Parker Pen Co.

International Marketing

Type Private (subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid)

Industry Writing instruments

Founded 1888

Founder George Safford Parker

Headquarters Newhaven, East Sussex, England

Area served Worldwide

Key people George Safford Parker, founder, Kenneth Parker

In 1993 Parker was acquired by the Gillette Company, which already owned the Paper Mate brand, one of the best-selling disposable ballpoints. Gillette sold the writing instruments division in 2000 to Newell Rubbermaid, whose own Sanford Stationery Division became the largest in the world—owning such brand names as Rotring, Sharpie, Reynolds as well as Parker, Paper Mate, Waterman, and Liquid Paper.

Products available in the Market

TYPE MODEL

5TH Technology I.M., Ingenuity, Sonnet, Urban

Fountain pens Duofold, Premier, Sonnet, Facet, Esprit, Urban, I.M., Vector, Jotter

Ballpoint pens Facet, Executive, Esprit, Frontier, Urban, I.M., Vector, Jotter

Inks and refills Quink, 5TH Mode

LETS SUMMARIZE

What is the case all about

CASE A

What we have understood and what we can derive

What would you do if James Peterson's shoes in January 1982?

• Designing global Strategy with reference to Parker’s present market conditions.

• Decentralized marketing strategy• Retain old successful managers.

What changes if any, would you make in Parker’s marketing strategy?

• Keeping only High end products to keep loyalty untouched

• Adopting global marketing strategy with lack of rigidity and required customization

• Continuing with the previous decentralized strategy with gradual expansion

Which aspects of Parker’s structure would you discard? Which would you keep?

Discard• Rigid centralization• Faulty technology

• Self-reference criterion of peterson

Keep• Retain old, experienced management

staffs• Providing more freedom to the country

managers, subsidiaries and agencies• Give due Importance on the R&D Cells

Assume that you are James Peterson and you have just hired a new management team composed oh highly qualified executives from

outside companies. You and your team are convinced that you have the solution to Parker’s problems but there are many holdovers who disagree with you. How would you incorporate the views of Parker

management into your plan?

This is a crucial decision for an individual as it is hard to choose between experience and modernization.

The best solution to this problem would be to use the experience of the

holdovers and inculcate it into the new teams ideas that would even give

an edge to the competitors

CASE B

What we have understood and what we can derive

Why did Peterson’s global strategy fail?

• Self-reference criterion • Rigid centralization• Pursuing the market and products of lower end in

addition to higher end products• Use of faulty technology in production plant• Firing of successful managers

What lessons can be drawn from the decline and fall of Parker Pen?

• One should always be careful with the customers it has before trying to expand and grab more customers

because a rapid strategic change can affect the loyal customers.

• All products cannot be marketed in throughout the globe equally, centralization always doesn't work for all

products.• For a product like pen it is very important to decide how

you want to place your Brand.

Though late but still PARKER’s management realized that the pen business consisted of “little pocket of entrepreneurial activity around the world” were not susceptible to centralized,

standardize approach. So it is well understood that we must understand the requirement of the market and plan their marketing effort accordingly.

Conclusion

Other wise this would hit the wall and crashed like the effort of Mr. Peterson and will lead the company in a

riskier situation like PARKER. Again sudden shifting from one strategy to another also proves to be disastrous for a company. It should be done slowly and gradually giving

sufficient time to the consumer to adopt with the change. Beside this an international marketer should also judge

and assess the differences of the varying situation judiciously to lessen risk of his marketing effort. .

Sweta SumanKumar AryanSudhanshu ChoudhuryIndranil ChattapadhayaySreoshi Bera