Service Marketing of Kodak - Coursework Example

As stated in Kinsman, Kotula, and Breidenstein (1994), the major disadvantages of test marketing are lack of accuracy, chances of misrepresentation, and high initial cost (p.468). Since test marketing collets the information on a random basis, it may not represent the actual trend of the region. In order to improve the accuracy of the collected information, the management must ensure that they have collected information from different parts of the region without any bias. Similarly, the competitors may try to misrepresent the outcomes of the survey by the excessive employment of advertisements for their products. In addition, it involves a high initial cost since it needs the support of skilled faculties and well-designed marketing charts. The application of scientifically developed questionnaires would assist the marketing team to reduce the errors to some extent. It is also discovered that an efficient market planning program would help the marketers to bring the associated costs within the framed budget.  

      Ford Edsel, New Coke, and Beta Max Video are the three products whose adoption rates have been affected by factors like compatibility, relative advantage, and trialability. Economists have opined that the failure of Ford Edsel can be attributed to issues associated with adoption rates which arose from the factors of relative advantage and compatibility. It had not any attractive features more than other models of the ford. Similarly, the adoption rate of New Coke, a product of Coca-Cola has been affected by compatibility and trialability. It failed to assess customers’ interests. The feature of relative advantage negatively affected Beta Max Video, a subsidiary product of Sony. It had possessed almost similar features as that of the previous model U-Matic.

        Personal computers, credit cards, DVD players are the three product categories in the maturity stage of the product life cycle that is posed to be reinvented. Although modern computer models like laptop and netbooks provide greater mobility, it is less convenient to use and hence cannot easily substitute the personal computers. Similarly, credit cards are also getting replaced by modern forms like prepaid cards and mobile phones. Often, these techniques cannot effectively meet the security measures as in the case of credit cards. DVD players also disappear from the market subsequent to the arrival of modern portable devices such as memory cards and pen drives. It is necessary to reinvent DVD players since the newly introduced devices have more chances to get affected by virus attacks and data loss.  

     In my opinion, Kodak’s services are customized. They try their level best to meet what their customers actually need. They mainly aim at market dominance rather than excessive profitability. The company has set industry certifications and extensive coverage as the basic factors of their service and support.