Psion is a leading UK company specialized in computer games and soft technology. As an opinion leader in marketing, Psion is more socially active and gregarious than those who are not. The established relationship holds for marketing leaders of each life-cycle type. It is possible to position Psion as a company operating in the existing market with both existing and new hard and soft technologies. Decision processes are concerned with the determination of alternatives that influence the position of the company during the last 25 years. In attempting to make a decision and solve marketing problems, Psion managers, either explicitly or implicitly, specify available alternative solutions for the company.
The solutions perceived will be limited by management’s insight, originality, and experience. Although no manager will perceive all the choices accessible, this is not a severe handicap. Psion can consider the most practicable solutions as it is detected by experienced management. Through matching, a set of possible courses will be determined and the most practicable ones will be established (Drejer, 2002). For example, a perceived position on the market may involve an extensive expenditure on product development. It may not be a practicable solution for the company at a point in time, owing to current heavy financial commitments. It would be wasteful to attempt to evaluate this alternative since it is not within the decision set of the executive.
If Psion chooses a course without explicitly evaluating the relative effects of each, he has in essence imputed a value and indicated that his choice is the “best” one. It seems desirable, therefore, to evaluate the alternative courses of behavior on some more formal basis, according to criteria that the decision-maker specifies. This leads to a more objective selection of courses of action and permits more scientific decision-making. The fourth and final phase of the decision process concerns the actual choice or result.
Here the executive assesses the evaluated options, applies his executive judgment, and chooses a course of action. Once a choice is made based on particular criteria, it might not prove to be the best decision after the fact, owing to unforeseen or unexpected circumstances. Though, whether a decision is a good one or a poor one depends on future situations and evaluations. All a decision-maker can do is reach the best possible decision, given his incomplete information at a point in time (Crawford 2006). The new positioning strategy provides new methods and perspectives for solving marketing problems and making predictions.
Used in marketing research, designing experiments, and measuring the effectiveness of various aspects of the marketing policies, they are significant tools for providing and analyzing information. A positioning selected by Psion is a representation that can be used to study a marketing process or institution. It is the perception of some complex system. Building a market positioning strategy involves translating perceived marketing relationships; into a construct, into symbols, and perhaps into mathematical terms (Drejer, 2002).
Psion reinvented itself many times to remain competitive and survive on the market. Replicas, such as scale approach to layouts of a warehouse or retail store, look like the “phenomena” they portray. The example and strategies of Psion depict real marketing situations but do not look like the situation they portray. Representative strategies may be subdivided into verbal models, graphs, flow charts, analogs, and mathematical models. In physical distribution, computer applications deal with such problems as the number of distribution centers to establish, where to locate them, the buyers to service from specific warehouses, the quantities to ship to warehouses, and the amount of inventory to carry at each distribution point (Crawford 2006).
The case of Psion market position allows saying that marketing becomes an orientation for the total business, a way of business life. Customers and consumers are perceived as the reason for business existence and their wants and needs become the bases for designing total systems of action. A narrower conception, which is an extension of the business orientation, is concerned with the basic management activities — the entrepreneurial functions-that have to be performed to manage micro-marketing systems. Through marketing, the critical role of consumption is recognized and cultures become reoriented from Producers’ to consumers’ cultures.
This reorientation involves shifts in ideologies and values. Moreover, in abundance, the major determinant of expenditure shifts from money to time. Marketing is a phenomenon related to mass systems. Mass production, which is the means of increasing living standards around the world, requires mass distribution. Mass markets do not exist mechanically but must be created through marketing (Drejer, 2002).
To change and improve the current situation, Psion should attract more customers and introduce new product lines including related technologies and markets. This strategy will help Psion to survive and remain competitive despite market changes and economic crises. In the areas, taste pervades every social and income stratum and affects the type and quality of goods that will be purchased. Psion buyers can express their personalities and their taste through the symbols with which they are associated (Drejer, 2002). Since buyers are often other-directed, they are concerned with what other group members think of them and their taste.
Taste is not an acquired or inherited phenomenon. Consequently, the opportunity exists for designers, manufacturers, and marketers to upgrade tastes. Learning implies repetition over time. What may be rejected in product design or color today may be viewed approvingly after a second, third, or fourth exposure. In tastes and taste-making, the marketer is concerned with the question of how consumers learn to like things, and what influence awareness has on the degree of liking (Crawford 2006).
For Psion, technology-related products are defined broadly to include both physical products and services. Products are perceived as means of problem-solving for both buyers and sellers. The discussion relates to both consumer and industrial goods. Product-line management involves the addition of new products to the line and the deletion or modification of current products. Product diversification (horizontal, vertical, or heterogeneous), maybe the result of internal product policies or mergers. Reasons for diversification vary from spreading risks to using by-products and increasing profits. New product policies and strategies may be offensive or defensive, convergent or divergent (Drejer, 2002).
Psion may adopt a followership or leadership posture and may choose a strategy of segmentation or product, differentiation. By differentiating new products they try to bend demand to meet their supply and so ensure a niche in the marketplace. Each of the new phases of the product- process (conceptualization, exploration, development, marketplace preparation, commercialization, and appraisal), is considered. Technology-related product development should be seen as one of the core foundations of corporate planning. Its success or failure shapes corporate destiny. Because of this, particular attention is given to a conversation of new products, technology-related products, diffusion processes, the product life cycle, and new-product failures. Channel balance, which is difficult to achieve for Psion, must be realized at various levels.
Bibliography
Drejer, A. 2002, Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Crawford C. Merle. 2006, New Products Management. Irwin-McGraw Hill. 7th edition.