Work experience report : Philips

Résumé du document

The foundations for what was to become one of the world's biggest electronics companies were laid in 1891 when Gerard Philips established a company in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to manufacture incandescent lamps and other electrical products. The company initially concentrated on making carbon-filament lamps and by the turn of the century it was one of the largest producers in Europe. Developments in new lighting technologies fuelled a steady program of expansion, and, in 1914, it established a research laboratory to study physical and chemical phenomena, so as to further stimulate product innovation.

Today, Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of 37.9 billion Euros in 2001. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, color picture tubes for televisions and monitors, and one-chip television products. Royal Philips Electronics is eighth on Fortune's list of global top 30 electronics corporations and quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges.

Philips has 168,400 employees in more than 60 countries actively functioning in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, security systems, components, semiconductors, and medical systems (particularly scanning and other diagnostic systems). It is a world leader in digital technologies for television and displays, wireless communications, speech recognition, video compression, storage and optical products as well as the underlying semiconductor technology that makes these breakthroughs possible.

As a technology-driven company, Philips attaches great importance to protecting its innovations by intellectual property rights (IPRs) to secure its investments in research & development. The company's IPR portfolio currently includes about 70,000 patent rights, 22,000 trademark registrations and some 6,000 design rights.

Philips' brand name is the company's most important asset. It guides the direction and shapes the content of its activity, from R&D to the delivery of products to customer servicing. Philips has spent substantially on supporting its brand throughout the world promoting the company theme of ‘Let's Make Things Better'.

Philips has ensured that the campaign carries significant consumer relevance: before a campaign was devised, Philips talked to over 14,000 customers in 17 countries in personal 'one on one' home interviews, with a group of men and women, roughly aged between26-32 years, with a specific attitude and lifestyle exhibiting comfort in technology and its benefits.

Extraits

[...] The French are looking for opportunities to be fully part of society. The European project is in line with some major concerns of these people: care for the environment, a demand for a fair society and openness to the world. French people are mainly in favour of Europe, and ready to study, work and live anywhere in the European Union, but also to vote in local elections of other member states if living there. They also focus on local issues and institutions, giving an important place to national superiority. [...]

[...] He has also gained experience in choosing and knowing want he really wanted. Although the consumer is more optimistic, he also has more experience and pays more attention to the origin of the product, to its quality and the transparency of its fabrication process and its ingredients. And this same behaviour appears all across Europe. In fact, the segmentation of the market changed. Regional integration and internationalisation of the brands has removed barriers between markets, and created common characteristics for larger market entities. [...]

[...] Design is important to them, but it must be discreet and pure. They like convenient and reliable equipment, but they distrust products with too many functions. Health and environmental benefits can be buying criteria especially in food markets. Plugged-Ins is the youngest segment of the European population with 50% aged less than 35 years old. Their occupations are mainly blue collar workers and students. They are materialists, fascinated by fast material success (like Internet start-ups). Particularly sensitive to fashion, they are a very active group, like to go out and have fun. [...]

[...] Secondary data are already available, because they were collected for some purpose other than solving the present problem. Examples are: 1. The existing company information system or operational systems trough the Intranet providing some market figures or the already existant studies and analyses. The use of this source can help to build the country reports and most of the descriptive researches. Intranet[?] is an internal company network, the building blocks for successful commercial activity. These internal networks start off as ways for employees to connect to company information and exchange them between co-workers. [...]

[...] That explains why the British culture is characterised both by flexibility and stability. Flexible because individualists are usually more flexible than conformists (conformists have to consult the rest of the group before changing something) and stable because conformists value stability. In Spain, three segments are particularly represented in the population: traditionalists, conformists and stylists. Innovators and Plugged-Ins mostly correspond to Conformists and Stylists. Contrary to Great Britain, Innovators and Plugged- Ins are first looking for the style of the product rather than for the personal utility of it. [...]