The company that I have chosen to plan a needs assessment for is Nokia (handset division). Two years ago, Nokia entered into a semi-exclusive licensing agreement with Microsoft to use their Windows Phone 8 software for their smartphones. Microsoft is now on the verge of acquiring the handset division, despite its struggle to gain significant market share (particularly in North America).
In preparing to perform a needs assessment on Nokia (Phone Division), I would address the following:
Stakeholders:
Since entering its semi-exclusive Windows Phone 8 licensing deal with Microsoft, Nokia has failed to make a significant dent in smart phone market share. I would use surveys to address Nokia customers, customers of rivals and potential customers as well in order to determine overall sentiment towards Nokia phones, attempting to ascertain both perceived strengths and weaknesses of company handsets. I would also attempt to meet with the CEO’s, marketing leads and sales leads for both companies.
Questions:
Consumers- Questioning would focus on reasons for purchasing or not purchasing Nokia products, customer satisfaction oriented questions and subjective improvement-based queries
Executives- Questioning would focus on goals (past, present and future); I would ask about marketing strategies for mobile projects, including partnerships and budget. I would also need to know about tactics that have been effective and both ineffective in order to tweak and adjust strategic plans.
Documents/Records:
Here I would need to analyze financial records including sales, costs for marketing, R&D, labor, training/development and partnerships. I would also need to see any other marketing feedback data that the company has gathered in order to disaggregate and analyze the data. Also, I would want to see the breakdown in sales between various phone models in order to determine consumer preference.
Methods:
The methods to be employed in this analysis would include, but not be limited to Questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and archival historical data
I believe that Nokia would benefit greatly from a needs assessment. The company has spent an enormous amount of capital pushing, what by most accounts, is a more than competent and desirable product; for one reason or another, critical success is not translating into sales success. Does the problem reside with the marketing department? Retail partners? As previously stated, Nokia handsets receive great critical reviews, so the problem seemingly is not the issue. A needs analysis can determine whether or not the sales gap is due to human performance or poor system design.
I was really interested to read your needs analysis of Nokia. I remember many years ago one of my first cell phones was a Nokia and the brand seems to have virtually disappeared since that time. You bring up a great point and some great questions:
ReplyDelete“The company has spent an enormous amount of capital pushing, what by most accounts, is a more than competent and desirable product; for one reason or another, critical success is not translating into sales success. Does the problem reside with the marketing department? Retail partners?”
It would be very beneficial for the company to determine its shortcomings since as you stated, they may have a great product. Why does a great product not sell? Something else is certainly going wrong.
I recall my first cell phone was a Nokia. I was 16 years old...it was the greatest feeling in the world! It seems that Nokia's have become obsolete, considering the new trend... the iPhone. In my opinion, Nokia needs to step it's game up and find a trend, a unique trend, that makes them marketable as with the iPhone, Samsung, etc. As you stated in your post, "critical success is not translating into sales success. Does the problem reside with the marketing department? Retail partners? " I think you are asking very good questions, very important questions that are possibly driving the success or failure, depending on how you look at it, of the company. There is an underlying issue and I believe the questions that you are considering will provide the ultimate answer.
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