The Marketing Plan of Honda

Executive summary

The mobile phone and phone device market in Vietnam is developing and with the high growth rate of phone users, Vietnam becomes a potential market of phone company. First introduced in 1996, until now Nokia is one of the popular brands in Vietnam. Understanding customer needs and want is a key for success of Nokia. Nokia has many line products that can be listed out as E series, N series, 1200, Lumia… Nowadays, digital technology and smart phone seem to be more popular.

Nokia Vietnam has a wide range of products and it is necessary to identify which areas that could be improved. Thus, Nokia’s trend is smart phone which be integrated many applications, running on Windows operating system for phone. With the same macro-environment, there are many competitors such as Apple with Iphone, Samsung with Galaxy, Sony Ericsson with Xperia. There are also external and internal factors that affect the company and create Strength, Opportunities, Weakness and Threats and by analyzing these factors Nokia can figure out marketing strategy and with the development in Vietnam, Nokia is reaching their specific strategy that called “global supply chain strategy”.

Table of contents

Company profile

Nokia, a Finnish company was established in 1865 and over the past 150 years, Nokia has evolved from a riverside paper mill in south-western Finland to a global telecommunications leader connecting over 1.3 billion people. In 1998, Nokia was selected the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer (Nokia’s official website, 2010). In 2010, Nokia becomes a leading company in digital technology industry, including mobile phones, telecommunications networks, wireless data solutions and multimedia terminals with about 27% market share of World mobile industry. Nokia has three main product categories: mobile phones, telecommunications networks and software’s solutions.

Recently, this group has met many challenges and income loss. According to the technology page on British newspaper – The Guardian, Nokia has lost the “King” position in mobile phones area. The revenue in the first quarter of 2012 of Nokia has dropped 29% over the same period last year, down to 9.7 billion USD.

In Vietnam, Nokia was first introduced in 1996 and until now it’s still the most favourite brand by occuping almost market share.

In 2011, Nokia also announced it will build a factory mobile phones in Vietnam. The company said the new plant would be worth 200 million Euros and will be located near Hanoi. The new production will comeintooperation from 2012. The Nokia has factories Brazil, Mexico, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Britain, China, India and Korea. Thus, a factory in Vietnam is the 10th country of the Finnish company. Vice President, Nokia said the factory in our country will play a major role in connecting billions of people on the internet.
Company analysis
Mission statement

Nokia’s mission is simple: Connecting People. The goal is to build great mobile products that enable billions of people worldwide to enjoy more of what life has to offer. The challenge is to achieve this in an increasingly dynamic and competitive environment. Everyone has a need to communicate and share. Nokia helps people to fulfill this need and we help people feel close to what matters to them and focuses on providing consumers with very human technology NOKIA
Nokia exists to connect people with innovative, quality, up to date products that are easy to use. “Nokia is a world leader in mobile communications, driving the growth and sustainability of the broader mobility industry. Nokia connects people to each other and the information that matters to them with easy-to-use and innovative products like mobile phones, devices and solutions for imaging, games, media and businesses. Nokia provides equipment, solutions and services for network operators and corporations.” ( Nokia.com)

Company objective
The opening ceremony took place on Apr 23rd in Bac Ninh and according to our source the Nokia’s new factory will produce cheap mobile devices to serve the growing markets with localized functions. Vietnam factory will be the third large on the the world, after other factories in India and China which focus on smart phone production. From Nov 2011, this group founded Nokia (Vietnam) LLC towards the objectives to open production units in this country. Currently, many divisions are in the process to recruit young local talents to ramp up the pre-production process.
Environment Analysis
Macro-environment are the major external and uncontrollable factors that influence a company’s decision making and affect its strategies and performance. Analysis factors helps Nokia determine their target and make suitable strategies. The tool used to scan the business environment is through PEST analysis.
Demographic factors
Vietnam is the country with high population and almost are the young. This is plays an important role in determining major customers and deciding orientation.
Mobile phone usage in Vietnam is big and getting bigger. Nielsen’s 2008 Vietnam Mobile Insights Report shows mobile use is spread across all age with a slight skew to the 25-34 years old, followed by the 15-24 years old and 35-44 years old. From teenage to over 60s, it seems everyone has his own mobile phone. In fact, 74% of people in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi City; 58% of people in urban and 37% of people in rural areas own cell phone.
With 54% of the population under 25 years of age, it’s no surprise that the young in Vietnam are hungry for new technology and keeping up with the latest product. Moreover, almost people are in working age so their need to communicate is high. Not only call and message, they but also check mail, update information wherever and whenever. Hence, the smart phone has a chance to development.
Economic factors
The global crisis also influenced in cell phone industry. It makes this market production down and the revenue decrease. But Vietnam economy grows faster and faster, the need of smart phone is not climb down. The growth rate of this kind of phone in 2011 is 44% and is predicted to become 51% in 2012.
Personal and household incomes have increased significantly in recent year, leading to much higher consumption of consumer products and services, including mobile phone. Most people use their phone for business and spend less than 200,000VND per month using prepaid card.

Social Factors
Vietnamese consumers are resilient and despite the global economic crisis, they remain relatively positive. Vietnam consumers are ranked the 9th most confident in the world according to Nielsen’s Global Consumers Confidence study released in November 2008
Technological factors
Research and development plays a key role in success of any company. The more technological advance the firm is, the better they have advantage to capture the market. As Nokia is well-known for its wireless technology and is among the leader.
They are using their advance technology in the service provider market and provide strong network range to bring Vietnamese consumers high speed Wi-Fi production for working purpose.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis in marketing is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats.
In the market, there are many companies those have the same product or same target with Nokia, both in mobile field and in software supply field. Thus, an analysising well competitor plays a vital role to Nokia survival and development.
Indirect competitor
In the phone field, Nokia has to compete with home phone company, internet phone company such as Ifone, Sky phone or home phone product from Siemens, LG…
In the software supply, App Store is a big competitor for Ovi Store. In photo sharing, Ovi Share is competiting with Dropbox and is said to be stopped in the near future.
Direct competitor
Vietnam is considered be one of the potential markets in the world so many companies and groups invested there. In Vietnam, there are more than 20 brands of mobile phone and these figures is increasing.
Nokia has 3 major types of mobile phone product: classical series (1200, 110i, 1208…), original series (5300, 2700, E series…), smart phone series (N series, Lumia…). Each type has specific competitors. In smart phone sector, Samsung and Apple are 2 major competitive.
Nokia, Samsung and Apple are the top 3 handset makers in the world

Apple
Apple certainly is the phone manufacture that receives the largest amount of buzz, but it is still a newcomer in the cell phone market. Companies like Nokia and Samsung have been creating handsets for much longer and they have built a reputation on people mind.
The fact is Nokia and Samsung are the top two cell phone producers in Vietnam and Apple is maybe at the third place. Obviously, Apple produce Iphone, but both Samsung and Nokia create multiple types of phone. For example, Samsung produced Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsun Galaxy Nexus while Nokia has Lumia 800, Lumia 900, N9…
In the beginning of 2012, Apple started combining with 3 largest telephone network groups in Vietnam: Mobiphone, Vinaphone and Viettel in distributing Iphone in Vietnam. Thus, Vietnam people can buy Iphone with the best price and have no worry about fake product and also get many services from distributer.
In spite of high price, iphone has other strong point such as IOS and Mac OS which is simply, smooth, good battery energy and powerful processing; good and luxurious design, huge apps store. Hence this smart phone becomes popular in a developing country like Vietnam.
Samsung
Speedy is a key to success of Samsung Electronics Company, which is known as its theory “Sashimi”. That is to apply the principle of continuous improvement technology and quickly launch new products to win customers’ attention.
Galaxy is the smart phone line product of Samsung running on Android, which includes more than 20 products with many kinds of price for different customers. Having the same design with Iphone, but with the cheaper price and also give favor to customer such as free application on Android market, Samsung is going to be the first choice for Vietnamese people.
Although the price is cheap and the design is good, Samsung products are reflected with many mistakes in operating system, camera… Product is not long-lasting, is the weakness of Samsung.
Positioning map

Iphone4
High price

Galaxy Note

Galaxy Nexus

Lumia 800 N8

High quality