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1. Competitive Strategy Of Nokia [Individual Assignment] * 2. Introduction: The basic question in the case of strategic management is how organisations achieve and uphold competitive advantage and therefore achive an average profit for industry. However, Because the business environment and individual firms are dynamic systems, endlessly in instability, it is a big challenge to attain a fit between both the systems and therefore get the competitive advantage. This article will firstly analyze and consider the balance of market-led and resource-based approaches in the academic point of view. These two approaches should be viewed as Following the discussion, the article analyzes Nokia’s strategies and empirically justifies the opposite and complementary relationship between both of these approaches. In the process of Nokia’s development, the company was successful because it could balance both approaches well. Once it failed to achive the balance, the company immediately suffered the loss in 2004, lost market share and decreased the revenue. However, the company was soon able to recover because it followed the market trends, and simultaneously its strong internal strengths neutralised the external threats. In addition, It can be argued that Nokia can maintain its market share and its market leader position in the following years based on the good market opportunities in mobile phone industry and its strong internal resources basis. Secondly, this article will assess Nokia’s strategies in terms of emergent and planned approaches as well * 3. A theoretical framework of Global Marketing Strategy "Global Marketing Strategy" has achieved great attention all across the world, both among the academicians and practitioners. It has been argued that worldwide marketplace has become so homogenized that multinational organizations can market standardized products and services all over the world, with identical strategies, that leads to lower costs and higher margins. The standardization of customers, importance of scale economies of standardized products and markets, can be argued when adapted to global markets. This issue has generated an important discussion on the effects of the globalization trends on company This section presents a theoretical perspective of the most influential framework of the present situation. The competitive strategy "The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew", Levitt (1960) explores the blindness of major business industries caused by narrow industry identification. The cellular phone industry is facing similar challenges today. There are hardly any cellular devices that only enable a phone conversation. New cellular devices are launched into the market with capability to collaborate information, exchange text messages, connect to corporate information sources etc. The railroad example and the cellular phone industry face similar identification threats, as the industries continues the rapidly expansion. The Marketing Myopia (Levitt 1960) is often refereed to as the marketing disciplines most quoted and reprinted paper that demonstrates the need for a broad interpretation of the marketing function. The article strongly argues for avoiding the myopia of narrow, product oriented industry definition. During the 1970s, the globalization of world business started for full (Jain 1989). American, European and Japanese organizations established subsidiaries and joint * 4. ventures all over the world. Theodore Levitt (1983) followed the globalization of business and emphasizes the focuses on the technology as a driving force towards a converging commonality in proletarianized communication, transport and travel. "Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technology" (Levitt 1983:1). The new reality forces organizations to emergence the global markets, but the multinational and the global organizations are not the same. The globalization of markets (Levitt 1983) explains how the same standardized product needs different analysis in different geographical segments in the global marketplace. The different analysis approaches are reflected in the organization’s orientation towards a multinational or the global company. "Globalization of markets" (Levitt 1983) is an expression which relates first to demand. Tastes, preferences and price are becoming increasingly universal in customer demands. Secondly, it relates to the supply side of the market. Products and services tend to become more standardized and competition within industries reaches a worldwide scale. Thirdly, it relates to the way organizations, mainly multinational companies, try to design their marketing policies and control systems. These efforts are done to retain its winner position in the global competition of global products, for global consumers. Michael E. Porter (1979) focuses on a different approach towards a competitive or differential advantage, by identifying the different competitive forces that exist within a competitive market. Knowledge of the underlying forces can shift a corporate focus on their collective strengths and identify the collective weaknesses. Organizations must increase its effort on how to influence the different forces in a corporate favor. Porter also contributed with several books, which entitles organizations to develop an approach to gain strategic or differential advantages and identifying the organizations value chain. * 5. Planned and emergent approaches There’s another keen argument about the planned and emergent approaches to strategic management . Some people argue that strategy is deliberate and should be deliberately planned and executed. Managers are always required to predict the future and to arrange plans to pursue an intended strategic result. In essence, this approach tends to emphasise long-term planning designed to achieve a ‘fit’ between an organisation’s strategy,settings and its environment. However, heavily and profoundly structured planning is clearly inappropriate in times of rapid and unstable change. In addition, it is clearly evident that, in practice, many strategies simply emerge from a stream of decisions that are made, which is better suited to dynamic and hyper competitive environments. Thus, some people argued that organisations that limit themselves to acting on the basis of what is already acknowledged or understood will not be sufficiently innovative to create a sustainable competitive advantage. However, in practice, planning and emergent approaches are both useful, they should not be seen as independent or mutually exclusive.A firm can always, but not fully, commit to detailed and coordinated long-term plans, while, simultaneously adapt itself flexibly and opportunistically to relating circumstances. That is, both planned and emergent approaches are necessary, and if an organisation is to succeed, then it is really important for the managers to try and strike the best possible balance between the two. Nokia had planned to develop the high-end mobile phone and invested heavily on its advanced products; meanwhile, the company also,as was earlie rplanned underwent an internal reorganisation aiming for the future sustainable growth. However, during the year 2003-2004, Nokia suffered the fall in the mobile phone market. Since the company then realised that the market was not yet ready for this new technology and operating system. The company emergently then adjusted its strategy again, and designed five new models of the mobile phones to meet the customer’s needs; meanwhile, the company followed the simply market trends and cut the price of phones. Soon the company recaptured the loss in the market share. In addition, the company gradually changed its stand and started to cooperate with the mobile network operators. These emerging strategy changes showed that Nokia no longer stuck to the strategies that were previously planned, while simultaneously adopted some emergent strategies in order to meet the customer needs and dynamic business environment. Actually, faced with the * 6. prospect of industry oversupply and increasing international competition in the mobile industry, Nokia will face more strategic choices. So, Nokia will need more emergent and planned strategies to respond to this dynamic global market based on the different business environment and situation. The Core Competence Part of Nokia’s core competence is the knowledge and experience in the wireless,cellular and network services industry. Nokia has gained several national and international awards by focusing on superior products and services.Introducing new product modifications and technological enhancements is part of the company’s product leadership. With a wide range of products, Nokia has applied products independently of technical standard or geographical location. Nokia also participates in several developing new global standards for future telecommunication needs and trends. With its leading position as mobile phone manufacturer and supplier of digital mobile networks, Nokia’s participation in development of future technologies enables and help them to deliver excellent products for the next decade.The Nokia products are mostly targeting to specific market segments. The Nokia design on portable cellular phones is characterized by the lifestyle of the people, freedom,opportunities of choice, technology and urbanization. The product design both emphasizes the behavior of the consumer and technical industry standards. Nokia was the first mobile phone manufacturer who adopted models for new ways of thinking into their marketing operations. The general management urged marketing managers to think of companies as repositories of skills, rather than the portfolios of products. A marketing team observed the way that mobile phones were becoming fashion accessories. This unusual approach resulted in a superior product design and * 7. control of consumer segment. Nokia attached a unique value of trends, lifestyles, freedom, power, and technology among others, into their products. Market development in the Emerging Markets Many countries in Eastern Europe are still operating under communistic governments and different reforms, but these governments are now slowly moving towards the western standards. Some of the Eastern European countries are trying to become members of the EU. These countries have a population of almost 100 million people, and the mobile phone penetration in the countries is low. Thus the sales of mobile phones in the South and Latin America have increased rapidly ,but it is estimated that half of the million people have never used a mobile phone. The region is benefiting from an improved governmental stability and a trend towards privatization .The market for mobile phones in Asia is also now increasing rapidly, and the potential sale is enormous due to the number of people living in these areas. The local operators have to develop the infrastructure for mobile phones to ensure the application and sale of mobile phones in the area. The crises in Asia this year has spread to most of the world. It has been reflected in stock markets world wide, and many branches, markets and companies have been through a rough period because of this. The result is that there are many governmental changes in many countries. This lead to a more uncertain political arena on the global mobile manufacturer market. Even though the price is low, the risk for large investments in these countries is considerable.Mobile manufacturers have invested a lot of there time and money in Research & Development and product development. This is their core strengths when facing possible entrants to the industry .There are, at the time, no substitutes to the mobile phones. The potential sale is sky high, especially in undeveloped countries like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and other 3rd world countries with high population rate * 8. Market-led and Resource based approaches ‘Firms should try to adapt themselves to market developments and they should build on the strengths of their resource bases and activity systems’. Some people argue that an organisation needs to adapt itself to its environment. Managers should take the environment as the starting point, then they should choose an advantageous market position and then gradually set up the resource base and activity system necessary to apply this choice. On the other hand, some argue that the organisation can adapt the environment to itself. Managers must take the organisation’s resource base as the starting point and select an environment to fit with its internal strengths. According to the first view, successful companies are externally oriented and market-driven and this view is referred to as ‘outside-in’ because of its focus on the environment The companies with this view take the environment as the starting point, set on developments in the market-place and adapt themselves to the external opportunities and threats encountered. They make use of the signals from customers and competitors for deciding their game plan. The proponents of this market-driven approach tend to emphasize that an insight into markets and industries is essential. They argue that not only the general structure of markets and industries need to be analyzed, but also specific demands, strengths, positions and intentions of all main forces need to be determined. As to Porter’s view this approach has spawned five forces, generic strategy and value chain frameworks. Many market-driven advocators suggest firms to initially lead market and industry to change, therefore, they can get the benefit from the altered rules of the game. Smirchich & Stubbart agreed with this opinion, and pointed out that firms can, in part, create their environments through strategic alliances with stakeholders, investments in leading technologies, advertising and a variety of other activities. Lieberman and Montgomery argued that firms that are market-driven are always the first ones to recognize that new resources or activities need to be developed. So those firms are better positioned can benefit from the ‘first mover advantage’. More significantly, Market positioning is vital for the company’s success. However, some argued that market positioning is vital, but it must take place within the boundaries set by the resource-driven strategy. That is, the market position selected should fit * 9. the organization’s resource base. So for being successful, companies must firstly build up a strong internal resource base, and then on the basis of this they can access to unfolding market opportunities in the medium and short term. In essence, this ‘inside-out’ approach assumes that competitive advantage depends upon the behavior of the organisation, rather than its competitive environment.The proponents of this approach also stressed on the importance of a firm’s competences over its tangible resources. Strategists have referred to the basis of this strategy as ‘competence based’ or ‘capabilities –based.Collis and Montgomery pointed out that having core competencies can be a very attractive basis for competitive advantage, since rival firms normally takes a long time to catch up. Even if competitors are successful at identifying the competencies and imitating them, the company with an initial leading position can still upgrade its competencies and stay ahead. Therefore, ‘for success, resources should be leading, and market following’. In practice, it is found both positioning and resource deployment issues critical for creating a competitive advantage. They argued that competitive advantage stems from the ability to align positional advantages and resource-based elements of strategy. Some other experts further suggest that the two approaches should be viewed as complementary, since organisations need to develop both internal and external focus to develop knowledge-based core competences and market driven strategies sensitive to customer needs.Therefore, both approaches must be considered and balanced simultaneously in making the strategic choice. Nokia was able to achieve a great success in the mobile phone industry because it aligned both the strategies – market-driven strategy and resource based strategy during the process of its development. And once it failed to do so, the company immediately suffered the fall, lost market share and decreased sales revenue. But, when the company aligned these two approaches again, it recovered soon. The article will assess the company’s strategy change between these two approaches and the results correspondingly. Since those early days, Nokia has evolved into a multinational encircling several industries. With the collapse of the USSR in 1990, Nokia suffered the high pressure to survive in so many different areas. Based on the new market opportunity the company predicted in mobile phone industry and its internal strengths-advanced technology on mobile phone sector.Nokia finally decided to focus on mobile phone industry. Soon Nokia achieved the success in the mobile * 10. phone industry and became the largest mobile phone company in the world. Without the external threats, the new market opportunities and its internal strengths on the mobile phone sector, Nokia may have not entered into the mobile phone industry at all. Therefore, both internal and external factors influenced Nokia’s strategic choice simultaneously.The big success Nokia quickly achieved in the mobile phone industry justified that the company’s choice was right, but this choice was made on the integration of market opportunities and Nokia’s internal strengths. A successful firm can develop the required potential to adopt or to shape the external environment, such as a new product, technological and market change. Over time, Nokia felt the cardinality of the design in mobile phones. Moreover, they also realised that the phone would not be limited to jst a communicating device role, but would also become fashion symbols. So further the company first broke explored the new ground and launched its fashionable and innovative handset -8210 instead of the previous bulky and brick sized device, the company transformed the customer needs and led the market change. For Nokia, this strategy not only earned the ‘first mover advantage and increased its market share, but also established a healthy brand name in the mobile phone industry and gained an extensive lead over competitors in this area. Furthermore, based on the different booming innovations from employees, such as text message, Nokia’s internal antennae design etc, Nokia kept updating its capability and gradually became the market leaders. Obviously, this change required both overall capability to produce the custom products, which is differentiate with the competitor’s, and an outside-in capability for understanding the evolving requirements of customers and energizing the organization to respond to them. Meanwhile, it also implied that market-led strategy and resource-based strategy have a reciprocal relationship, indeed, they complement each other. Following these successes, Nokia further solidified its market position based on its strong internal resource; meanwhile, company’s ability of sensitive of market trends lead the company to update its competence in a race to stay ahead. In the early 2000s, Nokia’s strategy changes further justifies the importance of the integration of these two approaches. Nokia just concentrated on launching the high-end mobile phones and the complicated software tending to supply the technologically advanced products and exceed the competitors, while paying less attention to other developments. Actually, at that time, the * 11. market was not ready for such devices. Eventually, the slow growth of customers’ demand for the advanced mobile phone caused Nokia to wait for the market. Thus, the company’s distinct competence on technolologically advanced products did not improve its performance and bring the competitive advantage due to its failure to meet the customers’ needs and its blunt market sense. Since Nokia realised what mistakes it had made, it soon adjusted the strategy. Followed the market trends, Nokia aggressively launched several new models of phones in June 2004 based on its strong resource capability, meanwhile, reduced the price of the phone. The company quickly recaptured its market share and increased revenue. The reason why the company recovered so soon was the ability that the company integrated again its inside-out capabilities and outside-in capabilities that matters. Based on the above analysis, marketing-led strategy and resource-based strategy both played key role in Nokia’s process of success. Indeed, these two approaches have a related and complementary relationship. In addition, based on Nokia’s internal resources and external business environment (From the supplied case information), I will assess whether it will be end of its dominance in mobile phone industry through Porter’s five forces (Porter, 1985, 1998) and Barney’s framework (Barney, 1991) as follows. * 12. Threat of entry Medium Industry Competitors rivalry Bargaining power of among Existing Firms Bargaining power of Supplier’s Buyers Strong Weak Strong Threat of Substitute Products Weak a) Threat of entry Microsoft Corp announced its decision to enter the mobile phones market, it could bring the big threat to Nokia. There are many other company entering into this market So, Nokia will meet more intensive competition than before. b) Threat of the substitutes There is no direct substitute in mobile phone industry, especially for Nokia’s highly advanced products c) Bargaining power of suppliers Since Nokia is the market leader in the mobile phone sector, Nokia is in the strong position. So bargaining power of suppliers is less * 13. d) Bargaining power of buyers In handsets market, end users are not directly purchasing handset from Nokia, instead they purchased from the service providers. Since the market becomes more sensitive to the price, Nokia could meet the strong bargaining power from the buyers. e) Rivalry among existing competitors There is a very high competition in mobile phone industry. The competitors include Samsung, LG, Sony Ericcson and other new emerging manufactures. Nokia SWOT analysis Internal analysis (Resource-based model) Strengths – Nokia has advanced technology over the competitors in the mobile phone industry – The market leadership in the mobile phone industry. – Strong brand value and image in the global market – Has its own manufacture and network. – Product innovation and creation. Weaknesses – Complications in technology – Few customized, operator-specific handset with less features – Few alliances, company sticks to its standing in the market, do not want to cooperate with the operators. Opportunities – The emerging market in developing countries, such as China, India – The emerging market for high-end mobile phone such as business user phone. * 14. Threats – Facing more new competitors, especially from Asia. – Stronger buyer power from the network operators. – Lost market share – Strong competition in mobile industry – The market becomes saturated Based on the above analysis, we can say that Nokia has the potential to remain a major presence in the global mobile phone industry in the following years. The external mobile phone market environment is dynamic, Nokia has lost its market share due to the misinterpretation of the market trends and customer needs. But the market also brings the big potential opportunities to Nokia, such as the market in developing countries, customized business user mobile phones and so on. Moreover, the most important of Nokia’s internal strengths, such as the advanced technology, innovative products, economy of scale, could let it surpass the competitors and solidify its market leader position; Furthermore, Nokia can benefit further from its strong brand name and company image. While the fall in 2004, to some degree, just reminds Nokia of the need to overcome its complacency and arrogance and to be more sensitive to customer needs. So, Nokia can maintain its market leader position in the following year in the global mobile phone industry. In fact, Nokia’s market share in handset market has increased to 39% in 2007 (BBC New, Conclusion: Based on the above assessment of Nokia’s approaches to mobile phone industry, although the approaches present as contradictory and conceptually opposed, in practice, they actually present a reciprocal and complementary relationship to each other. Arguably, no single approach can facilitate the company achieve the success within such a dynamic and complex mobile phone industry. Therefore, the various approaches should be viewed as complementary. Because Nokia adopted the balanced various approaches in its previous time, it gradually achieved the market leader position. Since Nokia lost the control to make sense the market trends and concentrated on its planned strategy, the balance between the different approaches also lost. Thus the company’s market share fell immediately. As Nokia adjusted its strategy, aligned its * 15. internal strengths and external opportunities and balanced the emergent and planned strategies, the company recaptured its market share again. Therefore, if Nokia wants to get the long term development in the mobile phone industry, the four approaches are all necessary.
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