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

Chapter 14 - Marketing Channels and Retailing

  When I was first confronted with this assignment, I was keen to find a Motorola retail store in New York, Later on, I found out that they haven't got any brick and mortar stores in the U.S. This gave me an opportunity to look in to other companies that excels in retailing. I finally picked Best Buy since I consider it as my second favorite place to buy electronic equipment after Amazon. I went in to their 86th Street store, arguably one of the busiest stores in Manhattan.

        

            As soon as I stepped in I recalled something that Professor Evans mentioned in the class. It was the smell of the store, the sense that matters most to a marketer. They certainly capitalized on that, since it had a pleasant smell for a busy store in the rush hour. I went in with the intention of inspecting the procedures in mobile department, and I was surprised by the crowd that was gathered in the mobile section. It had every latest gadget in the market today, and it was apparent that they lure customers from the hands on experience provided in their showrooms.

 From my short visit, I learned about their new price match service which allows the customers to match the prices of an item with other retailers, and purchase it for the bargain price. It demonstrates a clever tactic used by Best Buy to counter the rivalry from Amazon. 

                                                     Best Buy's 6 P's in Retailing

Chapter 6 - Consumer Decision Making

   Ever since the company was started, Motorola was a prominent contender in the mobile phone market. Their success among the consumers was seriously threatened when the iPhone was announced in 2007. Thereafter, Motorola tried various tactics to win back their customer base. Most of them were in vain, since non of them won over the customers that switched to other brands.

    However, after recent acquisitions, it has been introducing products that could change their fate in the mobile phone industry. When you evaluate the customer decision making process for a current Motorola product (Moto X), it would reveal the improvements that Motorola has made to make their products more appealing to the smartphone consumers.

   Today, smartphones have become a necessity, rather than a simple want among the consumers. A barrage of features have allowed consumers to do more than what they have imagined in the palm of their hands. As I have mentioned in the earlier posts, Motorola have taken a different approach to make smartphones. They have allowed their customers to create their own smartphone from the back plate to buttons. Most importantly, they have been able to keep the prices much lower than their competition. Those factors serves as a external stimulus that creates the "need" to buy their product.

   After the "need" is created, most customers do their research before purchasing the product. There are thousands of websites thats dedicated to review mobile phones and tablets, and those media outlets actively cover news regarding those devices. Some website leave it entirely to the customers to voice their opinion about the new phones they bought.

Even though, its labeled as user reviews, it is important to realize that it is difficult to find actual source on the internet. Anyone on the internet could create reviews at will. Therefore, it cannot be categorized as a non-marketing controlled information source, or a  marketing controlled information source.

Besides that, these outlets are being frequently used by smartphone consumers to pick the products they need. Also, YouTube is a popular source to get information about mobile phones.

Since their prices are lower than their competitors, customers are most likely to consider the Moto X over any other mobile phone. Moreover, features mentioned above are only available in Motorola phones. Therefore, it is highly unlikely to see customers evaluate alternatives in that price range.

Finally, after the purchase most customers have been giving positive feedback about the phone, except for some who had complained about the camera quality and other slight issues as you can see in the ratings above. Also, Many customers are glad to purchase this product, because it is an American made mobile phone. Most importantly, they are providing a great customer service from social media websites, and through their hotline. These services , and features that you get after purchase helps to satisfies Motorola customers in the long run.