Parker Pen Essay

541 Words3 Pages
Was the globalization strategy for Parker Pen was flawed or plagued by implementation challenges? Parker Pen Company’s globalization strategy was truly flawed from the beginning. Because of numerous flaws at planning stage, the marketing campaign could not possible to succeed. The three main flaws that Parker Pen Company made within their strategy: dilution of brand image, lack of cultural adaptation and over-centralization. The most valuable asset of the luxury product has is a brand. People buy Parker Pen not because of its writing quality or good look, but because Parker Pen is “The World's Most Wanted Pen”. This is the reason why people buy Parker Pen. Unfortunately, PPC at this time have forgotten about it. The Company started to sell low end items, like Vector and even disposable pens like Itala By aggressively pursuing low-end market diluted the brand as by selling high volume low margin items, PPC almost destroyed their image of the high-end brand. Most people does not buy pens for status symbol, they buy it for writing. This meant that more expensive than “normal” pen, Vector was not as popular to compensate on losses from cannibalizing on luxury PPC pens. After the year of the start of marketing campaign, PPC made loss of $22 million on US market only. Poor marketing strategy made them compete on cost on which they did not have competence. As they did not have an experience of mass-production, PPC experienced numerous problems with their new, state of the art $15 million factory. Selling luxury pens is very specific business where regional preferences differentiate drastically: France preferred expensive fountain pens, while in Scandinavia market, ballpoint pens dominated. Positioning and expectations from pens varied greatly over different markets. Not to mention difference between purchasing powers of countries. Strong international brand of
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