Marketing Plan for Nokia Phones

3. Marketing Principles:

To achieve the desired level of sales, the company needs a robust marketing plan based on strong marketing principles. Although there are many principles that can be applied to Nokia, few of the most important ones that relate to the company in the current wake of times include:

 Customer Satisfaction

 Customer Perception

 Customer Needs & Expectations

 Generating Revenues

 Making Progress

 Environment Awareness

 Diffusion of Technology

Further, it is important to look into the 4P's of marketing or the marketing mix for any existing products. Although declining, Nokia's products are existent in the marketplace and therefore the impact of 4P's of marketing is definitely visible on the business.

The four P's of marketing also known as the marketing mix is a combination of elements within a marketing strategy that is aimed at giving the customer what they desire.

The 4P's of marketing mix are:

Product: Product is the core product of the company. In the case of Nokia, the product is the mobile phones that the company manufactures.

Price: Price is a key indicator of selling probabilities and the only fluctuating factor in terms of strategies applied. Different pricing strategies are applied by companies considering the need of different environments. With the introduction of large number of mobile providers, Nokia needs to re-design its pricing strategies to cater to all types of markets globally.

Place: Place refers to the geographic distribution of the product. Generally, place is dependent on the pricing strategies and how the company wishes to place itself in the market. For nokia, it is seen that the company has experienced declining sales in North American regions (Nokia Financials 2009). Therefore, the company needs to take steps to improve its sales in North America.

Promotion: Promotion refers to the attempts of the company in getting the information to be distributed amongst its target audience. Different media platforms are used for promotions which are again budget oriented and pricing strategy based.

4. External Factors Affecting Nokia:

While designing of a marketing strategy or a plan, it is important that companies take a note of the external factors affecting their business. Apart from these factors, it is important to realize the impact of external environment factors on the company. This is typically done through the use of SWOT and PESTEL analysis. PESTEL synchronized with its name is the effect of political, environmental, socio-economic, technological, environmental, legal factors on the company while SWOT is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the company. SWOT is explained in detail in the Appendix (Appendix A and Appendix B). It is important to conduct the PESTEL analysis of an organization while designing any marketing plans since it gives an idea of the external business factors affecting the company.

5. Changing Trends in Mobile Phone Market:

A lot depends on how businesses can evaluate the changes in the market that they operate. For this purpose, it is important that any business has conducted a market research of their industry. Market research helps to improve the management decisions by providing relevant, accurate and timely information (Aaker, Day 2001). The company needs to first analyze whether or not their market has been saturated and whether or not there is any room for product development. As it can be observed, the mobile phone market is almost saturated with newer technologies coming in at a brisk pace. Customer trends towards mobile phones have also changed drastically. There is a constant drift in demands of mobile phones of customers. With the introduction of touch screen technology and the 3G internet facilities, customers are willing to spend more on their handsets without compromising on certain services. The impact of branding too has played a major role in certain markets like the UK. According to Kamvar, Baluja (2007), cell phone users in the US are no more typing in search queries through their computers. This shows a significant proportion of mobile phone users wanting to use internet through their phones. Moreover, the technology has become affordable in recent times allowing more and more service providers to enter in the market thus producing more competition for Nokia. In business terms, this is a warning signal for the company and in such times the company is expected to change their market or products rapidly or allow some change in their operations to survive the competition. Branding the products of Nokia would also not be a recommended plan of action since the company already has a nice brand name to which it sells all of its products. The product life cycle of Nokia's mobile phones shall help in recommending the right plan of action.

6. Product Life Cycle:

The product life cycle for Nokia typically has four stages v.i.z Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. In its introduction stage, Nokia had produced phones that were bulky and operational for simple communication only. At that stage, there were a few competitors to the company due to which it emerged as the market leader. In its growth stage, Nokia like any other company promoted its products through various marketing strategies including promotions, advertising and using technology to allow users to watch videos on their Nokia handsets. During this stage, Nokia had made considerable profits. In the year 2005, the company had reported operating profits worth $1.32 billion (Nokia financials 2005). Thus, the company in its growth stage rightly made huge operating profits. However, the emergence of newer technologies gradually decreased Nokia's product demand in the marketplace. This was Nokia's declining stage when it made little efforts to market or promote its older phones since they were technologically outclassed. Nokia during this period had also closed the production of many of its phones due to the lag in technology within these phones. Thus, Nokia adopts a life cycle that is typical to any product in general. It is seen that during the growth stage of the life cycle of Nokia's products, it had recorded huge operating profits. However, during the decline stage it was seen that the company