which implies that the company doesn’t has a clear idea of how the customers can get benefit from their products and how their products are different from the competitors present in the market. The company always has tried to come up with high quality phones with better features that can surely help the customers in a huge way but until unless the customers come to know the real thing which is how they are going to get benefitted by using Nokia phones they prefer to buy other brands like Samsung which does conveys its message to the customers in a very effective way (Aulakh, 2013). Nokia has also reduced its expenses in advertising and promotion in 2012 from 2011 with a huge margin of 25% which also shows that it concentrates more on the product division and its quality and technology than promoting the particular product in a perfect way so that the message is been correctly conveyed across to the customers. This strategy will never help Nokia to recover from the slump and make it more difficult for them to achieve its goal of again becoming the market leader with so many competitors present. Nokia should look to have a good value chain proposition for its product and understand properly how its products can benefit the customers better than the competitors. It should look to communicate their various products in different countries based on the buying decision of the customers of that country and have different marketing strategy at different places. Like for India which is an emerging market it should try and promote more of its mid range Smartphone’s and with the major customers being the youth section it should look to show and promote their phones conveying the message that Nokia’s phones can provide them various facilities that can help them to lead a more fascinating life and also build a good status apart from being less costly than competitors (Hague and Jackson, 1994, pp. 27-36). Question 2 Among the various internationalization theories, Nokia should look to take the Porters Diamond model. This model implies on the dependence of the company on the various factors which helps to know the market and improve the market share. These models highly focus on the process of increasing the involvement and engagement in the foreign market country and expand globally. Using this model it helps to know and gain more knowledge about the market and its condition and choice in different countries as it takes into consideration of the firm’s strategy , structure and competitors, the demand conditions in the particular market, the condition of the related and supporting industries and also the policies of the government. Nokia must look forward to take this model for its international process and to regain its position. The Model will help the company to know the link between different factors and communities that plays a vital role in its market coverage (Jobber, 2012, pp. 84-89). The correct analysis of the model will give Nokia the idea about the chances of its market in a particular country which will be directly depended on the other factors, with all those factors being interlinked to each other will help the company to know the exact market condition of a particular country based on the various factors on the government and the demand conditions of the customer in the particular country that will help the company to know how to enter the particular market and with which product at what price. This model will help in understanding the company’s strategy and structure which it need to follow in the particular country so that it can get the maximum gain. This model will help the company to understand the different market situation of different countries and help Nokia to regain its market position in the international market. References Kotler, P., Keller, K. L., Brady, M., Goodman, M., and Hansen, T., 2009.Marketing Management, 1st ed., New Jersey: Pearson Education Limited. Belch, G and Michael, G., 2005. Advertising & Promotion-An Integrated marketing Communications Perspective. London: McGraw-Hill. Burrow, J., 2011. Marketing. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Jobber, D. 2012. Principles and Practice of Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Aulakh, G., 2013. Nokia to rope in young consumers for Lumia 920 marketing campaign. [online]. Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-01-07/news/36192674_1_windows-phone-lumia-nokia-last-week-nokia-india. [Acessed on February 28, 2014]. Nokia., 2014. About Us. [online]. Available at: http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/. [Accessed on February 28, 2014] Cho, D. and Moon. H., 2000. From Adam Smith to Michael Porter: Evolution of Competitiveness Theory. London: World Scientific. Cowan, A. 2005. Risk Analysis And Evaluation. London: Global Professional Publishing. Hague, P. and Jackson, P,. 1994. The Power of Industrial Brands: An Effective Route to Competitive Advantage. London: McGraw-Hill. Jobber, D. 2012. Principles and Practice of Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Read More