Reality Case Studies

[AlpeshChaudhari]

Current Problems :

1) Motorola does not have a brand image in the market.

2) They don't have products that would appeal to specific segment of market.

3) Motorola's low end products are very pathetic. They can't compete with any of the other player's product.

4) They are losing on the side of innovation to Sony & Nokia.

5) There products don't stand for any special purpose. e.g. Nokia's music edition/ Sony's Walkman series/ Nokia's high end photographic cell-phones with 8GB space.

Analysis :

Nokia was (& still is) the biggest player in India. Because of there simplicity of softwares & service provided after the sell of products. Motorola was managing to compete with Samsung,Sony but then Sony suddenly took a lea forward with Walkman series & ate a large market share of Samsung, Motorola. Even Nokia lost some of the market, but it was less. They roped in Hrithik as brand ambassador for new product range.

Motorola did not (still has not) tried to change it's products to suit the market. The only product was doing good is Razor, the only reason people are using it is the Style, which people like to change every now & then.

Nokia has a wide range of products & each cellphone is embedded with the features that, that particular segment would care about. Low end segment eyed products contained features like Radio, Colors, Polyphonic Ringtones & these are the features that are advertised & not the style. Costly cell phones are advertised for their Style, high end music system, cameras & all that, that segment would care about. None the less, the biggest of Nokia remains is - User Friendly Interface.

Sony had the same problems as Motorola, but there products were better in terms of Style & then came the Walkman series, it was the biggest hot of the time.


Solutions : (other than appointing me as a Brand Manager)

1) Revitalize the brand. Roping in Abhishek Bachhan has certainly not helped. The advertises are too funny to be of technology product. And, yes, other adds like Yuva, are seriously torture.

2) Study the market, introduce the products that are aimed at certain segment of customers.

3) Introduce technology driven products - like Music, Photography more additional services. Take one of all aspects, & advertise accordingly instead of general advertises.

4) Change the brand manager. (In case if some one hears about recruitment of Motorola's Brand Manager, PM me :icon_cheesygrin

[jshah29]

Originally Posted by jas_maverick

Oh, dint know ppl still bump into this thread
Cool!

With almost an year in post MBA corporate life, here is a garma garam fast case:
Motorola !!

1. Being a brand manager, what do you think Motorola has been doing wrong, esp in Indian market?
2. Should it keep in premium market segment like Razor, or should it flood market with Moto Yuva kind 2-5K handsets; or what else? (remember big daddy Nokia)

All the best!

First things first - Motorola knew it was nowhere close to the leader Nokia - hence it was clear cut product differentiation strategy to be adopted AND compete to be the 2nd in the market

First the compeititor analysis

Samsung - amazing features and amazing range - but lacking clear cut branding initiative.. still managed to capture a slice of market

LG - No clear strategy but yes trying to get as much mileage from whatever market it was

Sony Ericcson (wondering how couple of guys above me missed this key player in the market :O ) - Clearly 2nd in the market according to me- Excellent Campaigns for its W and K series - who offers 3.2MP camera wid phone??? Hrithik Roshan used quite effectively (not entirely but much than better Moto's Aby Baby) !!!

Moto did generate some interest by its Razr campaign - but the product let down very very badly... all the ppl i knw were not satisfied... it looked good and it just stopped there... very difficult to navigate and worse was the battery life... when you knw that its a multimedia phone, you have to have support the features... the battery hardly lasted 6-8 hours...

It again tried to mileage using Rockr campaign... I dunno why it wasnt really hit.. (My guess is that bad experience from Razr - if battery would not last enough to be able to listen to music no use to spend so much on the phone)

However full marks to Moto on launching the touch screen phone - who gets a touch screen phone in 12K? Awesom looking and the touch screen is really cool and stylish.. This is a clear hit! This is where product differentiation came in picture and took away entire mid market from Nokia! And I knw ppl who are very happy with the performance!

Hence acc to me they shld continue wid some great innovative ideas where Nokia is not present! Tech markets always have first mover advantage - hence acc to me they shld stick to new product development and offer them as an alternative to Nokia! No use competing wid Nokia on other fronts like lower segments or multimedia phones...

Jaimin

[jas_maverick]

Wow, after mufasa's reply, the replies just getting more and more critic for Motorola! I don't think many of you like it ; but ya, i would like to know how many of you are actually using a Motorola!

I wont be that harsh on Moto. I would like to point it out that some of you here had mixed the international and Indian reviews, which is not a right way here as the market is very different today.

Moto is known as the excellent engineering innovation company, with strong and consistent process, all highly focussed and efficient thanks to six sigma initiatives, Moto is known for it. It got the mobile technology to world, but thats exactly from where Nokia takes over. Idea and implementation are so different, aren't they?

I agree that Nokia has so large a range, it has features that are easy to use. But that is mass marketer strategy, and Motorola never wanted to be there. Its earliest phones were from Motorola only - the bulky ones weighing in 100 of grams. Then it lost on the track and focussed on the corporate sales only. And all this while Nokia was doing something else, but what?

Ever thought how Nokia launches so many phones one after another? and it replies to comptt so fast! I had a talk with Motorola marketing guy, and he was all praise for Nokia, saying that when Moto launches a low end phone, Nokia launches a one of similar features and similar price tag soon as flange attack, and then it does the thing only the big daddy can do - it decreases the price by big margin! But then again how can they launch a similar set so fast? the answer to both the questions lies in the strategic far sightedness of Nokia. While everybody was crying innovation, Nokia set its eyes on mass scale and to achieve success there you need standardization across production lines, across line extensions. And thats exactly what Nokia has done, it has a framework ready for designs. Just remember, is one of the strong reason of buying a Nokia was because you could charge your phone anywhere and borrow just practically anybody's phone charger! Or was it because you were accustomed to the interface of Nokia phone and you were just too glad that the interface dint change much with your new phone? There you get me!

So guys, I will say its a great lesson for strategy guys. The long term focus pays a lot more than a short term aggression. What Moto needs right now is to clear up its huge huge processes, when a company becomes too process oriented it loses the agility. If Moto was to come up with a competitor of Walkman, it will have to do a complete delivery cycle thoroughly, and in the end the world may have gone forward. This is another question I have been having in head since last few weeks in my head, is it that all process oriented companies who implement a complete and thorough processes, weaken with age? So do we need agile processes? look at GE in another context, these firms are mammoths and not even elephants. So "Can mammoths dance?"

PS: I had covered the Motorola announcement of split news at my blog in this post:
Marketing Confetti by Jasginder Singh

[jas_maverick]

I have never understood it; when am regular to thread there is no activity. The moment i go off, people post asking for activity !

[vinsdome]

Originally Posted by jas_maverick

look at GE in another context, these firms are mammoths and not even elephants. So "Can mammoths dance?"

GE is known for pursuing only those businesses where it is among the top few in the world. Otherwise it exits the business asap.

I think, irrespective of the size of the company,it is its ability in adopting to change that creates the difference. A greater size allows economies of scale and a greater opportunity to tap into future opportunities. Infact, a company with dominant market share can influence the direction in which the product development would move, atleast in the near future.

Motorola is a six-sigma process company but to the end user nokia is as reliable and in more cases than not it is more reliable than a motorola.

A common man walking down the road would not think much of 6-sigma,etc as long as he recognises the brand as reliable based on his own experience.

While it may appear that processes make mammoths bad dancers n less agile, i think this happens only if the ppl fail to understand the real reason for being process oriented.

Processes are laid down to ease the day to day activitites and create a uniform work culture in the organisation that operates across the world.

But when a change is required, it should be as easy for big company as it is for a small company. The only difference would be in the manner the message is conveyed to the organisation.

I think IBM is an example of a Mammoth that can dance. Its strategy of tapping the indian market and the restructuring that it did within the organisation ensured that it is the top IT services company in india within a short span of time.

[amarsaboo]

hey puys
i hope i am posting in the right thread....i just wanted to ask are icfai case studies good and used across all premire institutes in india....and is icfai one of the largest case studies writer in india...thanx

[mufasa]

Originally Posted by jas_maverick

I have never understood it; when am regular to thread there is no activity. The moment i go off, people post asking for activity !

Lol... I thought most of the questions you asked were to provoke us to think and not necessarily answer them... read you blog... seems that some of what I had penned match with your thoughts...
When is the next one coming?

[noelatwork]

Wow! A great thread here..
Many from FMS and MDI too here

Now I have to sit through this today!

Meanwhile, a small query to my seniors...
FMS and MDI have case studies in their selection process?

Cheers

[maxell]

Originally Posted by ramachess1

Here is a reality case study right between us.

Each person in pagalguy.com is connected to MBA, either as an aspirant or as an MBA student. Since the most important part of MBA is the case study, it is pretty obvious that case studies should be very popular in this forum. But somehow, we have had very lukewarm response.

So here is the ultimate case study.

What do you think should be done so that this thread is popular ?

I have some ideas too, but will post them after getting a few responses.

Found this thread, and started reading from scratch... Got really excited with this case study, albeit was posted in 2006... but i think its still relevant...

Here goes my analysis...

Reasons for less popularity for this thread :
1) Visibility : We have a gr8 concept at hand. Everybody who has come on this thr8d even once would vouch for that. Still, we can't attract more ppl... Why? Simply bcos we are not visible ! The thr8d is inside the chitchat section, which is not appropriate at all ! This should be hosted somewhere in the "For B-schoolers section" as case studies is wot somebody normally encounters after getting into a B-skool.(agreed, some institutes use it as a filtration tool at the time of GD/PI... but they are very few and most puys are not concerned with that... everybody's still fidgety abt their CAT/GMAT scores and calls !
Another reason why I think this thread shud be in that section is bcos the kind of discussions being promoted and the knowledge level needed is a notch higher... so... b-skoolers wud be more interested and wud find it beneficial too...

2)Catering to a Niche segment- according to point 1 above, the thread is a niche product. It has a limited market. Not everybody will post here... so this fact shud be agreed upon that generally traffic over here wud be low - peaceful, hill station like settings...

3)Competition - Maybe there's olready competition present on PG in form of another thread dealing with the same content ! Have we done the fatal error of thinking that we r the only producers of this product ? (haven't researched whether competition truly exists, or not)

[desiredmanager]

why is the toyota case study considered important
can anybody give me more info on this
was it that they beat the americans at their own market at the time where no body dared to enter their market
or was it the pricing brilliance which boosted toyota ahead of the other automakers
or was it simply because of the "the toyota way".......