abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
Marketing Research of Nokia : Nokia Corporation (Finnish pronunciation: ) (OMX: NOK1V, NYSE: NOK, FWB: NOA3) is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki.[2] Nokia is engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries, with over 132,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of over €42 billion and operating profit of €2 billion as of 2010.[1] It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones: its global device market share was 31% in the fourth quarter 2010, up from an estimated 30% in third quarter of 2010 but down from an estimated 35% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Nokia's estimated share of the converged mobile device market was 31% in the fourth quarter, compared with 38% in the third quarter 2010.[1] Nokia produces mobile devices for every major market segment and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA (UMTS). Nokia offers Internet services such as applications, games, music, maps, media and messaging through its Ovi platform. Nokia's subsidiary Nokia Siemens Networks produces telecommunications network equipment, solutions and services.[3] Nokia is also engaged in providing free digital map information and navigation services through its wholly-owned subsidiary Navteq.[4] Nokia also has greater dependency on England based company duo namely Symbian Corporation for its mobile operating systems and OVI for its mobile based application software development and distribution, which has made Nokia as highest selling mobile phone vendor within the last few years.
Nokia has sites for research and development, manufacture and sales in many countries throughout the world. As of December 2010, Nokia had R&D presence in 16 countries and employed 35,870 people in research and development, representing approximately 27% of the group's total workforce.[1] The Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia's industrial research unit consisting of about 500 researchers, engineers and scientists.[5][6] It has sites in seven countries: Finland, China, India, Kenya, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.[7] Besides its research centers, in 2001 Nokia founded (and owns) INdT – Nokia Institute of Technology, a R&D institute located in Brazil.[8] Nokia operates a total of 4 key manufacturing areas[9] located at Salo, Finland; Beijing and Dongguan , China; and Masan, South Korea.[10][11] Nokia's industrial design department is headquartered in Soho in London, UK with significant satellite offices in Helsinki, Finland and Calabasas, California in the USA.
Nokia is a public limited liability company listed on the Helsinki, Frankfurt, and New York stock exchanges.[9] Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland; it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007, a unique situation for an industrialized country.[12] It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as its partners and subcontractors.[13] Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003.[14]
Devices & Services
In the fourth quarter 2008, the total mobile device volumes of our Devices & Services group were 113.1 million
units, representing a decline of 15% year on year and a 4% sequential decrease. The overall industry mobile device
volumes for the same period were 305 million units based on Nokia’s estimate, representing a 9% year on year
decrease and a 2% sequential decrease.
Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the fourth quarter 2008
increased to 48.0 million units, based on Nokia’s estimate, compared with an estimated 40.1 million units in the
fourth quarter 2007 and 44.2 million units in the third quarter 2008. Our own converged mobile device volumes
were 15.1 million units in the fourth quarter 2008, compared with 18.8 million units in the fourth quarter 2007
and 15.5 million units in the third quarter 2008. We shipped approximately 8 million Nokia Nseries and over 3
million Nokia Eseries devices during the fourth quarter 2008.
The following chart sets out our mobile device volumes for the periods indicated, as well as the year on year and
sequential growth rates, by geographic area.
In considering the design of the research method, we planned to carry out both observation
and street intercept interviewing of the customers. We realised that we would face
some cultural barriers when trying to stop people and encourage them to talk about their
mobile phone experiences. The issues that were considered are as follows:
• Thanks to the Aum incident, the Japanese are more conscious than ever about being
approached by people on the street. There are also many men who aggressively
recruit or flirt with women in ‘young’ areas such as the Shibuya area of Tokyo.
• People in Japan are naturally reluctant to voice their opinions in public to someone
that they do not know. This is particularly true when the person asking them is also
Japanese.
• Similarly, most Japanese will refuse to have their photo taken by other Japanese,
but less so by foreigners. Foreigners are seen as tourists and so it is ok.
• (Probably not specific to Japan) People are naturally not comfortable with being approached
by a group of four or more people. Even three is a bit too many.
For these reasons, we selected the following approach.
- The research teams would comprise two people.
- One male, one female.
- One Japanese, one Gaijin (foreigner).
- The foreigner is assigned to observation and taking photographs of the Gemba
scene and customers.
- The Japanese person also observes, conducts interviews and makes notes of
what the customers say.
As mentioned earlier,
we decided
from the start to
‘go to the Gemba’
ourselves. This
highlighted a need
for training in the
observation and
interviewing techniques
that we
planned to use because
very few of
the project team
members had a
market research
background. However,
it was felt
that the benefits of
experiencing the
customer contact
first hand would
outweigh the disadvantages
of our
lack of experience.
So the next step was the creation of a Training Guide (Figure 3.) to facilitate the training
and to act as a reference for the future. To create a very effective guide we engaged a
local market research company to co-develop the guide. This was important for providing
tips for first timers on how to approach and interview people on the street. The
document is intended to be self-explanatory and to contain all the information needed for
anyone in the company to conduct a Gemba visit. The document contains the following
information:
1. Introduction – the objectives of the research
2. What the Gemba is all about
3. The basic steps (go to the Gemba, observe, develop questions, interview people,
report)
4. The Gemba team (male/female, local/foreign) and why
B4 You Go
�� Teams should consist of two people (one foreigner + one Japanese)
�� Reason (Explained later)
�� Teams are recommended to consist of one male and one female
�� Reason (Explained later)
�� Decide where to observe
�� Decide the main target end user for that day and select a part of town
where that target is likely to be found.
�� Until interviewers begin to feel comfortable with the process, interviews
should be conducted on the street. Later, the range of sites can
be expanded to include train station platforms, trains themselves, department
stores and supermarkets, bars, and restaurants.
�� Items to bring
�� Digital camera
�� Interview sheets and pen
�� Clipboard (to interview while standing)
�� Business cards (in case subject asks for proof that you are a Nokia
employee)
��F Cigoumrpele 3m.e Entxaraym gipftsle fe oatfu rGineg mNobkaia Tlorgaoi ning Guide
12 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
5. Preparation
6. Guidelines for observation, what to look for
7. Guidelines for interviewing, how to approach people, what to ask (5 whys)
8. Reporting
9. Contacts names and how to arrange a Gemba visit
10. Reporting template
This document is one of the tangible outcomes of the project so far.
4.5. The GEMBA experience so far
We started the Gemba visits in June 1999. The visits have been running at the rate of
about two per month in 1999 but have slowed since the beginning of this year. In November
1999 we decided to take stock and to analyse the results of the Gemba visits to
date. We used the results of only five visits but this generated over 80 Voice of the Customer
statements. These statements have been analysed and turned into a tree structure
of Demanded Quality statements with two levels of detail. This is how we did the
analysis:
1. Extract the customer statements from the visit reports. (Figure 4)
2. Get the customers to organise the statements into groups (affinity diagram
method).
3. Turn the affinity diagram into a hierarchy of Demanded Quality statements (a tree
structure).
4.5.1. Extract the customer statements from the visit reports
The visits were analysed in three separate group sessions by members of the project
team. At least one of the people who actually visited the Gemba was present in each of
the sessions. This proved to be important because in many cases, the visit report failed
to explain clearly enough what was going on.
The teams used Voice of the Customer tables and customer flow charts to aid in the
process [Mazur 1997, 2000]. It was surprising how many customer statements could be
inferred from just a few clues gained from the observations and interviews. After
eliminating duplicates, the result was over 80 customer statements.
4.5.2. Get the customers to organize the statements into groups (affinity
diagram method)
We decided that we should get our customers to organise the statements for us, even
though this proved to be relatively expensive. We wanted to avoid introducing our own
view on the structure, which would probably be rather feature or ‘solution’ oriented. We
wanted the customer’s view.
Because we were targeting four customer segments, four separate sessions were arranged.
We used a research agency to arrange and conduct the sessions.
The figure below shows the kind of structure that the customers created.
13 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
Of course, each customer group produced a different structure, although we found that
there was a remarkable degree of similarity between the structures.
4.5.3. Turn the affinity diagram into a hierarchy of Demanded Quality
statements (tree structure)
The intention of this step was to ‘sort out’ the hierarchy. We planned to align levels of
detail, harmonise the language used in the statements and look for missing statements
NO.
001
Date: 1999.6.3 10am-
1pm
I t i HH l &
Location
Weather
Hachiko Square, Shibuya, Tokyo
Cloudy
Observations
•Many people were waiting to meet their friends and made phone calls and SMS messages
to find them from the crowd.
•Mostly young people; few of the High Flyers or Assured, but many Trendsetters
•Young high school students wear phones around their neck (927 ads)
•"Salary-men" smoke while talking, either holding their cigarette in the other hand or talk
with it hanging from their mouths
•Many people are carrying bags and other things (suite bag) in their hands while walking
and being on the phone
•"Punk" style dressed young guy has similar color (mix colors of yellow and green) shoes
and the cellular phone
Figure 4. Example of a Visit Report
14 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
in the structure. To this end, four members of the project team got together for a meeting,
which was planned to last two days. At the same meeting we planned to design the
quantitative research to discover the customer importance rating for the statements.
However, the team first decided to combine the structures produced by the four customer
groups. We made the assumption that a single structure could represent the views
of all four customer groups. Indeed, we found many similarities between the structures
but there were also some differences. We found that this was a difficult process and we
spent over half the meeting (more than one day) combining the structures.
Because of this we did not complete our work as planned but had to complete the tasks
via e-mail. The result was a 2-level table of Demanded Quality statements with four first
level and 18 second level items. (Unfortunately, the information cannot be reproduced
here as it is regarded as company confidential)
4.6. Results so Far
‘Going to the GEMBA’ was planned as a continuous process and the GEMBA visits continue
to this day. More and more people in the company are gaining experience and insight
from observing and interviewing customers and the GEMBA Training Guide continues
to be used as a reference.
Going to the gemba is becoming a popular job for Nokia people!
Also, we have gained knowledge and experience of how to process Voice of the Customer
information into a form that can be used to support future product planning and
definition in Nokia.
Nokia has sites for research and development, manufacture and sales in many countries throughout the world. As of December 2010, Nokia had R&D presence in 16 countries and employed 35,870 people in research and development, representing approximately 27% of the group's total workforce.[1] The Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia's industrial research unit consisting of about 500 researchers, engineers and scientists.[5][6] It has sites in seven countries: Finland, China, India, Kenya, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.[7] Besides its research centers, in 2001 Nokia founded (and owns) INdT – Nokia Institute of Technology, a R&D institute located in Brazil.[8] Nokia operates a total of 4 key manufacturing areas[9] located at Salo, Finland; Beijing and Dongguan , China; and Masan, South Korea.[10][11] Nokia's industrial design department is headquartered in Soho in London, UK with significant satellite offices in Helsinki, Finland and Calabasas, California in the USA.
Nokia is a public limited liability company listed on the Helsinki, Frankfurt, and New York stock exchanges.[9] Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland; it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007, a unique situation for an industrialized country.[12] It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as its partners and subcontractors.[13] Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003.[14]
Devices & Services
In the fourth quarter 2008, the total mobile device volumes of our Devices & Services group were 113.1 million
units, representing a decline of 15% year on year and a 4% sequential decrease. The overall industry mobile device
volumes for the same period were 305 million units based on Nokia’s estimate, representing a 9% year on year
decrease and a 2% sequential decrease.
Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the fourth quarter 2008
increased to 48.0 million units, based on Nokia’s estimate, compared with an estimated 40.1 million units in the
fourth quarter 2007 and 44.2 million units in the third quarter 2008. Our own converged mobile device volumes
were 15.1 million units in the fourth quarter 2008, compared with 18.8 million units in the fourth quarter 2007
and 15.5 million units in the third quarter 2008. We shipped approximately 8 million Nokia Nseries and over 3
million Nokia Eseries devices during the fourth quarter 2008.
The following chart sets out our mobile device volumes for the periods indicated, as well as the year on year and
sequential growth rates, by geographic area.
In considering the design of the research method, we planned to carry out both observation
and street intercept interviewing of the customers. We realised that we would face
some cultural barriers when trying to stop people and encourage them to talk about their
mobile phone experiences. The issues that were considered are as follows:
• Thanks to the Aum incident, the Japanese are more conscious than ever about being
approached by people on the street. There are also many men who aggressively
recruit or flirt with women in ‘young’ areas such as the Shibuya area of Tokyo.
• People in Japan are naturally reluctant to voice their opinions in public to someone
that they do not know. This is particularly true when the person asking them is also
Japanese.
• Similarly, most Japanese will refuse to have their photo taken by other Japanese,
but less so by foreigners. Foreigners are seen as tourists and so it is ok.
• (Probably not specific to Japan) People are naturally not comfortable with being approached
by a group of four or more people. Even three is a bit too many.
For these reasons, we selected the following approach.
- The research teams would comprise two people.
- One male, one female.
- One Japanese, one Gaijin (foreigner).
- The foreigner is assigned to observation and taking photographs of the Gemba
scene and customers.
- The Japanese person also observes, conducts interviews and makes notes of
what the customers say.
As mentioned earlier,
we decided
from the start to
‘go to the Gemba’
ourselves. This
highlighted a need
for training in the
observation and
interviewing techniques
that we
planned to use because
very few of
the project team
members had a
market research
background. However,
it was felt
that the benefits of
experiencing the
customer contact
first hand would
outweigh the disadvantages
of our
lack of experience.
So the next step was the creation of a Training Guide (Figure 3.) to facilitate the training
and to act as a reference for the future. To create a very effective guide we engaged a
local market research company to co-develop the guide. This was important for providing
tips for first timers on how to approach and interview people on the street. The
document is intended to be self-explanatory and to contain all the information needed for
anyone in the company to conduct a Gemba visit. The document contains the following
information:
1. Introduction – the objectives of the research
2. What the Gemba is all about
3. The basic steps (go to the Gemba, observe, develop questions, interview people,
report)
4. The Gemba team (male/female, local/foreign) and why
B4 You Go
�� Teams should consist of two people (one foreigner + one Japanese)
�� Reason (Explained later)
�� Teams are recommended to consist of one male and one female
�� Reason (Explained later)
�� Decide where to observe
�� Decide the main target end user for that day and select a part of town
where that target is likely to be found.
�� Until interviewers begin to feel comfortable with the process, interviews
should be conducted on the street. Later, the range of sites can
be expanded to include train station platforms, trains themselves, department
stores and supermarkets, bars, and restaurants.
�� Items to bring
�� Digital camera
�� Interview sheets and pen
�� Clipboard (to interview while standing)
�� Business cards (in case subject asks for proof that you are a Nokia
employee)
��F Cigoumrpele 3m.e Entxaraym gipftsle fe oatfu rGineg mNobkaia Tlorgaoi ning Guide
12 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
5. Preparation
6. Guidelines for observation, what to look for
7. Guidelines for interviewing, how to approach people, what to ask (5 whys)
8. Reporting
9. Contacts names and how to arrange a Gemba visit
10. Reporting template
This document is one of the tangible outcomes of the project so far.
4.5. The GEMBA experience so far
We started the Gemba visits in June 1999. The visits have been running at the rate of
about two per month in 1999 but have slowed since the beginning of this year. In November
1999 we decided to take stock and to analyse the results of the Gemba visits to
date. We used the results of only five visits but this generated over 80 Voice of the Customer
statements. These statements have been analysed and turned into a tree structure
of Demanded Quality statements with two levels of detail. This is how we did the
analysis:
1. Extract the customer statements from the visit reports. (Figure 4)
2. Get the customers to organise the statements into groups (affinity diagram
method).
3. Turn the affinity diagram into a hierarchy of Demanded Quality statements (a tree
structure).
4.5.1. Extract the customer statements from the visit reports
The visits were analysed in three separate group sessions by members of the project
team. At least one of the people who actually visited the Gemba was present in each of
the sessions. This proved to be important because in many cases, the visit report failed
to explain clearly enough what was going on.
The teams used Voice of the Customer tables and customer flow charts to aid in the
process [Mazur 1997, 2000]. It was surprising how many customer statements could be
inferred from just a few clues gained from the observations and interviews. After
eliminating duplicates, the result was over 80 customer statements.
4.5.2. Get the customers to organize the statements into groups (affinity
diagram method)
We decided that we should get our customers to organise the statements for us, even
though this proved to be relatively expensive. We wanted to avoid introducing our own
view on the structure, which would probably be rather feature or ‘solution’ oriented. We
wanted the customer’s view.
Because we were targeting four customer segments, four separate sessions were arranged.
We used a research agency to arrange and conduct the sessions.
The figure below shows the kind of structure that the customers created.
13 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
Of course, each customer group produced a different structure, although we found that
there was a remarkable degree of similarity between the structures.
4.5.3. Turn the affinity diagram into a hierarchy of Demanded Quality
statements (tree structure)
The intention of this step was to ‘sort out’ the hierarchy. We planned to align levels of
detail, harmonise the language used in the statements and look for missing statements
NO.
001
Date: 1999.6.3 10am-
1pm
I t i HH l &
Location
Weather
Hachiko Square, Shibuya, Tokyo
Cloudy
Observations
•Many people were waiting to meet their friends and made phone calls and SMS messages
to find them from the crowd.
•Mostly young people; few of the High Flyers or Assured, but many Trendsetters
•Young high school students wear phones around their neck (927 ads)
•"Salary-men" smoke while talking, either holding their cigarette in the other hand or talk
with it hanging from their mouths
•Many people are carrying bags and other things (suite bag) in their hands while walking
and being on the phone
•"Punk" style dressed young guy has similar color (mix colors of yellow and green) shoes
and the cellular phone
Figure 4. Example of a Visit Report
14 (17) 11 May 2000
Approved for public presentation.
Copyright © 2000 Nokia Mobile Phones Copyright © 2000 QFD Institute
in the structure. To this end, four members of the project team got together for a meeting,
which was planned to last two days. At the same meeting we planned to design the
quantitative research to discover the customer importance rating for the statements.
However, the team first decided to combine the structures produced by the four customer
groups. We made the assumption that a single structure could represent the views
of all four customer groups. Indeed, we found many similarities between the structures
but there were also some differences. We found that this was a difficult process and we
spent over half the meeting (more than one day) combining the structures.
Because of this we did not complete our work as planned but had to complete the tasks
via e-mail. The result was a 2-level table of Demanded Quality statements with four first
level and 18 second level items. (Unfortunately, the information cannot be reproduced
here as it is regarded as company confidential)
4.6. Results so Far
‘Going to the GEMBA’ was planned as a continuous process and the GEMBA visits continue
to this day. More and more people in the company are gaining experience and insight
from observing and interviewing customers and the GEMBA Training Guide continues
to be used as a reference.
Going to the gemba is becoming a popular job for Nokia people!
Also, we have gained knowledge and experience of how to process Voice of the Customer
information into a form that can be used to support future product planning and
definition in Nokia.
Last edited by a moderator: