Econ - Help

Tamika Mitchell

Southern New Hampshire University

Dr. Vilma Edginton

Econ 500

3/18/2018

The changing customer needs

The ability to attract and retain customers is always critical for any company and thus it can either break or make a business. It is therefore important for the Microsoft Company to take note of the continuous changing needs of their customers by arming themselves together with their employees with the necessary tools to provide the products and services that fully fit the needs of the customers. About a survey commissioned by the Microsoft Company, most of its branches have reported that the use of modern technology has tightened their relationships with the customers (Karla, 2018). The cloud and mobile solutions have acted as a bridge between the company and the customers and thus have alleviated the organizational challenges of handling huge information from customers. Most customers have gone digital and do need information to be processed faster so that they move with time. For instance, the Microsoft company had to develop a software called the Microsoft booking that streamlines the process of picking appointments from offices and helping in booking of appointments for many organization so that they meet the customer demands. In this regard, any organization, including the Microsoft company itself creates a booking page online where the customers can access and schedule appointments by themselves. This saves a lot of time for the customers and reduces the stress that the organization has been having for a long time in handling the customer appointments. The change in consumer behavior has led Microsoft Company to increase its feedback channels and take advantage of the data from consumers to identify the current and emerging trends from the customers.

There has been a shift in the taste of the smartphones by consumers from the Microsoft windows to android ones. Most consumers are now preferring the android phones that the Microsoft windows phones because they need some features that the windows phones lack. This has therefore caused the company to develop smarter windows phone although there is a chance that consumers will stick to the android versions than rather go back to the Microsoft windows. Microsoft Company is perfect in other software but it is so bad off when it comes to the windows phone, the company does not care much about who are its current buyers or the future buyers of the phones. This means that the company has failed to evolve in the mobile industry and keep pace with the competitive android and iOS and apps and features. This has made the consumers to develop a new tastes and preference and most of them have shifted to the android phones because they are better off and meet their new preferences (Kevin, 2016). The windows phone fans had had more hopes that Microsoft was going to update the platform with new features but it admitted that it was not going to develop any new features or hardware for the windows 10 mobile phone. There are no way consumers to stagnate at the same taste and preference yet other products are advancing and moving forward, therefore, the consumers have shifted their preferences from the windows phones to the android ones and this indicates that the company is less concerned about this new features and trends from the consumers.

Shift in demand for Microsoft products

Microsoft has had many customers shifting their demand in the purchase of its products. For instance, because the company is unwilling to update and make improvements on its windows phone, the consumers have resolved to shift to the android version and thus leaving the windows phone with less demand in the market. This is because the phone is becoming obsolete with no new features and updates yet the technology of the world is advancing so fast. According to Karla (2018) however, the company has reported a jump in the quarterly revenue meaning that business is increasing and thus causing to an increase in revenue. This is because the company has retooled its operations in the recent years by employing an effort and aim to move away from business stagnation and providing software in packages that are installed on the personal computers. This has made a shift in demand towards its products because the consumers are looking for the latest, fastest and most reliable technology to help them in their daily operations. There were two deals that basically symbolized to the general shift of consumers towards Microsoft cloud computing services that accounted for 39% of total revenue earned in the latest financial period. For instance, the Swiss banking company announced that it had shifted its tools of risk management to the cloud computing platform called Azure which is a Microsoft product. Another shift was from the Maersk, a shipping company that announced that it had started to use the cloud computing tools of Microsoft to analyze and store its logistic data. This is an indication that the new features of Microsoft have led to a shift in consumer demand.

For this shift in demand, it is important to find out the equations and calculations. For a linear demand curve, the following demand equation is used in plotting.

Qd = a – b(p)

· Q = quantity demanded

· a = all factors that affect demand apart from the price

· b = slope of the curve

· p = price

Therefore, before there was a shift in the demand for the Microsoft products, it had the following demand curve

Since a was representing other factors that affect the demand of consumers apart from consumers, in the case of Microsoft company, there was invention and innovation that made most companies and consumers shift their demand towards the new products produced by the company. This kind of demand does not increase along the old demand curve but rather there is a shift due to the change in demand combined with a change in pricing. Therefore, the demand curve shifts towards the right or upwards and outwards as shown below

This shows that there has been a shift in demand for the products of Microsoft Company due to the shift in the demand curve of the company outwards and upwards. The company has reported increased revenue and increased market share upon developing the new technological features and the cloud computing products that most companies and consumers are preferring. This type of a shift in demand of a product is always not caused by price but rather it is caused by other factors apart from prices, which is a true picture because the shift was reported after the company had invested in invention and innovation of new products like the cloud computing.

Changes in technology

According to Dina Bass (2017), Microsoft Company has been advancing in its technology and it has also changed the world’s technological systems at large. To begin with, Microsoft Company is a software company that deals majorly with technology and thus it has continually updated its technological advancement to aid in consumer preferences. For instance, it was 4 decades ago when the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates came up with a goal of ensuring that there was at least a PC in every desk and in most homes and this was achieved forty years later due to the improved technology and software upgrades. In those days, having such a vision was nearly impossible because most PC makers were focused on the major functions of PCs and that was to make PCs that were useful in bigger industries only, but this did not hinder Microsoft from achieving its goals. Microsoft made a step by creating a PC-DOS operating system and retained the OS’s copyrights because they knew that the PC makers would make attempts to copy it. This was the stepping stone for Microsoft to propel the personal computing vision across the globe. It came into partnership with the PC makers and thus its products, the windows were the dominant PC operating systems around the world and in many homes. This has made it grow from a company that initially employed only 30 people to a global force that is multibillion employing over 1 million employees and affecting all businesses and the global change in general.

The market structure in the global market is in such a way that they are demanding for newer and newer technology that is faster, convenient and reliable. This has called for the company to be devising ways to meet such needs and demands in terms of technological advancement. For instance, when companies continued to grow and increase in sizes with continuous acquisition of customers and expansion, they had a lot of information to handle at ago and this was so challenging with the previous operating systems (Aimee, 2017). Therefore, there was an invention of the big data that helped the companies to analyze the information in the most convenient way and thus helping in the smooth-running. The market was also in demand for a secure OS that had a large space enough to store their data without any intrusion or interference from third parties. In this regard, the company came up with cloud computing that has been embraced by many companies. The company has seen a great boost among the cloud boosting vendors and they have preferred this so much. Most investors and analysts are giving a close eye to the cloud race and they are trying to compare it with the previous versions and what they have come to conclude is that it is only companies with established technology and cloud computing will survive and gain enormous profits from the market. This means that the market is strategically situated in such a way that there is a demand for more advancement in technology to aid in simplification of operations and take advantage of new opportunities in the market. The technological upgrades and advancements that have been done by Microsoft Company have led to overall world’s advancement in technology than any other company.

References

Aimee Riordan (2017). Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability

Dina Bass (2017). Microsoft Regains Turnaround Momentum on Strong Cloud Growth

Karla Brown (2018). Microsoft’s profit climbs 28 percent with shift in demand to web-based software

Kevin O. (2016). Why you absolutely, by no means should even consider buying a Windows Phone