Chapter 7 - Business Marketing

   Business marketing, also known as industrial marketing, is the marketing of goods and services to individuals and organizations for purposes other than personal consumption. However, Motorola mobility is a company that market its product to the end consumer:hence it sells consumer products. Motorola Solutions which was a sister unit of Motorola mobility that split in 2010 from Motorola Inc., is a company that utilizes business marketing. It sells major equipments, such as interactive kiosks, and RFID readers to businesses. Moreover, it provides accessory equipments like bar-code scanners, portable computing devices for stock management, and communication devices for organizations(two-way radios). Those products are intended to improve efficiency, and productivity, of businesses. and to be used for organizational tasks, other than personal use. 

   

Motorola Solutions advertising its business oriented products on their website

Strategic Alliance

  With the current state of affairs, Motorola has not considered a strategic alliance with any other company. However, they were engaged in it in the past. In 2012, Intel and Motorola made an agreement with each other to combine Intel's newest atom processor with Motorola's RAZR i android smartphone. Intel CEO at the time stated that their chips would provide a great platform for Motorola devices. It was the only US mobile phone manufacturer to use Intel processors in 2012, but the reception was not ecstatic. Intel processor was in its early stage, and it was not up to the level of Snapdragon processor at the time, and RAZRi was struggling in the market. Therefore, Motorola moved on to the Snapdragon processor that was hailed as the best mobile processor at the time. 

Birth child of their strategic alliance, RAZRi

Chapter 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

  Motorola's market is the mobile phone market. They introduce mobile phones to fulfill the needs and wants of their target market every year. In the past, Motorola was criticized for their marketing segmentation woes since they were only focused to sell their products in the U.S. However, the new management of Motorola has re-positioned  itself in the diverse mobile market to fulfill the needs and wants of both emerging, and established markets. It is evident from their new devices as the new Moto G was targeted at emerging markets such as, Chile, Peru and Brazil, while slightly expensive Moto X was targeted at established markets like U.S, including Europe, and Australia.This method of segmenting the market is known as geographic segmentation.  It allows them to identify group of customers with similar needs and wants, and also the buying patterns of these markets. Eventually, it delivers a marketing mix that caters to specific needs and wants of the segment.

  This method of market segmentation has worked in favor of Motorola in the last few years. It is mainly due to segmenting the market according to the criteria of successful segmentation.

1. Substantiality - They have utilized it to their advantage in order to sell their low budget Moto G effectively in emerging markets. When they announced the phone, they decided to release it in countries like Brazil, Chile, Peru, and India. I was startled by this because they did not include China to that list, which apparently has a boosting market for smartphones. Later, I found out the reason behind it when I read an article about Moto G. Chinese government has blocked Google play services which is essential for android phones. Since Moto G runs Android based software the consumers in China is most likely to buy a home based brand instead of the Moto G because of the lack of features due to the missing Google play services. Therefore, they have capitalized in other emerging markets excluding China.

2. Identifiability and Measurability - These markets that I mentioned before are being identified as emerging markets, because of the rising demand for products, such as smartphones, tablets and computers. The low price point of Moto G it attracts a lot of customers in these markets, since it matches their limited buying ability. It may be the reason why Motorola decided to market their products in these emerging markets. 

3. Accessibility  - This is common factor for all markets, because it is vital to reach the customers with special needs in any market. For example, Europe and U.S.A both have a high population of senior citizens. Finding solutions for accessibllity is less tedious for a company like Motorola because they have the ability to add features for their products without changing the product completely. They have added accessibility features such as, enlarge fonts, magnification gestures, talk back features that makes those devices easy to use for senior citizens as well as for disabled. 

4. Responsiveness - This is evident by Motorola's pricing strategy for their leading products. Even though, they targeted the Moto X for established markets, they priced it at a low point compared to its competitors. At the same time, Moto G was also a low budget phone that has a price difference of $150 in comparison to Moto X. Most of all, the prices are globally similar. This method of pricing agrees with the fact that it is not necessary to heavily increase the price depending on the market segment, unless that segmented market responds to a marketing mix differently than other segments.  

Forecast shows a rapid demand for smartphones in emerging markets

Chapter 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Revisions of Products

   New products are essential to keep up with the market, and to maximize profits as a company in this fast paced digital era. As many other tech companies, Motorola follows the strategy of introducing flagship mobile devices every year. This trend was started back in 1996, they released the breakthrough mobile phone "StarTAC". They had a good few years after the release of the phone, but the competition was able to come up with more value added features which poised them to replace their flagship device  after 4 year to keep up with the competition. Today's mobile phone market is fiercely competitive. It is simply not adequate for a mobile phone company to replace their previous product every 4 years since the technology is evolving at a fast pace. Therefore, it has become a necessity for smartphone manufacturers to come up with a successor every year for their last year's smartphone, and Motorola has already confirmed their plans on refreshing their mobile line up this year. These new products that serves to replace the previous product are called revisions of the existing product. 

New Product Lines & Research and Development

   Fittingly to this discussion, they are about to enter a whole new product line this year with the announcement of Moto 360. It has already created a buzz in the tech community, but Motorola aims to reach the regular consumer with an ergonomic design that mimics the traditional timepiece. It's design departures from the geeky square design which is followed by other smatwatch manufacturers. These design changes were made by Motorola's research & development team that has conducted thorough research, and brainstorming to make significant changes for its new products in order to make it unique in the market.

Moto 360

Samsung Smarwatches

A different design approach to smartwatch

Four Stages of Product Life Cycle.

Motorola's breakthrough product, StarTAC is a product that went through the four stages of product life cycle. It was introduced in 1996, it was in the center attention. It caught the eye of many businessmen, since it was portable & well designed compared to its previous edition, MicroTAC. This stage was the introductory stage of the StarTAC. Sales were growing steadily with the hype of the new mobile phone as it entered in to the growth stage. Motorola reported that it sold more than 40 million units in 1999, and the European phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, Ericsson started to introduce their products to the market to compete with Motorola. By the end of year 200 sales reached 60 million units, but the rate of sales were decreasing compared to what it was two year ago. Therefore, it was the reaching the climax of its maturity stage. Predictability, the steady ship was startled by the European tech giants inventions. Moreover, several technical issues with the device drove away the new customers. By the end of 2000 it was struggling in the market, and the sales were decreasing rapidly which means it entered in to the decline stage of the life cycle. In  2001, Motorola discontinued the product as they came up with a new iterations of the StarTAC.


   Currently, the Moto X is reaching its decline stage, while the inexpensive model Moto G is in the growth stage after 6 months of its launch. Moto X has been struggling to compete with the big guns since launch, and the sales figures were continuously dropping to this day according to Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, reception for Moto G has been overwhelming, and because of this demand, it also went out of stock in countries like India, Brazil & United Kingdom. Therefore, Moto G clearly belongs to the growth stage while the troubled Moto X is in the decline stage.

Chapter 12 - Services and Nonprofit Organization Marketing

   Even though Motorola is a product oriented company, they still have to provide services to ensure customer satisfaction after purchase. For example, it provides free phone consultation, and online chat service for its customers' to help them to navigate, or troubleshoot in an emergency. Moreover, it has several repair centers in major cities to provide after purchase repairs for the their products. 

   These few services I mentioned above are all intangible. They cannot be felt or touched as their products. Also, these services are heterogeneous. For example, the repair centers of Motorola could take different amount of time to repair the mobile phones from center to center, since it depends on the skills of the assigned engineers and technicians. Therefore, from center to center the quality and the rapidity of service could vary. Same goes for their customer service. 

Service Quality

   Service quality can make or break a company's reputation regardless of their orientation. With the ease of access to internet, consumers have the ability to get valuable information about services provided by certain companies. Therefore, companies have to provide a reliable service for the customers. In fact, is the utmost important aspect of service quality. For instance, if you were to call Motorola's customer care to claim the warranty for a damaged phone, (assuming that the damage has been covered by the warranty) you would not expect to have an argument with a representative to prove your eligibility. In other words, it should be accurate to the written warranty, and the process should be effortless to the customer. 

   Moreover, responsiveness is a key component in service quality. In the example above, if you were put on hold for 15-20 minutes because of the representative's incompetency, it would definitely irritate you as the customer, and it could lead you to give him/her a negative feedback. In the worst case scenario, they could lose you as a customer out of frustration. Therefore, response time is an important aspect in service quality. To counter those issues, companies like Motorola educate their customer service representatives about products, as well as issues that are related to them.

Chapter 10 - Product Concepts

   Motorola mobility is a company that offers consumer products worldwide. Their products serves to satisfy individual wants of the customers. If you analyze Motorola's product mix, it is clearly confined compared to companies, such as Apple, and Samsung. Those companies have a wide variety of products such as, smartphones, notebooks, MacBooks, Television sets, and DVD/Blu Ray players. Motorola mainly emphasizes on mobile phones, and accessories that works along with their products: hence the width of the product mix is considerably short. 

Brand

   When you hear the name Motorola you would recall that world renowned "M" symbol in your mind. As a prestige American company, Motorola has been able to establish their brand name, and the brand logo as a leading figure in the mobile phone industry. It could be one of the reasons why Lenovo opted to keep the Motorola name, and the logo for the company even after the acquisition, because the Motorola brand has a high awareness among the consumers.

All throughout the years, the iconic "M" hasn't left its brand logo

Product Modification

  Motorola has utilized functional modification in their products to present a better user experience for their consumers. Even though, their products were based on Android operating system,  in the beginning they used a completely different user interface that was created with hopes of making it appealing. However, they failed in that regard, since the user interface of their Android devices were full of lag, and it demanded a lot of system memory which made the phones unusable at times. Therefore, they decided to make a huge overhaul with their new devices by removing the UI completely, and using Google's authentic user interface with some added features. It worked in their favor, since they have been getting good feedback about their new overhaul to the user interface. Conversely, Apple decided to stick to their conventional user interface with iOS 7, because the early iterations has been praised by many consumers in the past. Even though, they did some minor tweaks to the exterior looks, it operates similarly to the old versions of iOS. They followed the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and it proves that product modification is something that has to be done after extensive research.

Apple's controlled approach to their operating system

Chapter 17 - Personal Selling and Sales Management

    Almost every business today is customer-centric. Motorola follows the same philosophy when it comes to marketing. They made a huge overhaul when they introduced their flagship device, Moto X last year, because it allowed the customers to customize the appearance of the mobile phone. It was something that consumers desired, since mobile phones lacked personalization. At the same time, Motorola's CEO stated in an interview that they always listens to the consumer's need as it is the base for their product's blueprint. It demonstrates Motorola's customer-centric approach to marketing.

    With their latest announcement, Motorola aims to generate leads for their new product line up this year. They introduced their new smart-watch with an exclusive advertisement on YouTube rather than publicizing it on conventional media. It allows them to gather feedback through comments, and see the expectations of their potential customers, and to change or add features according to that. Apart from that,  they held a public chat on Google hangouts where they answered many questions of people who were interested in the smart-watch. It provides valuable data about the potential customers which could result in favor of Motorola, since they are relatively new to the smart-watch business. 

Jim Wicks explaining the features of their new smart-watch which is due to release on this summer

    Since it's a mobile phone company, Motorola has the liberty to capture customer data directly from their mobile phones. The initial set up of a Moto X or any other Motorola smartphone asks the users consent to collect data from that phone, and these acquired data could reveal customer trends, such as what features they frequently use, and what is not. It also enables the users to send feedback about their new applications directly through the phone. These data could be used to change or add new features, and rectify issues in future releases that will benefit customers, and the company in the long run. Furthermore, interactions through social media, reviews, and comments from press gives valuable feedback to the company to keep or make changes to their products. The downside to this massive data collection is privacy breach. Therefore, the company abide by rules to collect those data anonymously in order to protect their customers private information. 

Chapter 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

      Motorola has invested considerable amount of money on advertising just as much as every other mobile phone company in the industry. However, it has gone in to great lengths to advertise products to the target market. It was well demonstrated in one of their latest advertisement for Moto X. They published an ad on the "Wired" magazine. It was not an ordinary advertisement. It was an interactive advertisement that allowed readers to select the color of the phone. An image of the advertisement is posted below for further review. It was an innovative approach, because they utilized a medium that lacks appeal to modern society, yet made it an interesting advertisement to promote their brand new phone.

When Readers tap the color tabs, the Color of the Phone Changes Accordingly 

Motorola also excels in comparative advertising. When Apple decided to make their own maps application, it ended up as a disaster since it navigated people to wrong locations, and in some cases to forbidden areas. Motorola capitalized on this failure to promote their new Droid RAZR M phone that was released consequently with a new advertisement called "iLost". It showcased that their new phone was significantly better at giving directions than the iPhone. Moreover, it was an effective advertisement which prompt other smartphone makers to create more comparative advertisement against Apple to great effect.

Motorola's Comparative Advertising Campaign 

  Celebrity endorsement is another advertising method used by Motorola in the past. The likes of David Beckham, Fergie have featured in their Moto RAZR advertisement to promote their products. David Beckham in particular took part in several Television advertisements which was targeted at the female audience, and soccer fans around the world.

Celebrity Endorsements

   Moreover, they heavily engage in consumer sales promotions where they offer product bundles at a bargain price. At the moment, you can purchase a no-contract Moto X phone for $399 bundled up with a free "Chromecast" that allows users to stream their music, photos, videos to TV. Add to that, you will receive a 30% off discount on accessories from their online retail store. It motivates potential consumers to purchase their main product, Moto X, and the accessories to go along with it.

Last week, they made an announcement about a new product category that they plan to introduce in this summer. It is a smartwatch called Moto 360, and they published a video which serves as a promotion and a sneak peak for their new product. This is already creating a huge buzz for their upcoming product, and it is an example for a pioneering advertising from Motorola.

Moto 360