Kodak on the ropes!
I cannot believe my eyes – Kodak has announced that it is to withdraw – yes you read right – withdraw from the industry it so innovatively lead in the 90's as a consumer manufacturer. It will stop making digital cameras. This is clearly a bad sign from the company, its employees (another 2000 lost in Rochester making it 27,000 by the end of 2007 total), corporate America (ITS KODAK!!!), and the Rochester region (our second largest employer). I like so many others living in the area will see this as awful news. This begs the question what exactly went wrong and what exactly do Kodak now DO?! According to the Times in the UK they are in the systems and R&D game. ie no consumer manufacturing. Whats depressing even more is that the story hasn't even made front page news of CNN's business section – what's happened to one of Rochester's flagships? Was this expected? She cant rely on old film manufacture either – down 22% this quarter in sales. City analysts are saying that 'digital' is no longer profitable. Well excuse me but it is for such firms as Cannon and Sony of all companies – a relative newcomer to the camera scene once the world went digital.
The problem from my limited perspective is their understanding of the marketplace. Kodak dropped the ball. It did not foresee the changes digital cameras would bring and refused to play as vigorously as it could have. I saw those cameras back in 1997, they were bleeding edge, top of the range and years ahead of the competition in terms of technology and consumer acceptance. They won every award going! A classic case of failing in marketing terms to reposition itself or understand the consumer or the market. Fuji is also in the same boat but this will offer little comfort to those who invest their lives in the region. I just hope the company finds itself guided in the right direction from here on in and becomes a great repositioning story – riches, rags to riches once again.
Dr Hair is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the E Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT.
© 2006, Dr Neil Hair. All rights reserved.
Facebook
LinkedIn
Flickr
Twitter
RIT 
Hell and Back
its the price you pay for being on top for too long and pretending its going to last forever.
Kodak has been in decline for nearly a decade now. Sony has no business beating Kodak in the imaging game but yet they have. Their cameras are cutting edge utilatarian and very pretty.
At thee end of the day Kodak isnt as sexy as Canon or Sony. They should have created a separate, ‘young’ ‘hip’ urband brand that the direct consumers can relate to.
Kodak is just too OLD to be relevant to todays marketplace – as a company and as a brand.
Coincidentally, I was in the research department at a fund management firm in 1998-99, which I think was a critical time for positioning oneself this market.
Sorry to say, but they have nobody to blame but themselves. In 1998 they were obsessed with preserving their film business. The focus of everything I read from them was on competing with Fuji and maintaining share in film and processing. They saw consumer digital as a problem, not an opportunity, because they relied on a consumables model for so long. They talked about digital, and tried some things (the early digital kiosks, going into printers) but nothing caught fire and they seemed reluctant when they wrote about this area. All the real energy was going into film.
Sony is going to get stronger in cameras, as they just bought Konica-Minolta.
the brand as a whole is decaying and OLD. i mean film isnt that big anymore. for an imaging company they should have realised it.
The sound of Kodak isnt the sound of young urban consumers its the sound of people a generation behind.
they should have rebranded themselves or atleast created a sub brand.
Film Rocks. If I could, I would, buy kodak only produce film; making a huge loss for all eternity because FILM ROCKS!!
Be a pure player and throw away your digital camera!!! Chromatic abrations! lack of resolution! extreme barrel distortion! small buffers!! and CCD/CMOS DEATH+DIRT!!! are only some of the reasons why digital sucks.
The bottom line! Stick with film and if you want to be a man, shoot kodak Press 800 at 6400 and feel the soul.
or everyone could just take their medication on time