Экзаменационные ответы по Market Leader(2)

themselves to benefit from economies of scale (producing in larger quantities so that the cost of each unit goes down), they are able to charge market prices with a healthy profit margin on each unit sold. Competition can also be gentlemanly or even cosy, so cosy that companies may be accused of forming a cartel to agree on prices in a price fixing arrangement. They may then be investigated by a government department that looks into unfair trading practices.

Competitors may also enter into other perfectly legitimate forms of cooperation, such as joint ventures for specific projects. They may even talk about strategic alliances. But like mergers, these can go awry and lead to recrimination between the erstwhile partners.

2.What is Michael Porter’s model of competitors’ types?

Michael Porter's model containing:

• cost-leaders, who are low-cost producers with a broad scope and cost advantage, appealing to many industry segments (many groups of buyers with different needs)

• differentiators, who appeal to buyers who are looking for particular product attributes (characteristics) and position themselves as the most able to meet those needs

• focussers, who concentrate on one particular segment and try to find competitive advantage by satisfying the needs of buyers in that segment better than anyone else. Focussers are, in effect, nichers. These are the available choices, according to Porter, that a commercial organisation has if it wants to compete effectively, and not get 'stuck in the middle'.

3.Why is Nokia no longer the leader in the mobile phone market?

Although Nokia's share of the global market for mobile handsets is more than competitor’s share, but Samsung has momentum. Samsung's camera phones, with twisting flip-up screens that allow users to take, send and display photos quickly and easily, are hot; Nokia's are not. The high end of the market - phones that retail for $300 or more in the US - is no longer Nokia's. Samsung makes the expensive camera phone that a young consumer wants to have. Design should be Nokia's strength, since it overtook Motorola by turning handsets into handsome and desirable consumer goods, rather than technological objects. But in its recent models, Nokia forgot the first rule of modernist design - that form follows function. Instead, it has placed most emphasis on making its handsets colourful and zappy, with snap-on covers. And of course the main Nokia’s disadvantage is size of handsets. It is rather big in comparison with Samsung.

Samsung has main advantage – it is the fact that it is willing to pay high prices for development new electronic devices.

4. Why are some products unsuitable for foreign markets?

Nowadays many new high tech products appear on world market. Producers of these products try to distribute them into different countries in order to increase profits but they do not take foreign conditions and traditions into account. For example Japanese robot-toys. In the Russian market such toys haven’t great demand. Maybe because of rather high price. But also maybe because of Russian mentality, habits

– we like to communicate not with robot pets but with alive pets.

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