Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

FINDING NEW CONCEPTS 181
hidden and controlled by a microprocessor, automatically shifts
between three gears. Fueled in part by the Shimano Coaster
and by an increased desire to commute with bikes, coaster
bikes started to take off. In 2009 a magazine for coaster riders,
Kickstand , came out, giving the subcategory a signal that it had
emerged.
Often, particularly in emerging economies, the problem
is price: there is a gap between what is affordable and the cost
of what is available. Nokia in researching consumers in India
found that even a simplifi ed phone cost too much. 13 However,
by packaging the phone with a fl ashlight, an alarm clock, and
a radio, the price of the combination, though high, was much
closer to being acceptable. There were other problems: the dust
that affected reliability, the humidity that resulted in slippery
hands, the glare of bright sunlight that made the screen hard
to read were addressed with a phone that was dustproof, had a
better grip, and featured a polarized screen. Retailers would not
carry phones, so Nokia developed a network of people willing
to sell its phones from small stands. By 2007 something like
100,000 retail outlets were selling Nokia phones. This all came
from identifying and addressing the barriers to buying.
Market Trends
Thomson Corporation in 1997 was a Toronto media company
that owned some fi fty - fi ve daily newspapers that were doing
well.
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CEO Richard Harrington, however, observed several
trends in the environment that caused him to move the fi rm
away from newspapers. He could see that the Internet was
going to undercut classifi ed advertising and that cable television
and the Internet were going to steal readers. Despite the
fact that the company was profi table, he made the rather dramatic
decision to disinvest from newspapers and to move the
fi rm into delivering information and services online to the law,
education, health - care, and fi nance industries. As a result of