Communication Technology's Development and its effect on Management Practice

• Lennartz says research has shown youth have the spending power to purchase expensive MMS phones and services and could consider the new service as a means to express individuality, maturity or belonging.
• More than half of the company's new product collection was designed with the speedily growing young and fun demographic in mind. 
• To the youth now, mobile phone instead of not just a machine to call or contact with people, but also stand for their status. Nowadays, mobile is such a world of color, sound and pictures, play games, get on the internet and access loads of greats. To express their individuality, many youth people will choose such a mobile that have some functions that make differentiate to the others.

1.4  Incorporate In the Youth Market

• Young people are ardent about everything from fashion and music to their hairstyles.
• While positioning brands within the youth market, it is crucial to understand the intricacy of their enthusiasm. 
• Youth, on the other hand, are significantly more motivated to partake in mobile for social reasons than adults.

                                         

CHAPTER2.IMPORTANCE OF THE BRAND

Today, established corporations and new start-ups spend a marvelous amount of time, power and resources to found or strengthen a strong brand image.  And for good reason, companies that hold a strong brand identity have many sole advantages and attributes versus their competition.

                                                 

2.1  What Is A Brand?

• Gardner and Levy(1955) for example argue that a brand name is more than just a “label employed to differentiate” and see it as “a complex symbol that represent a variety of ideas and attributes”.
• A different perspective on branding is offered by Jones(1986) .He sees the value to the customer/consumer as a “guarantee of homogeneity and quality” arguing that the purchaser receives more than the functional benefits of a product but also other benefits,  that are “substantially psychic”.
• Kim (1990) sees a brand as being totally concerned with the intangible, a “mental construct” . A brand’s value, according to Kim, can be measured in terms of extensiveness (the number of people who have feelings about the brand), comprehensiveness (how general sable these feelings are) and intensiveness (the strength of feeling evoked by the brand). Two keywords can be identified in similar definitions of the termbrand: ”differentiation”, “quality guarantee”. These two attributes of a successful brand have benefits for both supplier and consumer.

2.2 Why A Brand

• A brand is just a company’s assure to its customers. It is a high impact way for companies to differentiate themselves and to establish trustworthiness, confidence and consistency of image and trust with consumers.
• Perceptive people will already have experiential that, so far, we have intentionally chosen not to make any reference to brands as assets. It will also be clear by now that figure1 depicts not just a physical product, but also a relationship with the customer. This relationship is personified either by the organization’s name, or by the brand name on the product itself. 

• ICI, IBM, BMW, Kodak and Cadbury’s are excellent examples of company brand names. Persil, Nescafe, Fosters and Dulux are excellent examples of product brand names.

1. First, then, it should be stressed, that when we refer to the term ‘brand’, we use it to include not only consumer products, but a whole host of offerings, which include people (such as politicians and pop stars), places (such as Bangkok), ships (such as the QE2), companies, manufacturing products, service products, and so on.
2. Second, dissimilarity should be drawn between a “brand” and a commodity. Commodity markets typically are characterized by the lack of perceived differentiation by customers between competing offerings. Through packaging and, more particularly, promotion, an international brand has been created with high brand loyalty and consequently it sells for a price well in excess of the costs of the ingredients.

• Conversely, one can also find examples of once-strong brands, which have been allowed to decay and in effect become commodities. This process is often brought about because the marketing asset base has been allowed to erode-perhaps through price-cutting or through a lack of attention to product improvement in the face o competition.
• Successful brand building helps profitability by adding values that attract customers to buy. They provide a firm base for expansion into product improvements, variants, added services, new countries, and so on. They protect organizations against the growing power of intermediaries.
• And last, but not least, brand help transform organizations from being faceless bureaucracies to ones that are attractive to work for and to manage.

                           

CHAPTER3. GLOBAL MOBILE PHONE MARKET SHARE

In recent times, there are five big players in the global mobile phone industry— Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

3.1 NOKIA

• According to Gartner ( ZDNet UK,2002), Finland-based Nokia extended its lead to 35.6 percent global market share from 34.2 percent in the same quarter a year ago ( Figure 3-2 and Table 3-1). This is because Nokia experienced the strongest position in GSM market by reaping the benefits of economies of scale, a focused branding campaign, strong product design, and unrivalled distribution channel.

3.2 MOTOROLA

• The number two Motorola, based in the United States, remained stable at 15.7 percent market share. Motorola is anguish from the cutting edge competition of global rivals and its incorrect focusing on analogue technology instead of digital technology. Lately, it is undergoing huge restructuring and rightsizings.

3.3 SUMSUNG

• South Korea’s Samsung rose to 9.5 percent from 6.5 percent a year ago. Samsung achieved its dramatic increase with high-end strategy. Moreover, Samsung has benefited from strong growth in CDMA markets, both at home and in the American market. Samsung has also performed well in the GSM markets such as Europe and Asia, underlining the strength of this organization and potential for continued market penetration in the future.

3.4 SIEMENS

• Germany’s Siemens, which in the first quarter was overtaken by Samsung, increased its market share from 7.4 to 8.4 percent. Siements focuses on low-end market of upgraded buyer. Its development of new models with high technology and attractive features led Siemens gained more market share into the fourth global mobile phone producer.

3.5 SONY ERICSSON

• Sony Ericsson, the joint venture between Sony and Ericsson’s mobile phone units, held 5.4 percent market share, down from 7.7 percent in the second quarter last year even it tried to launch new product to maintain market share world wide. Sony Ericsson focuses on making higher-priced handsets and was one of the first companies to sell a color-screen phone in Europe.

    Figure1: The Global Market Share of Mobile Phone Manufacturers

                           (The second quarter of 2002)

                 

3.6 Global Mobile Phone Sales Attitudes

• According to Dataquest Inc, a unit of Gartner Inc., worldwide mobile phone sales in the third quarter of 2002 grew about 7.8% from the same period last year. In addition, Gartner reported that worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 104.3 million units in the third quarter of 2002(Aanova, 2002).
• According to International Telecommunication Union (2001), the number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide is expected to reach 1 billion by 2002.And; it is expected to reach 1.5 billion in 2005(Manager, 2002).

    Table 2: Global Mobile Phone Market Shares in Term of Sales.

Source: Gartner Dataquest(October,2002)

• Moreover, Gartner(ZDNet UK, 2002) expects the global market to grow about 5 percent in 2002 as phone prices fall and color-screen models hit the market. The cheaper handsets will help the operators to cut mobile phone subsidies on prepaid packages allowing operators to preserve cash to cut their massive debts. With the new series of phones, which are cheaper to collect because they contain fewer components, operators will come out with attractive offers to target cost-sensitive consumers, particularly in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.

3.7 Companies Should Adopt A Global Brand

Investors have historically been extremely confident about the prospects for branded goods businesses, particularly those owning international brands. And the multinational branded goods owners themselves have shared that confidence. With their economies of scale, massive spending power and highly developed management structures, these behemoths have seemed invincible.

CHAPTER 4. COMPANIE MOVE PRODUCTION TO OVERSEAS

World trade and investment have grown rapidly, with many attractive markets opening up. The number of global companies also grows dramatically. To compete in foreign market, companies that operate in global markets need to broaden the sources of competitive advantage relentlessly over time.

4.1 Trends Drive Companies To Develop Global Market

• Levitt (1983) mentioned that technological, social, and economic trends were combining to create a unified world market place that was driving companies to develop global standardized products enabled them to capture global economics. 

4.2 Global Consumers Attitudes

• However, Kolter and Armstrong (2001) argued that consumers around the world differ in their cultures, attitudes and buying behaviors. 
• Also, market vary in their economic conditions, competitions, Accordingly, the differences across countries make marketers face particular challenges. 

1. First, they must figure out what products to be produced and what services to be provided in which countries. 
2. Then, they must decide how much to standardize or adapting their marketing program to each country. This dynamic environment constructed TWO fundamental counteracting forces: 

1. Standardizations and localization. They are the key issues in the international marketing management. The mobile phone industry is one of the global businesses tends toward globalisation and technological innovation.
2. Mobile phone companies are making effort to build up their global marketing strategy, especially heavily investing in Research & Development and design in order to compete over the globe.

3. Global Marketing Strategy

• By the concept of globalization, worldwide businesses use global marketing when they take the same or similar approach or content for one or more elements of the marketing mix, that is, the same or similar brand names, advertising, and so on in different.

1. Straight extension means marketing the product in the foreign market without any change. Top management tells its marketing people:” Find customers for the product as it is.”
2. Product adaptation involves changing the product to meet local conditions or preferences. There are several levels of adaptation. A company can product a regional version, a country version, a city version or even retailer versions of its products.
3. Product invention consists of creating something new for the foreign market. It can be divided into two forms.

1. First, Backward invention is reintroducing earlier products forms that happen to be well adapted to the needs of a given country.
2. And forward invention is creating a new product to meet a need in another country.

Moreover, some international marketers suggested that companies’ should:” think globally but act locally.”