Assignment
Case 1
Kevin Stewart, GM's marketing director for new ventures, has called you in for a consultation. He's been put under substantial pressure to increase the sales of GM's hybrid fleet but feels that, despite his best efforts, sales seem to keep falling further and further behind Toyota's Prius. By next week, he has been charged with making a recommendation to the CEO on exactly what GM should do next to make their vehicles more competitive against the Prius.
Last week in a brainstorming meeting he made the statement:
"If you want to get a lot of hybrids on the road, you put them in vehicles that people are buying now."
Where this seems to make perfect sense to him, the statement received a fair number of quizzical looks - far too many to be a coincidence. Knowing the need to produce real results, Mr. Stewart has asked for your help in first analyzing Toyota's success and then secondly generating a concrete recommendation he can take to the CEO.
He has asked you to investigate and report back to him on the following:
• Evaluate Toyota's marketing strategy so far - what have they done well and how has their knowledge of the major macro environmental and micro environmental factors contributed to this success?
• Given these findings, what is the biggest challenge facing GM in the hybrid market?
• What factors macro and micro environmental factors contribute to this challenge?
• What are 2-3 tactics GM could use to address this challenge?
o Evaluate the pros/cons of each approach for Mr. Stewart and determine - in your professional opinion - which is the better course of action and the one you think he should propose to the CEO
o State your proposed recommendation to Mr. Stewart
- Support your recommendation by stating the short-term or intended outcome of this plan (who is the target market, how they can be targeted/served)
- Consider any possible unintended or long-term consequences - since you know that if you recommend that GM go after a group in Toyota's target market they won't just sit back and let that happen.
Prepare an answer to Mr. Stewart's questions above. Be sure to research (at least 2 high quality resources are required) your answers, and then cite the sources appropriately.
Case 2
Your new business, Walsh Marketeers, finally looks like it's about to take off - but some of that optimism is tempered by exactly who your new client is. You have just been hired by Microsoft (the very good news) to help them review and plan forward their mobile phone venture (the hard-to-assess-whether-its-good-or-bad news).
When the team from Redmond came for their in-office meeting today, the brought with them an archive of old documents (Case #4 in you text). As you sifted through and dusted off these papers on Nokia's initial successes in the cell phone market you were struck by how much things had changed. You know that the Nokia cell phone division was purchased by Microsoft for $7 billion in April of 2014, but also know that in July of last year they wrote off the entire investment and fired a lot of employees because the investment, massive though it was, never achieved even a measure of the success that had been initially expected.
That however is about all you know - and unfortunately that seems to be all that your new Microsoft client team is absolutely sure of as well. As a result, they are banking on your insight and your objectivity to give them some guidance forward. Before moving forward, the team wants you to go back, assess those elements that lead to Nokia's initial and substantial success, consider how things have changes, and then to make some high-level recommendations as to what the best next steps might be for Microsoft in the market.
Specifically, they would like you to consider the following:
1. Using current research, evaluate Microsoft/Nokia's position in the overall cellular service market.
a. Using insight from the case, discuss the global strategy elements that led to Nokia's initial success in cellular phones.
i. Did they truly have a global strategy or a series of regional strategies?
ii. How did they differentiate between marketing to developed countries as opposed to developing countries?
iii. How did they utilize the five global product and communication strategies?
2. With these researched answers in hand, where should Microsoft/Nokia go next?
a. What is the biggest global marketing issue the organization faces currently?
b. What are the top three potential global strategic actions that the company should consider taking?
i. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these potential actions.
3. Provide your professional advice to the Microsoft team as to what they should do.
a. Identify and defend their best alternative
b. State the short-term or intended outcome of this plan (who is the target market, how they can be targeted/served, how will different markets be differentiated)
c. Consider any possible unintended or long-term consequences - since you know that competitors like Apple and Samsung won't just let Nokia reassert their dominance in the global cellular industry unchecked
Prepare an answer to Microsoft team's questions above. Be sure to research (at least 2 high quality resources are required) your answers, and then cite the sources appropriately.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.