Marketing Strategy

The problem in this case study deals with the decisions that must be made by Kone's director, Mr. Hatala. Kone is a Finnish elevator company that has met some new problems within in its organization and industry. Due to some unforeseen and problematic economic factors that have impacted the construction business, Kone's main source of contracts, a new product was unveiled to help lift Kone from its low performance. The MonoSpace product was developed by Kone and new market opportunities were presented.

The main problem that revolves around this case therefore, is how to introduce the MonoSpace product in order to maximize the opportunity that is presented before Kone. Hatala must incorporate all of the factors that are included in launching a new and important product in order maintain or create competitive advantage and stay relevant within the industry and lead his company to a new plateau of success.

List of Alternatives

Before listing a set of alternatives it is important to summarize what is on Hatala's agenda. To successfully launch his product in Germany, Hatala must incorporate the favorable results from the launches within other parts of Europe while still maintaining pricing and product positioning strategies he has set for this region. In order to this Hatala has the following list of alternatives to choose from:

- Abandon the project all together due to too much risk.

- Reset pricing and product placing standards for Germany to mirror the past successful attempts at this product launch

- Slightly alter previous launch efforts to tailor German markets.

3. Recommendation

The risks associated with the previous MonoSpace launches in other markets should be enough encouragement to realize that not much alteration is needed to follow suit in Germany. However, the competitor risks that are present in this case, that were absent in the others, does present a new shift in this simple approach outlined in Appendix 9. The advantages gained by the successes realized in the other markets should be used to promote and vet the proposed processes in the German market. Instead of hiding this information, it should be exploited to it utmost to deliver the most impact.