AMB 211 – Brand Management

Assignment 1: Brand positioning Analysis

Brand: Huawei

Student name: Leshi Luo

Student number: n8999562

Background

Huawei is a Chinese Multinational networking and telecommunication equipment

and services company, is the largest telecommunication equipment company in the

world. Huawei offers a variety technologies and solutions for operators, such as

Telecom Wireless network, Telecom Fixed network, core network, network energy and

enterprise network. Moreover, Huawei offers global services to build network for

mobile and fixed network. In addition, Huawei has mobile phones, tablets, mobile

broadband and so on. Their mission is to create value for customer, promote industry

development, boost economic growth, drive sustainable development and provide

dedicated employees with a strong growth platform (Huawei, 2016).

Frame of Reference

Segmentation Base Mindset younger customers

Geography Youth who live Europe or Asia.

Demographic 15 -24 youth, might not have income or, little to mid

income. Male and Female.

Psychographic Fashionable teenagers. Be familiar with new technologies

and always keep up with latest technologies or trends.

Behaviours They use social media to contact with their friends and

families. Update and share information on Facebook or

Instagram every day.

Table 1 Market Segmentation for Hauwei

Based on the market segmentation analysis, the target audiences for Huawei is 15

to 24 years youth, who use social network all the time, have well knowledge of

technologies (Hicks, 2011). Social network communication is very important part of

young people’s life, is the latest communication tools that allow people to interact with

their friends and families (Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter & Espinoza, 2008).

Therefore, in order to enable Huawei to become well known, it is vital to target young

people because they tend to use social network to share their information and

experiences and also they are more willing to accept new technologies. The

motivation for the people to buy products from Huawei are influenced by their friends

and families, also the price and performance of the products. Young teenagers will be

affect by their friends, the numbers of their friends using a mobile phone, and they

feel they need to have a mobile phone not only to be the same as their friend, but also

to connect with each other (Walsh, White, Cox & Young, 2011). Moreover, price would

be a factor that influence the youth to decide to buy this brand or not, because

teenagers cannot afford an expensive mobile phone. Huawei always offer their

customers with modernized technologies with economical price (Low, 2007). In

addition, Huawei created a campaign to engage with their customers, which is “for go

anywhere mobile phone” (appendix 1), this champion indicates that the new mobile

phone from Huawei can resist the water, dust and shock in a creative way, to attract

people’s interest (Hicks, 2012). Furthermore, form the advertising poster (appendix 2),

it can be seen that they have numerous application, includes Facebook, internet

access, YouTube, Instagram, a live music player, Twitter and camera, which can

indicates that Huawei is the technology brand that put the consumers at the first place,

know what their target audiences need (Hicks, 2012). Huawei understand their target

audiences need social networks, so have mobile phones that associate with their

target markets in order to motivate their consumers to buy their products.

There are some competitors compete against Huawei, which are Apple and

Samsung. The main competitors of Huawei are Apple and Samsung, because there are

the three main smartphone sellers in the world. Additionally, Huawei is now be able

to compete with any high-end device in the marketplace, such as Apple and Samsung

(Tech.pinions: Apple v samsung v huawei and others: Measuring processor efficiency,

2016). Huawei increased its global share of the smartphone market from 6.8% in 2014

to 9% in 2015, in compare to Apple with 14% and Samsung with 21.2% of market share

(Sengupta, 2016). Huawei always take the leadership in innovation in order to enable

the customers to understand that they could get the best smartphone from Huawei

rather than other competitors (Skilton, 2016). Moreover, Huawei’s smartphone is less

expensive but have high-end handset than Apple and Samsung’s smart phone, so

Huawei have better position to compete with Apple and Samsung.

Points of Parity

When target audiences buying smartphones, there are few things that they would

considered. Firstly, smartphone’s battery life. Consumers are most care about are to

have longer battery life when they buy their smartphones (Wu, Kang & Yang, 2015).

According to Nuckles (2016), it can be known that Huawei Ascend Mate 2’s battery life

is 14 hours and 45 minutes, Apple 6 plus’s battery life is 10 hours and Samsung Galaxy

S5’s battery life is 9 hours and 42 minutes. Therefore, it can be known that Huawei

have longer battery life. Secondly, smartphones are responsive. With the development

of technologies, the smartphone are faster and faster in order to meet the consumers’

need. The smartphones will be 1000 times faster than before with today’s technologies

(Communication technologies including smartphones and laptops could now be 1,000

times faster, 2012). The faster the smartphone is, the more people are willing to use.

Thirdly, all three smart phones, IPhone, Samsung Galaxy and Huawei, are enable

customer to do what they want, such as texting, email, access to internet and so on.

Fourthly, smartphones has great UI. In order to make the target market to buy a

smartphone, whether it is easy to use is the first thing to consider. Apple IPhone are

easily to access, people can find the app or something they need very quickly (Nutting,

Olsson, Mark, LaMarche & Topley, 2014). Although Samsung Galaxy looks like very

complicated to use, it has an easy mode for consumers to access (Hart-Davis, 2014).

Additionally, Huawei is easy to access and consumers can make the change UI smaller

or bigger easily (Huawei; A breakthrough in power and efficiency - Huawei mate 8

launches in Southeast Asia, 2016). Last but not least, smartphones should have quality

hardware. Apple IPhone has better hardware and perform better than Samsung Galaxy

and Huawei (Tiongco, 2016).

Points of Difference

Huawei is a low price brand, it has the lowest price compare to Apple and Samsung

smartphones. Huawei P9 selling price is around $650, Apple IPhone 6s price range

from $649, $749, $849 for the 16 GB, 64GB and 128GB and Samsung Galaxy S7 priced

at around $694 (Tiongco, 2016). It can be established that Huawei has the lowest price

that could attract people to buy the product. In addition, Huawei uses an everyday

low price strategy to satisfy their customers (Huawei, 2016). Moreover, Huawei

differentiate their smartphones from Apple and Samsung by using different distribute

strategies. Huawei sale their phones in the phone operators, such as Optus or

Vodafone. But Apple not only sale their products in phone operators, they also have

their own Apple store for people to experience their products. In addition, Huawei’s

products are widely available, people can access it everywhere. There are some

differences from Huawei’s competitors of online presence. In Huawei’s website, it

have every link for consumers have different needs, such as it people want to buy

products from Huawei or want to work with Huawei, they have different link.

Furthermore, Huawei has latest news for their products on their website and

consumer are able to log into their website. Huawei also have direct link through to

Facebook, Twitter or YouTube (Huawei, 2016). On the other hand, Huawei

differentiate their smartphones based on product design. Huawei has the slimmest

smartphone and that will attract consumers (Warman, 2016). Furthermore, Huawei’s

product attribute for the purpose to distinct in consumer’s mind are low price and big

screen. Apple are quick and security (Hoog & Strzempka, 2011). Samsung has high

resolution of the image and big screen (Electronic equipment companies; samsung's

new 16-megapixel CMOS image sensor features high-resolution sensitivity and

performance for advanced mobile applications, 2011). Moreover, Huawei has the

lowest price compare to competitors, which will attract people to buy Huawei’s

smartphones. Also people can buy Huawei’s products easily. However, if Huawei

continuous to keep this strategy, it will not be able to do well in the long term. It is

important for Huawei to have something that are very different from its competitors,

not only price but other technologies or product design.

Recommendation

The first recommendation is place strategy, Huawei can be access and buy from

many phone operators. However, Huawei need to have its own store for customers to

experience the products. There are many other smartphone brands in phone

operators, so people will be easily attracted by other phone brands. Therefore, the

advantages to have own store is can enable the customers concentrate on the brand

and can make decision on different products under a brand rather than make a choice

for many different brands. It is will be helpful for customers to have the best possible

decision rather than need to mark decision among many different brands (Lee &

Benbasat, 2010). However, there is impossible for Huawei to have retail store in

overseas in the short term. Therefore, Huawei could have 1 to 2 retail store in Asia but

not in China in 3 years. Then Huawei could expand their retail store to Europe in next

5 to 8 years.

The second recommendation is to attract more target audiences. Huawei can have

campaign to enable more customers to join and use the products. It would be good to

have lottery draw and that will make everyone to join the campaign, everyone can

share the post on Huawei Facebook, then Huawei could choose a winner base on the

people that share the post, and that winner could get a free smartphone. After the

winner have the smartphone, he should share his thoughts about this phone. When

people share the post from Facebook, there will be more people know Huawei and

will join the campaign and let more people to know. According to Klapdor (2013), firms

use variety digital channels to send advertising message to consumers, such as create

a campaign for the purpose to increase brand awareness and enable target markets

to involve. The company could have this campaign in 6 months, could be done in the

specific states or territory. Moreover, the organization could target the specific age

group or where they live, and could make advertisement to these specific groups.

However, the newest Apple IPhone has lower their price, so the points of difference of

price for Apple may turn into points of parity for some IPhones that have low price

(Zacks Investment Research, 2016). This would compete with Huawei for the lowest

price. Therefore, Huawei should have some innovation for smartphone to be able to

compete with the competitors.

The third recommendation is product strategy. In order to differentiate from the

competitors, it is vital for Huawei to have some different technologies, design or have

more innovation, and also improve their security system. When there is an innovation

on smartphone, there will be popularly adopted (Trelease, 2008). Moreover,

smartphone security also important for customers, smartphone stores many different

sensitive data so it is vital for Huawei to understand the security issues (Flynn & Klieber,

2015). Furthermore, to have after sale service can help provide remarkable experience

for customers and that will allow customer loyalty for the organization (Ahmad &

Muhammad, 2012).

Reference

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Appendix

Appendix 1

Appendix 2