The
contrast between Nokia (as presented by Ms Yolanda Pineda and Ms Joanna Mikkola)
and Motorola was clearly in the marketing focus.
Whilst Nokia was visibility market-centric, Motorola’s emphasis appear
to be more along product development and technology.
According to Motorola’ representatives (in particular, Mr Elias Sfeir),
their marketing focus was as follows:
(i)
Advance quickly to high end products
(ii)
Obtain first mover advantage
(iii)
Increase brand awareness
(iv)
Efficient distribution and productions
(v)
For low end products, achieve good quality at lower costs.
Lowering
costs, efficiencies and production appear to be the key drivers.
Nokia’s presentation on the other hand was largely on responding to
market needs, citing fashion, lifestyle, demographics, third generation
telecommunication as the drivers in their marketing.
It is perhaps pertinent to note that as for the first quarter of 2001,
Nokia was the only cell-phone company to have reported a positive earning. –
Douglas Choo
My group and I could verify that, as presented in our
report, Nokia is a market-driven company that pays special attention to consumer
needs and tastes while maintaining a perfect balance with technology. As a
matter of fact, the company is focusing its efforts to grow on the 3G platform,
a crucial move for Nokia, which was mentioned in our report, in order to sustain
a strong overall growth. The Nokia visit taught us the importance of having
flexibility in decision-making and integration among all business units. A
well-coordinated operation in balance with present and future market needs and
technology are key strategic imperatives for success in today’s mobile handset
market. - Andre Batista
The
most exciting aspect of business for me is to learn from entrepreneurs their
strategies, visions and processes in developing and growing a business.
Nokia is another example of a company with “entrepreneurial spirit,”
which is “in time with the market.” Yolande
Pineda’s character and experience exhibits the progressive Nokia culture
flourishing without boundaries. Now
the Marketing Director of Latin America for Nokia, she began her career as a
trainee and opened up the Paris office with a typing machine and 1 employee.
After literally building the office from scratch, she left years later a
thriving Paris branch of 450 employees. Nokia’s
strategy includes taking a leading brand role in creating a mobile information
society. It utilizes a global
marketing approach, yet quickly adapts to the needs of the local market.
Nokia’s emphasis on understanding the end-user has determined its
success. For example, Johanna
Mikkola explained how Nokia adapted their services to suit the local
Brazilian’s need for constant communication with a close circle of friends and
a need for personal security. –
Shonshana Osinsky
Nokia
seemed to be extremely aware of the surrounding environments in Latin America
through extensive research. Not
only the handset itself, even advertising, although using local celebrities and
locally adjusted message, was very well reflecting Nokia’s global brand image. It made me wonder whether they should have more local
adaptation, especially the handsets, which Nokia offers global products with
retail prices sometimes higher than those in the US.
Motorola’s corporate culture was also strongly felt in Brazil.
In contrast to Nokia, Motorola seemed to be very much internally focused,
to verify our previous research, which led the firm to make some uniformed
decisions. In brief, during the
company visit, I felt more differences in “corporate culture” which would be
replicated throughout the world, than the “local culture”; Motorola’s
corporate culture seemed completely different from Nokia’s, although both
compete within the same industry and their offices were located in Brazil. – Akira
Ozawa
Most of the
multinational companies follow the matrix structure which captures best the need
for local responsiveness (local headquarters) and global business efficiency and
consistency (global headquarters). The codependence of the two is the source of
the one-team approach that most of the companies employ in order to leverage
learning experience; example: Nokia, Accenture. Nokia’s marketing pitch:
‘Connecting People’ summarizes it all: it is how uniformly and consistently
all local offices work inside the region and outside in the network that
ultimately makes or breaks a company. - Eva Franczak