Brand Nokia

What is Brand?

American Marketing Association defines Brand as "Name, term, symbol, sign, or design or a combination of them, intended to identify a seller or a group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors". Thus a brand identifies the seller or maker.

A brand is a complex symbol that can convey up to six levels of meaning viz. Attributes, Benefits, Values, Culture, personality and User. Scott Davis suggests visualizing a Brand Pyramid in constructing the image of brand. At the low level are brand attributes, at the next level are the brand's benefits, and at the top are beliefs and values as shown below.

Brand pyramid

Brand building:

It is one of the most important activities to be performed for the lifecycle of any brand. Some of the various tools used by Nokia include:

* Public relations and press releases

* Sponsorships

* Events marketing

* High value for money

Brand Value:

It is the job of estimating the total financial value of the brand. The brand valuation is done on yearly basis for all ht global brands that have value greater than $ 1 billion.

Nokia is one of the top 10 brands in the world for past several years here is the brand value of Nokia in past 5 years:

Year Position Brand Value

In $ millions % change

w.r.t. previous year

2001 35,035

2002 6 29,970 -14%

2003 6 29,440 -1.2%

2004 8 24,041 -2%

2005 6 26,452 10%

Good chunk of the brand value comes from the marketing budgets, and different business models require different marketing approaches. It is interesting to note that in the top valued brands 6 out of 10 are technology companies

A strong correlation exists between the brand value and the innovation factor, which means their innovative efforts were correctly communicated and, moreover, there is a strong consistency between what the company judge as operational efficiency and delivers as a consequence and what the market accordingly perceives.

It is interested to note that, Nokia is the Only Cell phone Maker in Top 10.

Current scenario for the year 2005:

Nokia and Motorola manufactured about half of all cell phones sold worldwide during the second quarter of 2005, according to statistics published by the research institute Gartner.

From April to June, 190.5 million handsets were sold globally, a 21.6% increase compared to the same period of 2004.

Both companies increased their market share, with leader Nokia accounting for 31.9% of all sales and Motorola in second place with 17.9%.

Sales of Nokia were boosted by demand in North America and Latin America, where the Finnish company reclaimed the number one spot. US-based Motorola has made significant inroads in the western European market and is now the second biggest manufacturer of phones, a leap from fifth place a year ago, Gartner said.

For the world market, Korean phone makers Samsung and LG increased their market share to 12.8% and 6.5% at the expense of Sony Ericsson and Siemens, which saw their market share fall.

Sony Ericsson had a 6.2% share, while Siemens had 4.7%

Nokia in India:

In April 2005, Nokia India, a subsidiary of Finland-based Nokia, announced that it was setting up a manufacturing facility for mobile devices in Chennai, the state capital of Tamil Nadu in southern India. Nokia planned to invest US$ 100-150 million in the facility, where the production was expected to begin in the first half of 2006 according to Nokia's President "Establishing a new factory in India is an important step in the continuous development of our global manufacturing network."

India was ideal for Nokia's new production facility. Each mobile handset has more than 400 parts and the average production capacity of each manufacturing unit of Nokia is around 20 million units. This level of manufacturing involves a total of 8 billion components per annum, requiring strong logistical support. Nokia's manufacturing facility needed to be located close to a major international airport or sea port for quick supply of components. India met all these requirements, and also enjoyed cheap manpower costs and proximity to the rapidly growing Asia Pacific markets.

Besides, Nokia was the market leader in mobile communication devices in India. The company has been carrying out sales & marketing, customer care and research & development activities in the country. Nokia considers India to be one of its most important markets. The company's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) facility is located in Mumbai and provides software and technical support to CDMA consumers in India and other Asia Pacific countries.

In 2004, Nokia was chosen as 'the most respected consumer durables company' by Business world. The magazine wrote, "This Finnish Company's debut at the top of the heap says two things. One, that its strategies - including ones like developing a phone specifically for India - are respected. But, more importantly, Nokia's win is also an endorsement of the importance of the ubiquitous cell phone as a durable in today's world. After all, unlike its competitors, most of which offer a slew of durables, Nokia is mostly a cell phone company."

According to the latest figures, the Indian mobile handset market reached 63 million this August 2005.

Nokia: The CII Brand of the Year 2005 Award

Nokia was chosen from 10 finalists comprising Eveready, Titan, Dabur, Indane, Fair and Lovely, Lux, Ponds, Rin and Ponds Body Lotion after a selection