NOKIA Lifestyle Austria & Switzerland

When going on the Austrian or Swiss website of Nokia, we can open a new link which takes us directly to Nokia lifestyle, which is totally independent from the official website of Nokia. Consumers who are not fans and who do not visit the website regularly are also attracted when buying new phones, as brochures and leaflets are given with them. Indeed, in Austria and Switzerland, leaflets which say "Come and join our Nokia community and find out how your Nokia phone can improve your lifestyle factor" or "We are interested in how you use your Nokia %u2026 give us an insight on lifestyle.nokia.xx" are attached to every Nokia phone sold.

Concerning the target market for this innovative website we can first of all say that we could not find any figures, but this kind of website usually attracts the young generation (less than 35 years old), male and female Nokia-owners, fascinated by new technologies in general, but also in everything technology can bring to them.
With the lifestyle website, customers can enter a community: the Nokia community, which is very important for them.

Product
The product described here is the Lifestyle website itself. It's used to intensify the community and make the customer more loyal for further buys. This service is free and offers the well known Nokia-Website design. On this part of the website the developers have integrated more Web 2.0 applications (e.g. upload your own videos and photos) than on the residual website. It's easy to use, entertaining and gives the user the want to see more.
Nokia Lifestyle promotes Nokia mobile services and also invites customers to download these features that are supposed to facilitate and improve their life. Furthermore, they offer services in cooperation with partners like Coke Zero, The Gap and the Austrian Red Cross, to promote their services.

Place
Nokia Lifestyle is a website, so its place is online. There are no activities or events held. We can note that this service is only available on the Austrian and Swiss websites of Nokia. Here are the links to enter the two websites (in German language only).

Price
As this website is ought to be used by Nokia mobile phone owners, customers first have to buy a Nokia phone. Usually (different for Nokia stores), phones are sold is speciality stores where the price of a phone can vary a lot. Indeed, a phone alone is quite expensive, but when subscribing for an operator, the price of the phone always decreases. Nevertheless, price also depends on the operator chosen. Therefore, Nokia is offering this "Nokia Lifestyle" service for free.
However, this website is used to promote the brand and make customers become fans. So the website indirectly engenders revenues, because fans buy more phones than normal customers and also buy the services going with their specific phone.

Promotion
We think that the Word-of-Mouth (WOM) is very important for making this website more popular. It is partly built up by user content like videos and photos so the user itself plays an important role. WOM for Nokia Lifestyle is easier to achieve because Nokia is long-standing for concentrating on building a strong community, e.g. by using the forum, personalize services and use approval marketing. Compared to competitors like Motorola, LG or Samsung, the community of users is much stronger. The real purpose of the website is to "build a community where customers become fans of Nokia".
What can be surprising is that there is no forum on the lifestyle website. How can a community be build without a forum? A good idea would be to let customers talk together and maybe invite them to express their wants, so that the new phones would really fit their wants. They can already express their thoughts on Nokia phones on a separate website called "Nokia Trends Lab". However, it would be good if they would be able to interactively create a Nokia phone themselves online.
Something interesting to do would be to enable customers to personalize their website or mobile phone. For instance, Nokia could offer a web service to personalize the mobile phones wallpaper, ringtone, etc., but that maybe be difficult because of regulations of many national operators. Nevertheless, these services could be a nice opportunity to make more business and to make customers even more loyal.

The whole website works as an advert. Indeed, it promotes the brand by offering this nice service to the customers.
Permission marketing
Permission marketing is basically only used when signing for Nokia's newsletter.
Innovation
The whole website is the innovation itself. It is a new service for Nokia customers, which enables them to enter a strong community. However, it could be more interactive (with a forum for example) and personalized (currently no registration needed = no information gathered), because that is what people are looking for nowadays.

The website is interesting for people who already have a Nokia mobile phone. There is then no interest in using e-commerce, because the purpose of the website is really to provide an extra service to Nokia's customers, but not to sell directly mobile phones.

As every multinational firm, Nokia has to carry out some marketing research. However, Nokia also invite its customers to give their opinion on Nokia's phones. Nokia's will is really to make people talk so that they can always improve their phones.
This website is part of a 2-way-communication strategy of Nokia, so it is also an advantage for them. Product innovation is one of the most important things for mobile phones to be competitive. And Nokia has understood this well.

Building a community is one of the best ways to make customers become fans and that is something rare, but great to achieve. It is simply surprising that Nokia did not launch the same website in other countries as well.