Marketing| in the right track and to

Marketing| in the right track and to

Marketing| Kimura K. K. – Can the customer be saved? | Term 1 – Section B – Team 2| | 1.

What seems to be Pramtex’s strategy? The strategy of Pramtex is to produce “Best in class” cutting edge technology that appeals to customer engineers and will differentiate it from other producers. Focusing on high-end technology before any of its competitors allows Pramtex to charge premium prices. The company works in partnership with its clients to identify new technology and invests in R;D to deliver high quality technical products to the industry.However, in doing so Pramtex comes across as a company that thinks about the products mainly from an engineering excellence perspective and considers customer issues such as pricing, less technological sophistication and post-sale customer service as not so important. 2. Who are the key players at Kimura in the purchasing decision? What are their respective roles and interests? * Dr. Kimura: * He is representing the new generation in the company and has a strong presence in the media replication market.

Dr.Kimura’s role is to make sure that everything is going smoothly and in the right track and to decide on the final decision based on the inputs of his subordinates. His interest is to look for a very reliable supplier as a partner to achieve his ambitious growth target (double sales within 3 years) * Dr. Gen-Ichi Nomura: * Although he retired two years ago from the company, but he still has an influential role in the decision making process within Kimura K. K. He is a well-respected and socially highly regarded person with a deep knowledge and experience in the industry.

His interest is to have the most sophisticated machines with the best cutting-edge technology for Kimura K. K and this could be found in Pramtex technologies. * Dr. Hashimoto, CFO: * His role is to make sure that the purchases are in alignment with the company’s financial resources.

His main interest is to acquire the cheapest machine while meeting the company’s expectations. * Dr. Komoda, responsible for all areas of optical disc replication * He is Responsible of sitting the criteria of the newly purchased products and to implement them.Also, supervising the production process and making sure that it is going smoothly. His main interest is to meet the company’s operational and production goals.

3. Can this customer be saved? Why? Why not? It will be extremely difficult to save the customer. Reasons for this: ·         Gap between expectation setting and experience delivered: o   The customer’s expectations were high due to promises of excellent technology and the high price charged.

   The service experience delivered not fits the client’s expectations connected with high-end-strategy: the technology depends on a single person (Max), no immediate response time, no clearly assigned responsible and escalation process, unprofessional spare part handling and further deception. o   After the service problem occurred, John did not contact Kimura to present an excuse or no further proactive contact, but only called for selling more machines. ·         Gap between customer requirement and solution delivered: The costumer requires a product of less quality and therefore, less expensive that the one Pramtex provides.Apart from the engineers of Kimura, the other stakeholders of the company do not appreciate this technology that overpasses Kimura requirements. Once the product performance requirements by Kimura are met, few areas of the company appreciate this over performance. Indeed, Kimura would have signed the contract if this state-of-the-art equipment had minimized the learning and start-up curve and the equipment had been ready to produce (installed and check) on time and run reliably.

The client mentioned the importance of the reliability of the machine when mentioning the Disney order.          Pramtex’s service delivery and mentality does not meet the client’s priorities: no investment in a very sustainable, long-lasting customer relationship. Several relationships with the client were damaged: o   Key supporter of Pramtex were heavily deceived, perhaps lost their face, after having supported the purchase of the expensive Pramtex machine which turned out not to be reliable (especially Dr. Nomura). Partners turned out not to be able to fix the problems quickly.Kimura might have perceived that Pramtex was not really interested in its problem by explaining that the problem could only be dealt with on Monday morning, two days later. o   Dr.

Nomura: John did not realize he “owed” Dr. Nomura something o   Dr. Hashimoto gave a lot of signals about his concerns about the price o   It is thinkable that culture concerning personal relationships plays a major role: in general, in Japan personal relationships are very important to do business. Once they are destroyed, it might be difficult to continue a business relation.          Competition: Competitor Singulus seems to offer what the client is looking for – a less complex, perhaps not state-of-the-art, but cheaper machine which problems Kimura can solve itself easily and quickly.

In the short- and mid-term, there is no chance of saving the customer. Nevertheless, in the long term, if company’s strategy including pricing, its customer service organization and mindset are changed, and if the customer’s confidence can be restored in a long process, then Pramtex could have a chance to save the client.