BUSINESS RESEARCH

NOKIA:

Developing strategies for relaunch a company

Professor : COPIK Sidonie

Student : Marie Cristine MULUMBA MUMBA

 SUMMARY

Introduction

I. Research Proposal

a) Background

b) Research Problem

c) Literature Review

- Introduction

- Analysis

- Sources

- Conclusion

d) Research Design

II. Survey

- Questionnaire

- Findings

- Conclusion
 INTRODUCTION

As part of my L3 LEA degree, I have to write a research methodology report for Ms.
Copik in which the objective of this study is to solve the following problem: "How can
Nokia relaunch its telecommunications sector?”

To do this, we have developed a plan with different parts:

Firstly, in the first point, I will start by explaining my research proposal, presenting the
objective, scope and methodology of my study.

Secondly, I will discuss the general context of my topic, mentioning the key elements
that led to my approach.

Then, I will describe precisely the problematic that I wish to solve, while presenting
the main questions that I will try to answer.

Through a review of the existing literature on the different topics to be addressed, I

will be able to identify the different approaches and points of view that have been
developed.
After this important step, I will proceed to an in-depth analysis of the collected data,
interpreting and comparing them in light of my initial hypotheses, while citing the
sources used in the realization of my study, in order to guarantee the credibility of my
results.
I will conclude this literature review by summarizing the results of my analysis and by
proposing possible solutions to the problem studied.

Next, I will present my research design, explaining the chosen methodology and the
data collected. In this section, a quantitative survey will be conducted in order to
deepen or complete my perspective on the different solutions to the problematic
treated previously.

Then in a second and final point, I will draw the final conclusions of my study,
summarizing the main results obtained and presenting recommendations for the
future.
 I - RESEARCH PROPOSAL

a)Background

The sudden disappearance of Nokia smartphones from the world is a milestone in

the history of communication technology. For many years, Nokia was one of the
leaders in the cell phone market, with reliable and innovative devices that were very
popular with users around the world. However, the arrival of new competitors in the
smartphone market, such as Apple and Samsung, as well as rapid changes in
mobile technology, eventually took a toll on Nokia's strategy. Despite numerous
efforts to remain competitive, Nokia was eventually forced to withdraw from the
smartphone market, resulting in the sudden disappearance of its flagship products
such as the Nokia Lumia, which were eventually no longer offered for sale in most
countries around the world.

In all this, we can remember that Nokia, a company that left its large "phone"
footprint in almost every corner of the world and seemed to have its high visibility as
well as its leadership assured, disappeared from the global telephony scene.

So the real question we can ask ourselves is, will Nokia be in the future the leader in
telephony that it became in the 90s?

The birth of Nokia dates back to 1865, in what is now Finland, founded by Fredrik
Idestam who opened a branch office near a river called Nokianvirta, which also gave
birth to the name of something that would have a worldwide impact.

At the time, it was impossible to envision that this same company, more than a
century later, would be leading a business that did not exist at the time: mobile
telephony.

In the 1960s, Nokia made its first forays into the telecommunications industry, its
wiring division put its chips in the right basket: radio transmitters. It took two decades
for a device to appear that seemed magical at the time: the Mobira Senator. A phone
that weighed 10 kg, and was carried in the car, which was later followed by the
Mobira CityMan, a phone that weighed 800 grams.

In the 1990s, Nokia was a key player in establishing the worldwide standard for GSM
mobile communications. By becoming a company focused exclusively on
telecommunications, a decision that time proved to be more than right: Nokia
became the world's largest phone manufacturer and remained on the throne for 14
years. During the 1990s, it launched the 2110 model on the market, together with the
ringtone that became an icon.

In the year 2000, it manufactured the Nokia 3310, quite popular for its great
resistance.

During much of the first decade of the 2000s Nokia continued to reap success and
surprise with its launches, phones that did more and more things: take pictures,
shoot videos, play music, access video games, and also offered a wide range of
designs, thanks to its constant innovation. In the meantime, new competitors were
arriving on the scene to take advantage of the great development of
telecommunications.

While Nokia enjoyed a dominant position and its innovations were spreading around
the globe, a new revolution was approaching: smartphones with their touch
screens.This new way of using the phone, which to this day looks indispensable,
annihilated a giant that woke up too late.

In 2007, Steve Jobs launched one of Nokia's biggest competitors: the iPhone. From
then on, Nokia fell year by year, going from holding almost half of the phone market
to around 3% from the end of 2012 onwards.

THE NOKIA’S BANKRUPTCY

Nokia's almost complete disappearance from the smartphone market occurred as a

result of the arrival of two major players: Android and iOS. Samsung began to
manufacture phones with Android operating systems, Apple was launching its
iPhone with iOS and Nokia was desperately trying to avoid falling.
First through its own operating system, then abandoning it and forming a failed
alliance with Microsoft in 2013, with which it sentenced its cell phones to use
Windows Phone.

An operating system that arrived late and therefore did not give users enough
reasons to use it, nor did it have a great diversity of applications.

Nokia's devices and services division was bought by Microsoft in 2013. This left the
manufacturer and its original genius temporarily out of the industry, as Microsoft
decided not to continue using the Nokia brand.

FAILURE TO INNOVATE

It should also be mentioned that during the digital transformation that was occurring
in the market, Nokia was only focused on selling itself well, thus failing to innovate,
without worrying about the demand of society.

STRONG COMPETENCE

On the one hand, Apple's arrival caused a market disruption that redefined the
smartphone business by attracting developers and controlling the high-end mobile
segment.

With strong sales and despite its high prices, it ended up becoming the revenue
leader in the cell phone market in less than four years from its advent to date.

At the other, the arrival of Google on the phone scene with Android smartphones led
several manufacturers and Nokia's current competitors to go and build smartphones
with the same device.

These facts negatively accelerated the fall of the great phone leader.

And it should be emphasized first of all that, although Nokia had two great qualities
that neither Samsung nor Apple could match to this day, which were the autonomy,
which allowed Nokia mobile devices could last many days without recharging. And
secondly, the robustness of Nokia devices which was considered incredible, iOS and
Android came to overshadow it.

NOKIA MOBILE PHONE EXTINCTION

After multiple failures, Microsoft in 2014, as part of its new strategy after the
acquisition of Nokia to finally manufacture its own smartphones, decided to take a
controversial next step, with the intention of completely renewing its brand, and the
identity of the same:
To stop using the Nokia brand by unifying its products and services and becoming
known simply as Windows.

In doing so, it marked forever the end of Nokia's phone era.

Following my own study of the book "Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia
in Mobile Phones" by Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson" which discusses how leaders
who made strategic and organizational decisions, of their behavior and interactions,
as well as how they succeeded and failed in inspiring and engaging their employees,
I have found that Nokia has largely declined not because of external factors, but
because of the following internal factors:

- Mismanagement due to fear and arrogance:

In which the company and management style could be described by many former
employees as aggressive and motivated by fear, fear of contradicting the board of
directors and being fired.

Despite the fact that Nokia's strategy was also to introduce new "innovative" versions
of the cell phone to the market faster and faster, due to lack of time, dozens of
incompatible versions of Symbian were created, all of which did not work optimally.

In the early 2000s, Nokia experimented with various game phones, camera phones
and all sorts of futuristic designs, but the feedback from the media was invariably the
same. Nice design, but a worthless user interface.

Despite the fact that in 2005, Nokia already knew that an Apple iPhone would be
introduced and that Google would launch an Android device in the market, because
of their great arrogance Nokia saw no threat in this and even though they had a
similar concept to the latest iPad at the time, they didn't market it thinking that the big
phone leader was invincible.

- Internal division and struggle

The arrival of high competition created internal competition at Nokia, making each of
the different departments strive to appear as the brightest and most effective, as this
allowed them to obtain more resources, more visibility and a greater chance of
promotion in front of management.

All this without forgetting that the pressure to work longer and harder was increased,
making, as mentioned above, that the fear of losing their job or being humiliated
increased.
For these reasons the main objective of maintaining market share was not achieved.
If Nokia had focused on innovation, market shares would have been maintained and
even gained through its automatic effect.

CONCLUSION

Concluding, learning from Nokia's failure, we can underline that new technologies
must be a fundamental part of a company's development. This one, had to innovate
faster than ever, even if critics might say that the phones did not live up to its
ambition.

On the one hand, one should emphasize the ability to flow with current changes and
the target audience, having a foresight of all future events and being able to get it
right.
SOURCES

INTERNET SOURCE :

1. The strategic decisions that caused Nokia’s Failure

https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/strategic-decisions-caused-nokias-failure Website.
Yves L. Doz, Nov 23, 2017. Apr 9, 2023.

6. Comment Apple a tué Nokia?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfNP1_g7-nU Website. Daddy Dtech, Feb 22, 2023. Apr
3, 2023.

7.Chiffre d'affaires net mondial de Nokia entre 1999 et 2022 (en milliards d'euros)
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/911315/chiffre-d-affaires-net-mondial-de-nokia Website.
(n.n). Mar, 2023. Mar 22, 2023.

BOOK SOURCE :

8. Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones.

Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson. October 20, 2017. March 22, 2023.
 b) RESEARCH PROBLEM

Nokia has experienced the fall of the great telephone sector that once made it the
number one in sales. Faced with this scenario, we ask ourselves the following
question: can companies relaunch a sector that has been affected?

Nokia's problem was its loss of popularity in the smartphone market, when it was

once one of the leaders in the field and its poor internal management. The company

was eclipsed by new players such as Apple and Samsung, who managed to

innovate and offer more attractive features to consumers leading to the decline of the

once leading company.

This research proposal aims to identify recovery strategies for a company that is

affected in its market. By taking the example of Nokia and its decline in the

telephone market due to its lack of innovation, poor decision making and internal

management, I will identify effective strategies to relaunch a company that is in

difficulty in its market while aiming to understand the key success factors for a

company that wishes to relaunch itself in its market.

The scope of this study will focus on the recovery strategies to be implemented by a

company, particularly in the field of communication technologies while answering the

following question: can companies relaunch a sector that has been affected?

The methodology of the latter will include a review of the literature on recovery

strategies for companies.

 c)LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

A literature review is an important step in business research because it involves

studying pre-existing work done by other researchers on the research topic in
question. The literature review is used to explore and synthesize existing knowledge,
identify gaps in existing research, and formulate hypotheses to guide future
research.

In short, it will allow me to understand the current state of knowledge on my research

topic, contribute to my own understanding of the research question, and ultimately
help me formulate an appropriate research methodology for my study.

This work required specific research to understand how companies could re-launch
an affected sector. To do so, it was necessary to analyze the management of the life
cycle of a product, the different strategies to relaunch it and what to do with a
product whose life phase reaches its decline.

This literature review will focus on three key aspects that will seek to address our
problem: What strategies for product lifecycle management? What strategies for the
relaunch of products? and What to do with a Product which is going to decline?

Bringing to the forefront the context of strategic product life cycle management,
through product life-cycle management:

A company must invest in marketing and information by conducting market research

on its target market and potential customers in the market and ensuring that the
necessary operations are carried out to get the product to the intended users.

During the introduction phase and the growth phase, you should set a fixed period
for the new product to prove its value. For example, by reaching a certain level of
turnover or margin.

Although this first phase requires high marketing expenses, it is important to choose
the right strategy with the lowest possible investment.

For example, social media marketing through social networks, where the average
user spends an average of 2 hours a day surfing these channels, which is obvious
because we must take advantage of our customers' presence in them to promote our
products.

On the one hand, if the criterion of the new product is to generate a certain volume of
sales during the first months, if it reaches this goal, it can be accepted in the
assortment. Then, if the product gains traction in the market, forecasts and
replenishment cycles should pick it up as soon as possible to maintain high levels of
availability.

But, on the other hand, if the product does not reach the turnover target, it should
move directly to the retirement phase without causing major losses.

If during the growth phase the product seems to be liked by customers and therefore
demand is strong. In this phase, availability must be essentially guaranteed, as
stock-outs can be a serious mistake.

Service levels must therefore be more important than stock optimization or order
transaction costs.

It is also important to use all available data to build a good forecast, so that as the
product moves through its life cycle, more data becomes available and more
quantitative trend models can start to be used.

When it comes to the maturity phase of a product, the key word is differentiation. In
which a company must find ways to make its products more attractive to the
consumer so that, in this way, we can generate an emotional connection with our
brand.

Through forms of differentiation, you can find loyalty programs, personalized

discount offers and the creation of innovative experiences around your products, all
of them driving customer satisfaction.

All this finally reaching the last stage, the decline stage, a phase in which you
evaluate both your own and your team's performance against the set of
pre-established objectives and the expected results in a given period of time, to
decide whether it is time to withdraw the item from the market, replace it with another
or relaunch it with new and more attractive features.

All this action, called KPI (Key Performance Indicator), can also help a company to
know whether its strategies adopted to achieve its objectives are working, how
effective they have been so far, or whether they need to be adjusted in the medium
or short term.
In the background the context of strategies for relaunching a product:

According to the following reasons, which coincide with the issues generally raised:
- Customers are no longer interested in the brand or product.
- There has been a change in market trends and there is a need to adapt to it.
- The slogan, logo or name is considered outdated and no longer connects with
customers.
- The brand's good reputation or positioning against the competition has been lost.

The company needs to focus on relaunching its products.

Within the concept of relaunching a product, there are several strategies that any
company could use:

- Change some of the product or brand features, such as the name, logo,
communication structure or packaging, so that they can offer a refreshed but still
recognizable image.
- Target a new market segment.
- Launch different versions of the product, differentiated by quality and price.

And, above all, encourage longer sales cycles and new internal communication
channels to reduce employee stress, fear and discomfort.

On the other hand, it is not advisable to relaunch if we have a young brand, since
building a solid branding takes time. It is also not a good idea to make changes to
the brand identity too often or without a good reason.

Thus, a company should prioritize the launch of a marketing/launch campaign,

defining its own objective to relaunch its brand and products.

All this would consist of regaining the same customer attraction it had before by
changing the perception of the brand in its industry, increasing consumer awareness
and increasing its sales again.

After defining its own objective, the company would have to investigate what are the
new market trends and the demands of its competitors and its own customers, in
order to rethink the new brand identity, generate emotions in customers and create a
connection between the product and potential buyers.

Moreover, without having to start from scratch, as some products already on the
market can be relaunched, and as a good starting point to guide the relaunch
strategy, the company will have to design attractive promotions for regular
customers.
But before proceeding with the relaunch, the internal and external communication
plan must be defined. Without forgetting that the employees themselves, whether
new or old, will have to know the brand perfectly, necessarily training them in the
elements that have changed and in the company's new communication strategies.

Finally, all these previous stages will help the company to launch its campaign to the
market, periodically measuring its effectiveness. In addition, the company will have
to evaluate the performance of the relaunch by conducting surveys among the target
audience a few weeks after relaunching the products.

As a perfect example, we have the relaunch of the Adidas brand with its Superstar
sneakers. A Superstar that in 2015 managed to bring back into fashion 45 years
after its launch by launching an image and video campaign in black and white, taking
advantage of the "retro" potential of the product but linking it to current characters of
the moment.

The campaign was disseminated through social networks and had a dedicated
landing page on the Adidas website, where exclusive images of the product could be
seen.
The Superstar campaign was a success because it managed to reconnect with
consumers, giving a new value to the product. The chosen channel, social media,
was very much aligned with the sites where its potential consumer is present. In
addition, this relaunch coincided with the rise of vintage, hipster and retro fashion, so
the product fit very well with contemporary trends.

Then arriving in the third and final plan with the big question, what to do with a
product that is going to decline?:

If the company had bet everything, you could try to reactivate the consumption of the
good, but in the opposite case where you can be foresighted, it is possible that the
company has other products in the launch phase or even substitutes.
If we consider that a product is in decline due to the arrival of new strong
competitors, new social changes and new technology, it reaches the end of its useful
life and is losing profitability, which is reflected in the company's profits.

In this case, we will have to analyze the new competitors and their marketing
strategies, the emergence of new needs, the marketing actions of the companies
with which we compete as well as the lack of marketing actions of the company.

Thanks to this analysis we will be able to develop our product, improve it, add
functionalities, and meet the desires that our customers do not currently find in our
products.

In addition to marketing actions to achieve visibility and credibility with branded

content. A technique that consists of creating content linked to a brand, which allows
us to connect the brand with the consumer, seeking to generate conversation and
notoriety around the brand, generating added value for the user, appealing to the
user's emotions, presenting the brand in multiple formats and dissemination
channels and co-creating our content with entities to highlight our products.
As a result, all this will make our product the first choice for potential customers.

In another case, we would have to employ marketing, creating value for customers
and building strong relationships to gain value from them, in order to find another
target market by expanding our reach to another market that would help us slow the
decline in sales, or even take the product to new growth.

But in our case, we are experiencing the irruption of a new technology that allows us
to develop products that compete directly with ours and that, moreover, cover the
same need as our product, even more effectively.

This means that our product is losing sales and coverage in the target market.

Therefore, we must take advantage of appealing in our marketing to the reliability,

safety, credibility and proven results of our products, because these are of interest,
when it comes to reducing risks whether financial, physical, psychological, functional,
or social in their purchases. All of this for customers who want it and for those
customers who simply don't like change, even if the new product is clearly better.

Concretely, as dictated above, we can revitalize our product through rebranding.

This strategy would also fit into the development of new markets or segments.
And in any case, it can also serve to give our product or service a more modern or
current look that allows us to better compete against new solutions.
Sources

1. Dans quelle mesure une stratégie de repositionnement permet-elle d’étendre

le cycle de vie d’un produit?.

https://web.p.ebscohost.com/abstract?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=00

353051&AN=6874464&h=X4AL7eInxWfPti3N%2frC8S1hMktd0OvV3PSW273hCo04xlh%2bopKPEtC9PU5m

QHzVTCZNzrBFRM%2fuz6CFeRcdnpw%3d%3d&crl=c&resultNs=AdminWebAuth&resultLocal=ErrCrlNot

Auth&crlhashurl=login.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26profile%3dehost%26scope%3dsite%26authtype%3dcra

wler%26jrnl%3d00353051%26AN%3d6874464 Website-article. Soussy Caroline, Revue

Française du Marketing . 2001, Issue 182, p129. 13p. Apr 10, 2023.

2. "Strategic brand innovation – an explorative study of up- and downstream

brand innovation practices in SME wineries",

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJWBR-07-2021-0037/full/html Website-Article.

Drebler M. and Paunovic. (2023), International Journal of Wine Business Research,

Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 66-88. Apr 13, 2023.

3.Launching and re-launching high technology products

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166497202000974 Website-Article.

C.Easingwood and S. Harrington. Technovation Volume 22. 11, Pages 657-666. Nov

11, 2002. Apr 18, 2023.

4.Matching managerial strategies to conditions of decline

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hrm.3930220405 Website-Article. Kim Cameron,

Raymond Zammuto. Human Resource Management, Vol. 22, Number 4,

Pp.359-375. 1983. Apr 18, 2023.

Conclusion

In sum, with what we have gathered, we can say that yes, a company can relaunch a

sector that has been affected by applying the different marketing strategies

mentioned above such as rebranding, marketing campaigns and KPI's, innovating

and focusing above all on its customers, their tastes and their buying behavior in

order not to make the same mistake as Nokia.

RESEARCH DESIGN

This methodologically rigorous research design helped me to ensure the validity,

reliability, and credibility of the research and to achieve the study objectives in an

efficient manner while allowing me to define the research questions and hypotheses.

Through several telephone interviews of 5 minutes, I was able to interview one

person and here are the results.

SURVEY

The objective of my survey is to collect several relevant data that will allow me to

answer the problematic "how to relaunch the activity of a company". This one will be

solved thanks to the points of view of experts who will provide me with

complementary information to support or deepen my argumentation. This information

will be collected through a telephone interview, where several open questions will be

asked.

The questions asked during the interview are the following:

1. What is your expertise in product relaunching?

2. What are the strategies to relaunch a declining product that you can recommend
to a company?

3. Nokia is no longer in the phone business, how do you think they can relaunch it?

So after interviewing Djena BELARA, marketing manager of the luxury brand SAPE,

I got these following answers: I must point out the fact that the expertise could only

answer two questions out of the three asked.

1. I would innovate by breaking the common codes of the product, creating a brand

new version, and I would open up to another market that offers the same things, a

parallel market

2. It could revive its sector by playing on the vintage, for example I have personally

known the 3310 phone model of the Nokia brand, a product that was considered

mythical when it was released. This one and others can be re-launched in an

innovative way with the same vintage characteristics that it had once, with current

software.

Findings

Based on the questions of the interview and the answers provided by Djena

BELARA, marketing manager of the luxury brand SAPE, I was able to conclude that

we share a certain base of perspectives like those studied during this report, to

relaunch a product in decline. The perspectives, according to Ms. BELARA, consist

in breaking the common codes and creating a brand new version of the product,

opening up to another market that offers the same things, playing on the vintage

aspect of the product and re-launching older models with updated software. And the

one I was able to study during this report, centralized innovation. It is important to
note that even though the expert was not able to answer all the questions asked, the

answers provided offer valuable information that can be used to relaunch a

company's activity.

CONCLUSION

Through this research methodology, I have been able to draw the fact that yes, a

company can relaunch a sector of activity that has gone into decline. Through the

theories studied, which support and emphasize the fact that it can be strategically

relaunched through KPI, brand marketing, the highlighting of product innovation

through the reuse of mythical products while modernizing them and marketing

campaigns. I was missing some information so although my survey did not provide it,

it was able to complete my perspective.

Through this research of methodology, mainly I was able to draw the fact that yes, a

company can revive a sector of activity that has turned to decline, through the

theories studied, which support and emphasize the fact that it can be strategically

revived through the KPI, brand marketing, highlighting product innovation through

the reuse of mythical products while modernizing them and marketing campaigns.

Through this research of methodology, mainly I was able to draw the fact that yes, a

company can revive a sector of activity that has turned to decline, through the
theories studied, which support and emphasize the fact that it can be strategically

revived through the KPI, brand marketing, highlighting product innovation through

the reuse of mythical products while modernizing them and marketing campaigns.

I was missing some information so although my survey did not necessarily bring it to

me, it was able to complete my perspective that the solutions found to this problem is

the relaunch of products through the strategic marketing methods listed below:

1. Rebranding

2. Marketing campaigns

3. The reuse of a mythical product in a modernized and adapted way to its

consumers.