High Market The Chosen Industry

Globalization of Smartphones: U.S.A vs. Japan

The suitable industry that would present a potential market for the product, Smartphones, and this is justified on the basis that the BCG matrix analysis of the same market indicates that the product in question will have a high market growth and high market simultaneously (Debrecht & Levas, 2014). Below is a graphical representation of how the chosen industry would have the Smartphones’ brand fair in its marketing initiatives.

Reflecting on the emphasis provided by Dahal (2013a), mobile communication has become a practice that not only different organizations have transitioned to for commercial business purposes, but has even been adopted by individuals since it enables them to exercise real-time communication that is conveniently reliable due to the portability of Smartphones. The author justifies his claim by presenting a survey statistics which revealed that approximately 77% of the American adults and 71% of the U.S-based teens owned and regularly used mobile phones (Dahal, 2013b). Thus, with that being said, individuals have transformed their lifestyles such that a larger percentage of any nation or the global populations own smartphones.

Therefore, from a BCG matrix’ analytical point of view, it is evident that smartphones will have a great opportunity to thrive in the telecommunications industry since there is potential market presented by the dynamic global populations, especially in the United States and Japan. Hence, the product of choice in this globalization report indicates that the product would be categorized as a ‘star’ in the BCG matrix diagram pictured above. This is because the introduction and sell of smartphones in the U.S and Japan would have both initiatives presenting a high market growth due to increased demand for these types of mobile phones, as well as have a high market share since the number of smartphone manufacturers is not that high while the market demand remains to be highly dynamic and increasing.

The data presented above narrows down to the reports focal point which is smartphone usage, where the statistics presented evidently indicate that approximately 56% and 56.1% of the American and Japanese populations owned and used smartphones as of 2013 and 2018 respectively. Therefore, the selected industry seemingly presents a potential market opportunity for the smartphone brands in Japan and U.S since the business environment there is absolutely growing fast annually.

Global Opportunities for the Smartphones’ Brand in U.S and Japan

In entering the American and Japanese markets would present the smartphones’ brand with business opportunities such as a larger pool of customers, high profits and returns on capital, and a potential market that is conveniently presented by the huge population that is prefers to use smartphones compared to other regular mobile phones that do not support internet-based applications. For example, the above data indicates that 35% of the Americans used regular phones, compared to the corresponding 56% that owned smartphones in the same year. Thus, it is justified that entry into this particular market would present greater business opportunities in the context of globalizing the smartphone brand.

On the other hand, Japanese market has revealed that 56.1% of the population used smartphones as of 2018, and there is a forecasted 2.4% growth in the usage of these digital communication devices by the end of this year, which would make the current national’ smartphone usage to be at 57.6% by then, i.e. by the year 2019. Therefore, this market presents a potential business opportunity for the product brand too. The demand for the product in the Japanese and American markets is attributively highly due to the prevailing ‘smartphone-use-addiction’ behavior among the users (Kesari, 2018). Hence, the product brand would definitely do well in terms of sales, market growth, and capturing a larger market share.

Global Challenges for the Smartphones’ Brand in U.S and Japan

In view of the Japanese and American markets, introducing the smartphone brand into these markets would be a strategic business move that is probably susceptible to challenges such as steep competition due to existing giant firms that provide similar product at a prevailing relatively cheap price. There would be a possibility of facing high levels of customer disloyalty due to low product-switching costs that are associated with foregoing one model of a smartphone and buying another one which seems cost-effective and with preferred functional features. Also, it is obvious that the cost of doing business in the two featured markets would be high since it is a foreign business environment that most likely has stringent and unique local regulations of conducting business.

Factors Shaping the Market Competitiveness

One of the factors that have largely shaped and contributed to the competitiveness of the identified markets and industry is low switching cost. This factor has been publicly illustrated through real-life trends enhanced by customers for they regularly change their smartphones models from time to time. Okazaki, Li and Hirose (2012) emphasize that the increased mobile phones’ promotions have consequently led to the low switching costs and this is because the smartphone brands offered in the market have been closely priced such that foregoing one model for another would have insignificant financial implication on them. Also, the trends presented by the reduced numbers of return customers have affirmed that the product switching costs are extremely low for the smartphone brands and this is why a customer is able to make purchases of different models of mobile phones from different manufacturers.

The existence of multiple smartphone brands in the American and Japanese markets has led to steep competition in the industry, where mobile phones’ manufacturers present different and differentiated models of smartphones such as Samsung, iPhone, Nokia, Itel, Huawei, Infinix, etc. The prevalence of multiple product models in this industry has been effectively illustrated by the emerging consumers’ trends such as dynamic consumer preferences and tastes over the same product, and availability of many smartphone brands in the market. Shiraishi, Ishikawa, Sano and Sakurai (2011) explain that mobile phones evolution has triggered industry competitiveness through factors such as lifestyle change, which has been effected through trends such as transition to real-time communication and use of mobile phones by all ages. Also, a high demand of these digital communication gadgets has spurred high competition in the market, considering that the manufacturers are not that many. The high demand has been illustrated through the current trends characterized by; consumers owning two or more smartphones and having a high customer’ bargaining power (Parasuraman, Sam, Yee, Chuon & Ren, 2017).

Global Business Strategic Recommendations

Based on the marketing mix tool, one would recommend that the entry of the smartphone brand into Japanese and American market would assume the following combination of the 4Ps. The price will have to be set at a low level so that there would be retention of customers, pave way for high profits and returns on capital, and probably push the competitors out of the market due to variations in price. The place of provision would need to be strategically set so as to ease the access of the product and this would be actualized through establishing an online marketing platform for online purchases and marketing purposes. Also, door-to-door delivery would be appropriate for instigating customer satisfaction and convenient collection of their purchases. For the promotion considerations, the business entering these two markets would have to offer a discount on every return customer. Finally, product differentiation would enable the marketing of the smartphone from a competitive position.

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References

• Dahal, K. P. (2013). Mobile communication and its adverse effects. Himalayan Physics, 4, 51-59.
• Debrecht, D., & Levas, M. (2014). Using the Boston Consulting Group portfolio matrix to analyze management of a business undergraduate student program at a small liberal arts university. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 14(3), 65.
• Kesari, K. K. (2018). Lifestyle Factors: Causes and Concerns. Clin Oncol, 3, 1423.
• Okazaki, S., Li, H., & Hirose, M. (2012). Benchmarking the use of QR code in mobile promotion: Three studies in Japan. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(1), 102-117.
• Parasuraman, S., Sam, A. T., Yee, S. W. K., Chuon, B. L. C., & Ren, L. Y. (2017). Smartphone usage and increased risk of mobile phone addiction: A concurrent study. International journal of pharmaceutical investigation, 7(3), 125.
• Shiraishi, Y., Ishikawa, D., Sano, S., & Sakurai, K. (2011). Smartphone trend and evolution in Japan. Survey.