Macro and Micro Environmental Forces Essay

External factors are usually divided into micro and macro environment. Macro environment is about external higher order forces which do not affect an organization dealing as yet or directly but may do so in the future. External factors may include; economic, technological, competition, political/legal, and social-cultural factors. Political factors; these are factors that relates to political system and political instability of countries where Nokia Company wish to market its products i. e. Nokia 5800XpressMusic and its music features. This will involve scrutinizing the system of government that such target countries have adopted. Nokia will therefore need to decide whether to invest in communist or capitalist countries after careful consideration of each political system in terms of carrying out business in the chosen country of interest. It is recommended that Nokia Company should invest in those countries with flexible capitalist political systems because it allows labour, capital and resources to flow freely in and out of their countries thus making those destinations the best target markets for Nokia to market its models as well as the advance features of music that it offers. External factors analysis can be best explained as follows: (Nokia for Business, 2008). Economic Factors; this will involve Nokia Company analyzing the economic factors that may hinder or augment its operations in the target countries. Such trade barriers like restriction of imports and exports as well as foreign exchange rate systems should be carefully evaluated by the management of Nokia in order to carry out its operations without economic constraints. Other economic factors of importance to be analyzed by the company will include, inflation particularly anticipated inflation, balance of payments, counter trade, fiscal and monetary policies among other significant factors. Although Nokia may not be subjected to many of the above factors it will be prudent to critically analyze deeply the factors particularly inflation and foreign exchange systems by utilizing forecasting techniques that can give the company a clear picture of the future (Lionel Laurent, 2008). Social Factors; this will involve the management of Nokia Company analyzing income level, social structures, educational backgrounds, and religion and family units before selling its new Nokia phones such as Nokia 5800XpressMusic models that comes with advance features to the community. History reveals that social factors play a major in role in utilization of services in the society for example some religious beliefs may not allow different kinds of music to be played. Therefore, it will be prudent for Nokia to clearly identify the right kind of music for the right consumers as well as for the right markets. Social factors may influence beliefs, interests and attitudes of the consumers and therefore the management of Nokia Company has to consider in details such factors in order to avoid losses associated with these social factors. Technological Factors; technology and innovations have taken centre stage in trying to achieve a considerable market share by firms in many industries. Technology provides an opportunity to the firm of expanding through utilization of advanced technologies but at the same time it may contribute negatively to market participation for example where businesses use technologies to compete unfairly. Nokia will have to utilize advance technologies for example the use of internet marketing while trying to explore new markets in the target market. Such technologies will be useful in that it will save time and financial resources that could have been spent and therefore the management can therefore use the surplus resources in further expansion or pay back its shareholders returns thus getting shareholder confidence in the process (Nokia for Business, 2008). Legal Factors; All businesses including Nokia must operate in a business environment deemed to be legal by the target market. The company will therefore have to ensure that the sale of Nokia 5800XpressMusic series with its all contents that include advance music features are allowed by the host country in order to avoid unnecessary legal battles. Nokia also should observe the existing laws regarding to business transactions in the target market particularly avoiding unfair competition. Also it should observe other legal aspects such as the areas of corporate social responsibility whereby Nokia will be expected to manufacture and sell its products at the same time protecting the environment and benefiting the surrounding community by employing them and also participating in community projects (Lionel Laurent, 2008). On the other hand micro environment is about actual and political transactions used in a firm and its environment in day to day activities of a company that include; customers, suppliers, intermediaries among others. One of such micro factors is the intensity of rivalry among Established Companies; it is true that Nokia faces a very competitive environment that has a big concentration of rival competitors making it a very competitive venture in its business operations. Take for instance; they compete with its rivals across al levels i. e. production of high quality mobile phones with quality features like that of music and hence there is need for Nokia to try all strategies to ensure that it beats its rivals as well attracting more customers every day. Nokia is more organized and have better strategies than the new ones that come up and therefore have a competitive edge over the others. An established company will mean having a well developed network that has a good client base and that is supported by customer loyalty and therefore locking out the new firms that try to make an impact by trying the existing markets. The well established pharmaceutical firms give a big challenge to the new companies in the market that try to make their products known. Even though substitute products like iphones are received in telecommunication industry, it becomes easy for the Nokia to push customers to start using its new mobile series in the market since it has a name in the market and customers are loyal to them (Nokia Inc. 2007). The other factor is that of the bargaining power of suppliers. Suppliers take advantage of their unique supplies to ask and bargain for what they want and enjoy the monopoly and charge expensively for the products or services that they offer. Customers are very sensitive to any changes that may affect them that are caused by the bargaining power of the suppliers. Suppliers are a competitive threat in telecommunication industry because they can raise the prices of new and the old supplies and therefore making the customers to try substitute products such as phones and iphones that can satisfy the same needs. Suppliers may cost Nokia a lot of financial constrain if they switch and fail to supply parts that are used for manufacturing such phones like Nokia 5800XoressMusic series (Botan, 1993). Individuals may prefer to try the substitutes e. g. iphones according to their financial therefore Nokia must try as much as possible to bargain well with its suppliers so that it may get quality products at the right price so that it may also sell and price its products like Nokia 5800XoressMusic series at a an affordable price when compared to its competitors. Recommendations for Strategic Marketing Planning Nokia can enter into joint venture with any firm in the telecommunication industry in order to reach to more customers. The joint ventures are forms of market entry that allows for technology sharing and joint product development which fits the promotion of Nokia 5800XoressMusic series as well as its salient features f music that it offers. The main advantage of joint ventures is to get proper political connections that will allow for favours to be achieved. It is usually suitable when; the market power, resources and size of the partner is small compared to the industry leaders. If Nokia enters a joint venture with any company for instance with Apple Company which is still then it will boosts its market power, and thus it will be able to meet the demands in that particular region. The main issues that are usually sorted out during the discussions for joint venture are; agreement periods, pricing methods, ownership and control, local firm capabilities and technology transfer. Nokia should also employ porter generic strategies in order to enhance its market share; such strategies rely on the dimensions of the strategic scope meaning the market penetration and strategic strength referring to the firms or sustainable competitive advantage such as cost leadership, product differentiation and market segmentation which are required to meet the challenges of the competition. Therefore Nokia can utilize; growth strategies, innovative strategies, among others. However, it should be noted that although they are believed to be the best in the market so far, they are yet to be applied by most companies. Nokia should also apply functional strategies in its marketing operations; these strategies are developed within every department of the company to increase its international sales margins and production. The marketing department can for example prepare an individual strategy that will meet the overall Nokia’s objectives. Other strategies under this include; new product development strategies, legal strategies, financial strategies etc which can also be set up as autonomous strategic business units that are responsible for all of its operations but answerable to the Nokia top management (Murray, 1989). Encirclement Strategies should also be adopted by Nokia while marketing its Nokia 5800XpressMusic touch screens phones. This strategy is also called the envelopment strategy and is a more subtle, gentle, broader and a bit non-offensive but harmful way of attacking the competitor. Normally, this kind of attack is undertaken in two ways. One, introduction of a broader range of products that are similar to the competitor’s products and each of these products will get a share of the same market the competitor is; in this case Nokia will introduce the 5800X series phones which will overtake other competitor’s gadgets such as iphones. In the long run, the competitor will be demoralized, weakened and discouraged leading to a state of siege of the competitor. This first method will ensure that full scale confrontation is avoided between the attacker and the target competitor. Secondly, the encirclement can also be based on market niches rather than the products themselves. In this case, the market share is liberated from the target competitor via the expansion of market niches that surround it; thus Nokia will have to diversify in order to reach to large market share (Lionel Laurent, 2008). Nokia should also draft out clear marketing mix strategies that will enhance a larger market share. A marketing mix is usually used especially on branding and advertising as argued by Jerome McCarthy. The populous four Ps of marketing mix strategies are utilized, these are; Product: Product marketing and management aspects deal with the specifications of the actual good or services and how it relates to customer needs; in this case the new Nokia 5800xpressMusic touch screen phone marketed by Nokia. Such phones should be diverse in its features for instance music enabled and thus meets the expectations of the customers. The characteristics of such 5800Xpress touch screens phones should further be well defined to meet the needs of the consumers (Kottler, 1996). Pricing; pricing is the process of setting a price for a product to be sold in the market and in this case touch screen Nokia 5800XpressMusic to launch by Nokia. It will not be necessarily fixing a monetary value but simply what to be exchanged for the touch screen phone at stake e. g. attention, time etc. Nokia can therefore adopt any of the following pricing strategies to enable Nokia 5800XpressMusic reach its marketing standards. Premium pricing is where the uniqueness of the touch screen phone is defined such as a fixed online fee; Penetration pricing whereby, once Nokia achieves the market share, it increases the price of its product i. e. Nokia 5800XpressMusic phone. Other strategies may include regional pricing strategy which defines the price according to the regions where the phones will be sold. Promotion; promotion strategy comes in various forms; personal selling, publicity, sales promotion or advertising and it refer to the various marketing strategies of convincing the customers to buy the brand, product and in this case Nokia 5800XpressMusic touch screen phone. Nokia should come up with various and best suitable channels of distribution to enable such phones to reach the targeted market. Place; place is also the distribution modes which refer to how the touch screen phones gets to the intended customer. Nokia should ensure that the 5800Xpress series touch screen phones are available to customers in time and in convenient places in order to satisfy their needs. The utilization of computer technology for instance can aid a firm to get access to a wider market thus boosting its business performance (Winer, 2007). Conclusion Research reveals that trade has become progressively more global in some scope these days and there are several grounds for this. One of such reasons is the ever advancement in modern technology that is now increasing communication efficiency and modernization; therefore firms like Nokia are now facing stiff competition from its rivals in the fight for achievement of larger market share. 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