Marketing Strategy and SWOT Analysis of Lenovo

We all have personal computers which we use daily. You run a business or you are a university student, having a constant operating laptop is a must. The more frequently technology develops today, the higher the demands of customers become. Today, Lenovo is one of the most popular computer manufacturing companies located in Beijing, China. Besides eye-catchy design, Lenovo laptops are known for being 2-in-1. They can be used either for gaming or for your daily tasks. If you have never used or seen Lenovo laptops, I am sure you have come across their commercials with their logo “Smarter technology for all”. Let’s go through Lenovo’s marketing strategy and SWOT analysis to understand the reason for its constant growth.

First, let’s analyze the company’s goals, objectives and desired future position.

Mission Statement.

Lenovo’s mission statement is “our mission is to become one of the world’s great personal technology companies. We will accomplish this through:

• Personal Computers: Lead in PCs and be respected for our product innovation and quality.
• Convergence: Lead the industry with an ecosystem of devices, services, applications, and content to connect seamlessly to people and web content.
• Culture: Become recognized as one of the best, most trusted and most well-respected companies to work for and do business with”.

From the mission statement, it is explicit that one of Lenovo’s aims is to become the world’s best computer manufacturing company. They aim to provide their customers with perfected, innovative gadgets. Besides that, the company has planned to have a wide range of applications and services, which makes casual and professional computing easier for them.

Moreover, Lenovo aims to reach world recognition for personal prosperity and gain all the necessary features and tools to be well-respected. In that case, Lenovo increases its worldwide recognition, attracts more customers, and increases other companies’ recognition.

Vision Statement.

Lenovo Group Limited vision statement is “our vision is that Lenovo will create personal devices more people are inspired to own; a culture more people aspire to join and an enduring, trusted business that is well respected around the world”.

The vision statement highlights that Lenovo is highly concentrated on developing their products’ technological aspects, promising and providing the customers with all the necessary features.

Another fascinating feature of Lenovo’s vision and mission statement is the word “culture”. At first, it seems confusing; “what ‘culture’ has to do with the gadget development?”. The word “culture” derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin “colere,” which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture. Lenovo thrives on creating their own world with their own cyberspace culture, including all the necessary tools for their customers.

Moving ahead, let’s understand what positioning strategies does Lenovo use for their branding.

For that matter, let’s analyze the meaning of one of Lenovo’s Instagram posts.

Currently, there are more than 900 thousand followers on Instagram whom Lenovo is constantly in touch with. The Instagram post that we decided to concentrate on is a GIF, a short video that automatically replays several times. The caption for this post says, “Meanwhile at the Lenovo logo factory”.

Logos demonstrate the visual representation of the company, help in understanding what are the aesthetics and the thematic aspects the organization is aiming to represent. In this post, we can see how the robots are working on creating the logo; if we look closely, we can see how mastery they are doing their job, how careful and accurate they paint the tablet and stick the logo to it.

On their Instagram, Lenovo shares its new products and new technical features. It keeps an essential casual interaction with their customers. Posts like these create a friendly atmosphere that customers appreciate.

So, we can say that Lenovo shows a good and thoughtful attitude towards their business both professionally and casually.

Hence, Lenovo belongs to the Creator Brand Archetype.

What features do we know about this Archetype?

Desire: Create something precious

Goal: realize the idea

Strategy: adhere to aesthetic control and proficiency

And below are some of the messages we can get from Creator Archetype:

Level One: woolgathering, unexpected burst of encouragement and motivation.

Level Two: being ingenious, come up with original ideas.

Level Three: make a dream come true.

Level Four: Culture and society impacting structures.

The Creator Archetype provides a true identity for the brands:

-Which product’s function fosters self-expression, offers the client a variety of possibilities, encourages innovation.

• Marketers and public relations professionals in the arts and technology.
• A brand that “does everything for the customer,” leaving the customer with little choice.
• Any time a customer can save money by doing something for themselves
• Where customers have a lot of free time can be more creative.
• Which has a Creator culture in their organization.

Moving forward, let’s have a close look at the SWOT analysis of Lenovo

Strengths:

• The company was founded in 1984 in Beijing, China. It has a complete line of products starting from the data centre to smartphones.
• The company is following a successful strategy of vertical integration. To reduce costs across different parts of its production process, Lenovo keeps most of its production within China. This strategy helps them achieve low cost as well as high control over their production process and efficiency.
• Low-cost production is something that every company wants to achieve. It gives the advantage to make a significant profit. Today, technology produced in China is affordable, which makes many companies manufacture their products in China. As Lenovo was originated in there, their products already have efficient costs.
• Lenovo has a strong Product Portfolio. They offer various products, including personal computers, smartphones, tablet computers, electronic storage devices, workstations, servers, IT management software, peripherals, storage devices, printers, televisions, scanners, and smart televisions. The more diverse the list of products is, the more customers they attract and the more stable is their earnings throughout the years.
• The x86 server business from IBM and Motorola were obtained by Lenovo from Microsoft ThinkPad notebook PCs were also purchased from IBM.
• Lenovo does its operations in 60 different countries. For the organization, maximizing the potential of diversity is a top focus. A discrimination-free work environment is a priority for the organization. In terms of hiring new employees, employee promotions and employee compensation, the organization has fair hiring and compensation. There is a guarantee of equal opportunity and harassment.

Weaknesses

• Lenovo uses premium prices. It shows the high value of the products, indeed. However, it doesn’t help in making excellent and increased profits.
• For the merger and acquisition agreement with IBM, Lenovo sent four people to IBM in 2004. Back then, only one team member could converse fluently in English.  This has forced them to step out of their comfort zone and launch a business without regard to culture. Lenovo has adapted to new cultures in non-Chinese locations where other corporations are not as powerful, like  in China.
• While Lenovo’s profits fell by 51 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, 3200 people were laid off. Although many employees were from non-manufacturing areas, they fear losing their jobs in a downturn in the company.

Opportunities

• If the company decides to change their market target, it will increase its profit. Lenovo cooperates only with those markets, which have particular awareness and clear concepts about different gadgets. Obviously, if the company decided to target the mass market, it will sharply increase its profit margin.
• Lenovo has full functionality in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which also positively impacts their profit.
• If the company decided to create a strategic alliance with different telecom companies from other parts of the world, they might develop new distinctive distribution advantages.

Threats

• Most consumers care about quality products, but they are also interested in low-cost products. A smartphone with similar functionality to a brand-name smartphone does not warrant an exorbitant price when comparing costs. In the same vein, people from middle-class neighborhoods prefer to choose low-priced computer peripherals when purchasing them.
• Apple Inc. is the industry leader. Asus shifted a significant portion of its R&D budget (companies undertake to innovate and introduce new products and services) to its mobile segment. The rivalry has also been boosted by the entry of prominent Chinese companies such as Xiaomi and Oppo onto the international It’s no surprise that they’re dominating the smartphone.

We are done with the SWOT analysis! Each component has a significant meaning which determines the companies progress, regress or digress. TO avoid unfortunate situations inside and outside in the market, Lenovo should pay close attention to the threats and prevent them. Also, they should keep improving to keep away from the weaknesses.

Finally, let’s discuss the segment that Lenovo decided to target.

To do so, we need to watch this commercial first:

In the commercial, there are several people. They are most probably IT specialists, and we see some aspects of their daily routines, e.g. someone is getting ready to get out of their house, busy at work, and someone is on their way to a specific place.

We can see that those people have ordinary appearances unless they look into the mirror and see “other/hidden” versions of themselves. Once they look into the mirror, the audience can see the holograms of the game characters that those people represent.

And the script for the commercial sounds a bit unusual at first as well. For example, when the first man looks into the mirror, the background voice says, ‘to the untrained eyes, you look like everyone else’. Moving one, we see new statements like, ‘but you have another side’, in this scene, we can see the actual image of the hologram, which is likely a character from a video game.

‘Embrace it with the machine that is worthy of you’ is the net line in the commercial. This sentence emphasizes what do the customers mean to the Lenovo team. They put the most powerful characters from video games next to their customers. They believe that their customers deserve a gadget they can use for any kind of job or play any game they want.

Thus, Lenovo’s commercial is not about the gadget itself, but the possibilities, tools and main features and can provide its customers with. Only at the very end, they talked about their products.

They showed them to us featuring the last line, ‘stylish on the inside, savage on the outside, which obviously indicates that even though Lenovo laptops seem to be only about their design and eye-catching style, they are also compelling.

The participants of the commercial are intellectual people who seemed to be looking for something unique. They are highly concentrated on their job and seek to reach more success and gain more knowledge. Lenovo chose to target Conscious Progressives.

Now, let’s learn some interesting facts about this group:

Lifestyle and Values:

• Conscious Progressives are generally easy-going people. They are always willing to gain more knowledge and use them for their life decisions.
• They are realists. They are down-to-earth when it comes to making important decisions. They prefer not to spend money on things they don’t need.
• They are intelligent, and they measure their success by what they think and do rather than just by what they have done. It is more important to them to set an example than to impose their will on others. Many people respect and admire them because of this trait. They have many followers who are drawn to them because of what they stand for and what they do.
• Their hobbies often (but not always) reflect their intellectual outlook. They are voracious readers during the early stages of life and buy the most books, but they also enjoy cycling or playing football with friends on the weekends or after work/school.
• Political and social issues are well-argued by progressives who enjoy intellectual debates and are well-informed about them. A person who has explored a topic from many different perspectives before forming a solid opinion feels entitled to be heard and should be considered.
• People are trying to be more ‘intelligent’ when they go shopping and look beyond the packaging. Like the rest of us, they buy for emotional reasons, but they are more particular about the product’s functionality.

Summing up, we managed to deeply analyze the Marketing Strategies and SWOT of Lenovo. We highlighted the company’s target segment, their strength, weaknesses and threats. I hope this helped you get a particular image about Lenovo, how it thrives to reach more and manages to keep on the high level as one of the best computer manufacturing companies.

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