Case Name :      Shanghai COS Software Ltd.

Authors :           Kenneth G. Hardy, Bin Zhang, Patrick Zhu

Source :             Ivey Publishing

Case ID :            903A31

Discipline :        Marketing

Case Length :    21 pages

Solution Sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

Shanghai COS Software Ltd. designs and develops smart card operating systems. The company’s marketing manager must decide the best basis for segmenting the burgeoning market for smart cards for wireless devices in China. She has excellent data on this duopoly market, the segments, and their buying criteria. In fact, she already has received significant orders for low-end cards from each of the two large customers. However, she and the senior management team must decide on the market positioning for this young high-tech start-up. She must select one of the two major customers whose size, structure, and procedures are quite different. She must also decide whether the company should market low-margin/high-volume or high-margin/low-volume products. Both products seem to have a very short life expectancy in the face of rapidly changing customer expectations. The investors in the company want it to achieve profitability fairly quickly and still adopt sustainable positioning in the marketplace.