In the continually evolving market place, a company needs to adapt their products with time. In product and business model development make sure you are clear on whether you are differentiating, neutralizing or optimizing. If you get your choice wrong you will die, if you get it right a global market leadership position is just round the corner, for a little while anyway.
Nokia got its choice wrong and faced its demise. Where did Nokia go wrong?
The answer of this question is “Market Research”. As Nokia has believed solely in product efficiency; they underestimated the power of market research in order to survive in the market with consumer holding. Now Samsung and Apple do not want to take any chance in the market place therefore market research has become the key to attain leadership in the wireless industry.
Marketing research informs; not replaces the knowledge, insights and gut decision-making of business people, creative designers and marketers. Marketers need to use marketing research; not only as a shield to hide behind risk aversion or as a scapegoat for poor decisions, but also as a partner in creativity, innovation as well as revenue generation. Marketing research must include creative qualitative research approaches to gathering information as well as intuition in interpreting and utilising data. Quantitative measurements works in collecting data through survey and experiments regarding the choice of consumer at a mass level.
Both companies conduct market research to secure their place; what puts Samsung a step ahead of Apple?
Once Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs stated that “It is not the consumer’s job to know what they want.” This statement shows that he was not in favour of market research much like Nokia. However, the demise of Nokia taught a lesson to Apple which persuaded them to carry out market research.
Apple follows “Ethnography” to carry out its market research in which Apple does not conduct traditional consumer research. In this method, they observe how people use their devices and notice how customers interact when they walk into an in an Apple store. Here, a store person plays the role of an ethnographer ( Philip W. Schiller, Vice-president of world wide marketing at Apple Inc).
Samsung has a work atmosphere that moves with the times owing to which they constantly churn out a miscellany of gadgets . It sees what the business sector reacts to, pushes victories, and kill disappointments. What’s more now, instead of simply giving a less expensive and lesser iPhone, it has separated itself with bigger screens, diverse elements, fruitful promoting, and conveying what buyers need by using qualitative and quantitative techniques.
The Note is an impeccable sample which created after a qualitative research. The organization found through statistical surveying that Asian-dialect speakers specifically needed a gadget that they could hand-compose on, in light of the fact that drawing characters is less demanding with a pen. The outcome was a blend telephone/tablet (“phablet”) that has been a surprising hit.
BCW, (2012).
In addition, Samsung used network insight to vacuum up any information related with iPhone 5 that was posted on social media platform. Vitally, Samsung utilized the dashboard to discover what individuals were posting online about the iPhone–rather than simply searching for posts about Samsung’s own particular items. They then distinguished particular grievances about the iPhone where their own particular items outflanked Apple’s items, and changed showcasing effort to underline these Samsung solid focuses.
| Period | Samsung | Apple | Huawei | Xiaomi | Lenovo* | Others |
| 2015Q2 | 21.4% | 13.9% | 8.7% | 5.6% | 4.7% | 45.7% |
| 2014Q2 | 24.8% | 11.6% | 6.7% | 4.6% | 8.0% | 44.3% |
| 2013Q2 | 31.9% | 12.9% | 4.3% | 1.7% | 5.7% | 43.6% |
| 2012Q2 | 32.2% | 16.6% | 4.1% | 1.0% | 5.9% | 40.2% |
Source: IDC, Aug 2015
A different approach to market research makes Samsung bigger than iPhone. Here, one thing is clearly seen that iPhone is still reluctant to rely on the market research tool to capture the maximum market. On the contrary, Samsung is going great guns in recognising the consumer taste. Samsung believes in optimizing highest level of profit in terms of revenue rather than securing brand image like iPhone.
It is important to regularly assess the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, who is your customer, what they want and whether there are any gaps in the market for a new entrant. This can be crucial during all stages i.e beginning, running or growth stage. However, market research makes it easier as Samsung has been doing.
By,
Name: Pravinkumar Chaudhari
username: pravin136
student id: 215050842
References
BCW, (2012). Samsung Galaxy Note Ridicules Apple Fans. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-BpvxmguTo [Accessed 16 Apr. 2016].
Cooper, J. (2013). Samsung’s Creative Qualitative Research. [online] BuyerSynthesis. Available at: http://buyersynthesis.com/blueocean/creative-qualitative-research/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
Heisler, Y. (2016). How Apple conducts Market Research and keeps iOS source code locked down. [online] Network World. Available at: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2222892/wireless/how-apple-conducts-market-research-and-keeps-ios-source-code-locked-down.html [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
Owens, J. (2014). How Samsung Outflanked Apple Using Social Media Research – Research Access. [online] Research Access. Available at: http://researchaccess.com/2014/07/social-media-research/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
Shankland, S. (2011). ‘Steve Jobs’ biography: A wealth of detail. [online] CNET. Available at: http://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-biography-a-wealth-of-detail/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
Vascellaro, J. (2016). Turns Out Apple Conducts Market Research After All. [online] WSJ. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/07/26/turns-out-apple-conducts-market-research-after-all/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
http://www.idc.com. (2016). IDC: Smartphone Vendor Market Share. [online] Available at: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-market-share.jsp [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].
T1 2016 MPK732 Marketing Management (Cluster B) 