Lenovo: Building a Global Brand Case Solution & Answer

Lenovo: Building a Global Brand Case Solution

Weaknesses:

The major weakness of Lenovo is that it originated from China, due to which most of the people considered it as a low quality computer manufacturer. The world perception of Lenovo has posed different challenges to meet its desired results. Moreover, due to competition, its market share growth is low.

Opportunities:

The company has the opportunity IBM acquisition, which is an excellent opportunity to utilize for acquiring global market. It has the knowledge of Asian, American and European market, which can be used to build a strong competitive brand. Increasing demand of PC around the globe is also a great opportunity for Lenovo.

Threats:

It can be seen that it is difficult for Lenovo to sustain Think Pad’s brand equity in such a highly competitive sphere. Lenovo’s association with the Chinese government is also a threat that can hinder its expansion in the international market. However, Lenovo is also facing competition from both local and international rivals.

Identification of the Key issues:

The major issue was the difference in the cultures of Lenovo and IBM however, both the companies were similar, but their focus was different. Lenovo focused on the consumers and small businesses whereas, IBM targeted enterprise customers and large corporates. The new ownership also posed a challenge to retain the customers as IBM’s customers wanted high quality products and services,therefore it was difficult to predict the reaction of existing and loyal customers towards this transition.

It was expected that the competitors would also try to attract the loyal customers since the successful merger in the computer industry is rare. Building a global brand and to position the products in the global market with intense competition was a big challenge for Lenovo to address. Moreover, increased competition from Dell, Apple and others also influenced Lenovo to cut down its cost with great innovative advancements. Other than this, Lenovo’s brand name was not much familiar outside Asia, and it was a challenge for Lenovo to make its brand successful internationally. Lenovo was in need to have an effective branding strategy to build its image on a global scale.

Lenovo’s research also evaluated three main concerns of customers; innovation, quality and service, and support. It was an immense challenge for Lenovo to address these three concerns through satisfying its customers and to make effective branding strategies to become successful all around the globe.Moreover, Lenovo used certain brand strategies which are explained below;

Master Brand:

This strategy would focus on all marketing aspects of making Lenovo’s brand image successful all over the world. However,the main problem is that Lenovo can’t afford to lose its most successful brand, Think Pad.

House of Brands:

This approach would mean expanding the business with sub-brand,however the issue of this strategy was to spend heavily on other sub-brands and relatively little investment in the corporate brand.

Synergy Approach:

In this approach, the company’s major brand would be marketed with sub-brands. The idea behind this strategy was that the sub-brand would help the master brand to be recognized in the market which it couldn’t do alone. Moreover, this approach requires balanced investment from both Lenovo and Think Pad.

One-Two Punch Strategy:

The key elements in one-two punch strategy were to build Lenovo a strong master brand and continue to reinforce Think Pad. The growing concern of consumers towards better quality and more innovation has posed challenging situation for Lenovo and IBM. The question arises on how to differentiate Lenovo from its competitors. For this reason, Lenovo needs to combine its ability to incorporate efficiency and innovation. In order to implement this strategy, Lenovo planned three marketing strategies; firstly, to expand the company globally where it could advertise Think Pad with theaim to maintain Think Pad’s market share. The second strategy was the Think Pad Unleashed, which was basically to advertise Think Pad in Olympics to get maximum attention of the customers. The last option was focused on Lenovo and the reason was to use Think Pad’s strength to increase Lenovo’s strengths…………..

This is just a sample partial work. Please place the order on the website to get your own originally done case solution