Clark Material Handling
1. Is the Product Strategy Study conducted by the John Morton Company more than scientific mumbo jumbo? If you were David Richards how would you address the concerns of Joao Santos?
- Yes. It is more than scientific mumbo jumbo.
- How to address João Santos’ concerns?
• Show him that Clark is having many problems:
1. It’s losing the market share, if we don’t do anything, we will be worse off.
2. It has lost brand reputation
3. The competition will become more serious: Japanese company and Hyster.
• JMC used conjoint analysis and concept testing method in research. The conjoint analysis has been helping other companies in the same situation. The result of analysis forecasted the market reaction about the new models. It is a powerful tool to get insight into the underlying preferences. Clark satisfies the requirements of conjoint analysis:
1. Product as a bundle of attributes: Clark’s truck is able to be specified as a collection of attributes.
2. Must know important attributes: we know what attributes are salient in the product category.
3. Respondents can reasonably rate products: JMC carefully picked up interviewees who are experienced or familiar with product category.
4. Attributes should be actionable: all those attributes are deliverable.
2. Which HOL product line do you recommend? Stay with the present model? Go with JMC’s “dual offering” strategy? Something else?
• Add the automatic line
• Purchase Madal. By introducing the low-end model through Madal, the Clark brand will not be associated with a cheap and lower quality image, and we defend the low-end line.
• Purchasing Madal for low-end model, keep the current model and offering the automatic model. By having these th ...