Microsoft's Strategy for Small Businesses (A): The Innovative PR
Campaign for MS Office Accounting 2007
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ICMR HOME | Case Studies Collection
Case Details:
Case Code : MKTG167
Case Length : 20 Pages
Period : 2005-2007
Pub Date : 2007
Teaching Note :Not Available
Organization : Microsoft Corporation
Industry : Computers and Information Technology
Countries : Europe, USA
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Campaign for MS Office Accounting 2007 case study
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Excerpts
Background Note
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Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates (Gates) and his friend Paul Allen in April,
1975 at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Over the years, the company has grown to become
a global computer technology corporation. It is based in Redmond, Washington,
USA and develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software
application products.
As of 2006, it had a strong dominance in the desktop computer operating system
(OS) and work group server OS market. The company also markets gaming consoles,
mobile devices, and computer hardware...
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Microsoft - Making a Fundamental Shift
Though Microsoft was very profitable, its share price had remained fairly
stagnant since 2002 (Refer to Exhibit III for five-year chart of Microsoft's
stock price movement). Investors and analysts were more excited about
Internet-based firms like Google and Yahoo!. With its Internet presence,
Google, in particular, was making rapid in-roads into the software market.
While in 2005, the revenues of Microsoft grew by 8 percent to US$39.8
billion, Google's revenues grew by an impressive 92 percent in 2005, to
US$6.1 billion...
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The Big Battle for the Small Business Account
According to Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at Jupiter Research, even though
almost half of Microsoft's revenue came from SMBs, the company's
penetration in this market was still very limited. Some analysts
suggested that Microsoft could achieve a huge revenue growth in this
segment if it could get the SMBs to replace their pirated software with
authorised versions. Another challenge was that many SMBs tended to use
technology at a minimal level because they could not afford to employ
people with a strong technical background to take care of their
information technology (IT) requirements... |
MS Office Accounting 2007
On October 29, 2006, Microsoft unveiled two new accounting
software packages targeted at SMBs - OAE 2007 and OAP 2007 (Refer to Exhibit IV
for the Logo of Office Accounting 2007). OAE 2007 was targeted at the large
number of SMBs that did not use any accounting software to run their operations.
To entice such users, Microsoft offered OAE 2007 free of charge to SMBs, while
OAP 2007 would be available (in early 2007) at a price of US$149.95 (£80).
Existing SBA 2006 users could upgrade to OAP 2007 at a price of US$99. OAP 2007
would cater to SMBs with more complex requirements...
Excerpts Contd...>>
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