ELEPHANTINE CASE
Submitted by :
Rahul Gupta
Sharad Jain
Hardeep Singh
Bhavya Chugh
Pritesh Saparia
The engineering manager of this company one day conceived of new computer terminal that do
everything but peel potatoes, a slight exaggeration perhaps, but the concept was widely applicable,
broadly compatible device.
Since the manager enjoyed excellent rapport with the firm’s General Manager, who was also an
engineer, it was easy to conceive GM on the merit of the idea & a product development program
was vigorously undertaken.
When the prototype was complete & functionally proven, a product line was set up & manufacturing
was begun. About this time, the sales manager & his sales force were called in for a product
presentation. After the new device was explained & demonstrated, they were told to “GO SELL IT”.
Since the new product line was capable of producing 500 units a month, this was established on
average sell goal. The sales manager & sales force went optimistically forth into the market, but six
month later they reported back to GM that they were unable to move this wonderful new product in
anything approaching the target volume.
After firing the Sales Manager, the GM & the Engineering Manager commiserated with one another
about the incompetence of Sales people who couldn’t sell a product that is obviously superior to
anything else available & right for the market.
Neither of them knew quite where the market was or who it was & unfortunately even the ex Sales
Manager hadn’t know either. Since the mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammad & Mohammad
didn’t know where the mountain was, so he could go to it, a lot of time & money were wasted for
practically nothing.
It was certainly too bad Elephantine was so unlucky, because when the product design was
eventually sold to Whiz-Bang Computer Company, it was a roaring success.
Q &A
1. Does your group feel that Elephantine is really
unlucky? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes, Elephantine is really Unlucky.
They created wonderful product for the customers but
they failed to market it.
Top management- too Optimistic
Lack of proper Sales strategies
Initially high Target
2. What do you think are the processes & the step-by-step activities
carried out by Whiz-Bang to make business a roaring success?
Following may be the reasons due to which Whiz Bang made a roaring
success and their step by step activities carried out by them:-
• Understanding the product.
• Made customer to feel the importance of product.
• Created Demand for the product.
• Presented the product and its innovative design to be best among all
the products in the segment.
• MARKETING
3. What is wrong with Elephantine? What is right in it?
They failed to convince the customers.
No coordination between the departments.
Monthly or weakly reports could have been presented
to the marketing department.
Lack of planning and execution.
Introduced product without prior knowledge of
market demand.
Goal setting was too high in initial phase of
production.
4. Do you think Elephantine Management would have
learnt any marketing or business lesson before & after
firing sales manager & before & after selling the design?
No, if they have learnt any lessons then they would
have tried to re-launch their product with some new
branding and would have not sold the product to Whiz
Bang Company.
Elephantine doesn’t know the do’s and don’ts and fired
the sales person which was not right.
5. What marketing lesson did you get from this case?
Should have Target market understanding before launching a
product- organization has to approach to customers.
Major function is delivering the product to consumers.
6. What business philosophy or orientation or concept or belief
system has driven with efforts & result of Whiz-Bang?
Elephantine?
Actually the philosophy used by Whiz Bang is that they know
the marketing strategy to whom they have to market and where
they have to market and in Elephantine case, they haven’t done.
7. Do you think Elephantine Management did right with firing Sales
Manager? Why? Why not?
No, because of following:
It was not the mistake of sales manager in low sales of the product.
It might be possible that the design, or the usability of the product was not
accepted by the market and thus resulted in low sales.
8. Who else in Elephantine deserve to be fire? Why? Why not?
No one else deserves to be fired.
The engineering manager and the GM are the technical personal and
knew the fact the product is going to be revolutionary.
The top level management agreed with the product when the engineering
manager and the GM explained the product in presentation.
9. What is the moral of the case?
Knowing that the new product is going to be a great success is
not sufficient.
The coordination between the various departments of the
company as well as the right knowledge about the product is
necessary.
The sales person should know all the features of the product
and also conduct survey.
To find out the target markets i.e. following the right
marketing strategy.
TAG LINE: “EITHER MARKET OR READY TO PERISH.”
THANK YOU…..
