Mozilla Firefox - Marketing Plan

Marketing Management

Marketing plan - Mozilla Firefox

Project team members:
Riccardo Bettinelli
Gim Chuan Goh
Agnieszka Czecior
Jakob Marovt
Carolina K. Ruggiero

Mozilla Firefox | M a r k e t i n g p l a n

Table of Contents
Table of Contents.........................................................................................................................2

Company’s profile........................................................................................................................4

Mission.........................................................................................................................................4

Our focus......................................................................................................................................4

Opportunities/Issue Analysis - PEEST analysis..............................................................................5

Technology - New technologies................................................................................................5

Social - Lifestyle changes..........................................................................................................6

Political - Monopoly control.....................................................................................................7

Conclusion................................................................................................................................8

SWOT analysis..............................................................................................................................8

Strengths..................................................................................................................................8

Weaknesses..............................................................................................................................8

Opportunities...........................................................................................................................9

Threats.....................................................................................................................................9

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................10

Research Proposal .....................................................................................................................10

Increase of market share........................................................................................................11

Mobile Platform.....................................................................................................................13

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................14

Porter`s five forces analysis .......................................................................................................14

Threat of new entrants...........................................................................................................14

Power of costumers................................................................................................................15

Competitive rivalry.................................................................................................................15

Substitutes&suppliers.............................................................................................................16

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................17

Market segmentation.................................................................................................................17

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................19

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Marketing mix............................................................................................................................20

Product...................................................................................................................................20

Placement...............................................................................................................................20

Promotion..............................................................................................................................21

Conclusions............................................................................................................................22

References ................................................................................................................................23

Book.......................................................................................................................................23

Web sources...........................................................................................................................23

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/campusreps.............................................................................23

Appendix....................................................................................................................................24

Market segmentation.............................................................................................................24

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Company’s profile
Mozilla organization is a global community of thousands who sincerely believe in the power of
technology to enrich people’s lives. We’re a public benefit organization dedicated not to making
money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet. At the same time,
we’re an open source software project whose code has been used as a platform for some of the In-
ternet’s most innovative projects.

Mozilla’s technology and products belong to everyone. Not only are our products freely available,
but also our entire code base is a shared public resource. Many other projects use Mozilla techno-
logy as the foundation for their own products, both free and commercial.

In the end, the Mozilla community, organization and technology are all focused on a single goal:
making the Internet better for everyone.

Mission
To develop, deploy and promote:
• Free Mozilla software;
• Mozilla’s by-product;
• Mozilla’s related projects.

To articulate a vision for the Internet that Mozilla participants want the Mozilla Foundation to pur-
sue.
To make Mozilla’s contributors proud of our achievement.
Providing a framework for people to improve the current internet.
Reaching out to people with and without technical background.

Our focus
We have decided to focus on Mozilla Firefox – free, open-source internet browser. The browser
has been engaged in a big marketing battle alongside its main competitors (Microsoft`s Internet
Explorer, Apple`s Safari, Google`s Chrome and Opera).

We will try to provide an extensive marketing plan to further spread the word about this great in-
ternet browser and eventually try to overcome our main competitors. Also our big aim is to point
out Firefox`s unique features and consequently broaden its influence, gain even more publicity,
develop and enable unique user features that will make our browser even more outstanding.

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Our additional focus will be on entering new markets (e.g. mobile platform). We will try to find
out which are the most popular mobile platforms and what types of features of desktop browser
users would like to use on mobile phones.

The final thing that we will focus on will be the environmental impact on our future success: polit-
ical aspect, lifestyle changes, possible alliances with OEM manufacturers and dependency on our
big B2B customers (e.g. Google).

Global browser market share

Opportunities/Issue Analysis - PEEST analysis
PEEST analysis is a simple, useful and widely used tool that helps you understand the quot;big pic-
turequot; of your Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural and Technological environment. As such, it is
used by business leaders worldwide to build their vision of the future.

Technology - New technologies
We cannot live a day without computers. A few hours without mobile and internet is hard to go by
for some and we can see the reliance of man on computers. Not only so, we can see the craze
when a new IT product is launched and people will spend hours or even days waiting in the queue
just to be the first to witness its ability. This can be seen from the iPhone launched in Hong Kong
and Playstation 3 in Japan whereby some gamers at the back of the queue were turned away even
before the shop open due to limited stocks. Also, online web browsing has invaded the mobile
phones sector. More consumers are using their mobile phone as an alternative to computer for per-
forming internet activity. From these, we can see that internet is so important nowadays that
people requires it on-the-go. This is surely one of the new possible emerging markets with “unlim-
ited” prospect. Mozilla is currently in progress for this new challenge and a mobile platform
browser is in development.

Mozilla seeks to get ahead of others, be a leader and innovator in the aspect of providing better
online services. What makes Mozilla proud is the open source community that allows developers
from all over the world, whoever they are to participate in the development. The Mozilla De-

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veloper Centre (MDC), started in early 2005, is the official Mozilla Foundation website for devel-
opment documentation and news about Firefox, Thunderbird, and other Mozilla Foundation pro-
jects.

Mozilla and our developers see the need for constant upgrading. On average, a major version re-
lease is done annually and a minor one almost daily. In comparison to our competitors, the fre-
quency is much slower. From year 2006 to 2007, Research and Development (R&D) expenses
nearly doubled from 11 million to 20 million. This inevitably shows the importance of new tech-
nologies from Mozilla`s point of view.

Social - Lifestyle changes
Social factors include the cultural aspects and include health consciousness, population growth
rate, age distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety. Trends in social factors affect the
demand for a company's products and how that company operates. For example, an ageing popula-
tion may imply a smaller and less-willing workforce. Fur-
thermore, companies may change various management
strategies to adapt to these social trends.

Consumers are increasingly calling the shots in today’s
converged media environment. They use Apple iPods to
make their own music playlists. Personal video recorders
allow them to customize television line-ups. Satellite radi-
os pump commercial-free music into their cars. They come
together in online communities, generate their own con-
tent, mix it, and share it on a growing number of social
networks. No longer a captive, mass media audience,
today’s media consumer is unique, demanding, and en-
gaged. Content and services are overflowing, while consumer time and attention remain limited. A
new approach that helps consumers maximize their limited time and attention to create a rich, per-
sonalized, and social media environment is needed. PricewaterhouseCoopers calls this approach
lifestyle media. (As illustrated in a 2006

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report: The rise of lifestyle media) It
is the combination of a personalized
media experience with a social con-
text for participation.

At the same time, we see that adver-
tising budgets will continue to be
shifted out of television, newspapers,
and magazines into internet advertis-
ing. The convention way of market-
ing will be abolished as convergence
towards IT and internet takes effect in
the near future.

Political - Monopoly control
Media advertisement growth
Political factor is defined as to what degree a government intervenes in the economy. Specifically,
political factors include areas such as tax policy, labour law, environmental law, trade restrictions,
tariffs, and political stability. Political factors may also include goods and services which the gov-
ernment wants to provide or be provided and those that the government does not want to be
provided. Furthermore, governments have great influence on the health, education, and infrastruc-
ture of a nation.

The United States Department of Justice filled civil actions against Microsoft in 1998, alleged that
Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser
sales. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its
application programming interfaces to favour Internet Explorer over third party web browsers.

Many of the tactics Microsoft employed have also harmed consumers indirectly by unjustifiably
distorting competition. Consumers were prevented from having more choices and innovation.
Judge further concluded that Microsoft made it difficult for PC manufacturers to offer Netscape
Communications' rival Navigator browser preinstalled on PCs as they left the factory.

In January 2009 the European Commission confirmed that it had sent a statement of objections to
Microsoft about the tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system, which it said
quot;harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces
consumer choice”. Mozilla's Mitchell Baker weighed in, saying, quot;Microsoft's business practices
have fundamentally diminished competition, choice and innovation in how people access the In-
ternet.quot;

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Conclusion
We have deduced that the most important factors affecting the Mozilla cooperation are the con-
stant changes to technology (Technological), lifestyle changes (Social) and monopoly status of IE
(Political). The IT industry is sensitive to changes around it and through greater understanding of
each component in PEEST, Mozilla will be able to progress in the right direction.

SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Oppor-
tunities and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture.

• Strengths: attributes of the organization that are helpful to achieving the objective
• Weaknesses: attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective
• Opportunities: external conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective
• Threats: external conditions which could do damage to the business’s performance.

A SWOT analysis must first start with defining a desired end state or objective. Identification of
SWOTs is essential because subsequent steps in the process of planning for achievement of the se-
lected objective may be derived from the SWOTs. The decision makers have to determine whether
the objective is attainable, given the SWOTs. If it is not a different objective must be selected and
the process repeated.

Strengths
One of our biggest strengths is that we are an open source community so the code is available to
the general public and in this way everyone could improve it. We also posses the largest 3rd party
plug-in community with hundreds of useful add-ons at disposal of the users.

Regarding some technical figures we can say that the page loading time is faster than the one of
our major competitor, Internet Explorer, and we are the most efficient browser of all regarding
the memory usage. We also respect internet standardization stated by the World Wide Web Con-
sortium (W3C) and web developers are happier because of this as in respecting them, there is no
problem in the visualization of the page, as it can happens with Internet Explorer.

Weaknesses
Our biggest weakness is that we have a very limited branding and marketing budget (6,5 mil-
lion $ in 2007) in comparison to our major competitors who can rely on the big budgets of big
companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple.

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Another weakness is that we are not focusing on a single main feature that would distinguish the
browser from all the others, but we are offering the similar product as the other, with differences
that can be easily recognized only by expert users and not by mass users.

As stated before, we are an open source community and so we have a lot of external developers
and their loyalty to our products is crucial for our life. If they found a more interesting web
browser to develop it would be difficult for us to avoid their switching to the more attractive one.
Adding to that fact there is the fact that we have a small internal team with only 100 employees in
the company and not all of them are developers.

Opportunities
One opportunity is related to new market possibilities - in fact we are going to develop a mobile
platform browser hoping that will enable us to reach a great number of users and to gain a market
share in this emerging market.

Another opportunity is the rise of the “lifestyle media”: as stated in a report of Pricewaterhouse-
Coopers, the world’s largest professional services firm, traditional non-interactive media market
share is decreasing. Media consumer is becoming unique, demanding,

engaged, he wants to have all the information he needs in the minimum time possible and the web
is the easiest way to obtain this result.

The best opportunity we are facing is that European Union is charging Microsoft with anticompet-
itive behaviour concerning its Internet Explorer web browser as stated before in the PEEST ana-
lysis and if there will be a nice conclusion to this fact it could have a huge impact on the market,
as Internet Explorer wouldn’t be able to be the default browser anymore.

Threats
We are revenue-dependent on Google as almost 91% percent of our income comes from the
search royalties of the search engine provider, so if something will happen to Google it will have
consequences on our revenues. The biggest threat, related also to this fact, is that Google is devel-
oping Chrome, its own browser, and the contract we have with them expires in 2011, so if in this
three years they will be able to create a web-browser that will attract more users than ours they
could not renew the contract and we’ll lose a lot of revenue.

Another threat is the problem about the users that download the browser, but don’t use it. As
stated in IMPACT mozilla, an open contest, Mozilla conducted a big marketing challenge related
to this in order to find a plan to overcome the problem of “dead users”.

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Conclusion
Advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of old media into internet advertising making
the use of Internet more and more common giving us a possibility to increase our revenue.

Analysing our company, we can see that we are very affected by external factors in comparison
to internal factors and we are in a position of disadvantages as the other three major players in the
same fields (Microsoft, Google and Apple) has (almost) unlimited resources, making it difficult
for us to compete at their level.

Luckily the future is not so grey as we are studying the possibility of attracting new developers
and splitting development teams among different new rising platforms.

After having discovered opportunities and threats from the SWOT analysis we should have to in-
vestigate deeply in them for having a better understanding of how and whether the opportunities
can be embraced and the threats disposed or removed. Market researches are good tools for reach-
ing these objectives.

STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES

- open source community - limited branding & marketing budget
- the largest 3rd party plugin community - not focusing on a single main feature
- faster than IE, most efficient browser in - dependent on loyalty of external devel-
memory usage opers
- respect for internet standardization
(W3C) - small internal team

OPPORTUNITIES THREATS

- mobile platform browser - dependent on Google
- rise of ”lifestyle media” - Google is developing its own browser
- EU is charging Microsoft concerning its - users do not see differences between
IE web browser browsers
- users downloading browser, but not us-
ing it

Research Proposal
For a complete analysis of Mozilla Firefox, a Research Proposal is needed: problem formulation
and collecting information give us the possibility to design a more complete Marketing Plan. A
Marketing Research clarifies customers' behaviour and decisions, helps to understand real busi-

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ness problems, analysis in a scientific way personal opinions and choices' criteria. This brings to
an improvement of the company.

In our marketing research we will determine, first, the real problem. After this, we will carry on
the appropriate research that will lead to its execution and development. At the end, results will be
shown. The research proposal contains: questions, methods of survey (how we are going to collect
data) and type of sample (defined group of customers).

Increase of market share
Initial Contact:

Mozilla Firefox has 21.77% (February 2009) of usage share of browsers' market. Our main com-
petitor is Internet Explorer (67.51%). Minor competitors are: Safari with 8.00%, Google Chrome
(1.15%) and Opera (0.71%).

Our main goal is to increase Firefox's percentage of market share.

Research Brief:

We believe that the small percentage of Firefox's browsers market share is due to people's fear of
changing the default browser (that is Internet Explorer). Customers do not see big differences
between browsers: quot;standardquot; Internet users seem not to care about special features (e.g. book-
marks, downloads, password managing, auto-updating, privacy mode, image format supports, type
of navigation, HTML support keys...). Only technical-skilled users can appreciate some internal
differences between browsers.

In our opinion, this is a problem: we would like to know which are the features that can make the
difference. After the marketing research, we will concentrate on these characteristics.

Research proposal:
• Research Question #1: Which are the favourite features/characteristics of current Firefox
users?
• Survey method: online surveys, pop-up messages, questions on Firefox Home Page.
• Type of sample: current Firefox heavy and moderate users.

Current users know what they like. From this question we can understand our strengths. After, we
can focus on the improvement and development of customers' favourite features. Firefox's charac-
teristics are connected with many aspects of users' quot;Internet lifequot;. They deal with privacy (anti-
phishing, anti-virus, anti-malware, pop-up blocker, parental control, private data clearing, instant
ID, password manager), comfort (smart search bar, tags, one-click bookmark, smart bookmark
folders, library of visited websites), customization (add-ons, toolbar preferences, browser look),
download (pause and resume option), search (hundred of different engines, keywords and sugges-
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tions, integrated web search), tabs (instead of windows), standard and performances (memory,
graphics, support).

• Research Question #2: Which are the favourite features/characteristics of our main com-
petitors (IE, Safari, Opera)?
• Survey method: online surveys, watching purchasing behaviour (through social medias).
• Type of sample: heavy, moderate and light internet users.

This question is an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of our competitors and their products.
This information will be useful for developing the right quot;attack strategyquot;. For collecting the an-
swers, online surveys will be used. Furthermore, we will watch purchasing behaviour through re-
searches made in the social media world. Type of sample is wide and mixed. Users can be asked
about general qualitative features (add-ons, search methods, privacy and accessibility, options) or
performances (speed, number of languages available, web support, mobile support).

• Research Question #3: Why are people afraid of trying/using different browsers than the
default one (usually Internet Explorer)?
• Survey method: online surveys, focus groups, psychology research through social media
(analysing purchasing behaviour).
• Type of sample: moderate and light Internet users.

We believe that Internet Explorer has the largest part of market share because it is Microsoft's offi-
cial default browser. But why people do not switch quickly to Mozilla Firefox (or other
browsers)? This question is about people's psychology: we are going to use focus groups as well
as online surveys and researches about purchasing behaviour. Internet users (our sample) will be
asked about their reasons for not trying better browsers.

• Research Question #4: Why do people download Mozilla Firefox and not use it after
some time?
• Survey method: internal data, pop-up messages.
• Type of sample: Firefox downloaders.

quot;Tens of millions of people have downloaded Firefox, but don’t continue to use it today. How do
we get these past users back? And how do we keep future users active once they've downloaded
Firefox?quot; This question faces one of the main topics of the Impact Mozilla Competition (deadline:
December 2009). The sample is simple: non-active users. We can easily discover if Firefox
browser is not running. After 3-6 months of non usage, a pop up message will appear asking reas-
ons and tying to solve possible problems. Researches can be made also through internal records
and data.

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Mobile Platform
Initial Contact:

Mozilla is developing a mobile version for Firefox. The code name of this project is quot;Fennecquot;
(that is a small fox). Fennec is a browser for mobile phones. It is considered a quot;new experiencequot;
that uses Firefox's design, features and add-ons. At the moment an quot;alphaquot; version is available,
and our developers are working on a quot;betaquot; version.

Overall goals are:
• Grow the Mozilla community in the mobile space.
• Provide tools and documentation to help developers develop, debug and deploy web ap-
plications.
• Do all of this work in the shared Mozilla source repositories so all platforms, desktop and
mobile, benefit each other.

Research Brief:

We believe that developing the mobile version of Firefox would be a great opportunity for the fu-
ture of Mozilla. We would like to obtain information about both developers and customers.

Research proposal:
• Research Question #1: Which mobile platform (Java, iPhone, Symbian, etc.) would be
the most popular?
• Survey method: interviews, sales analysis.
• Type of sample: experts, mobile carriers data.

Firefox Mobile is now available for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux, which are the most
common platforms. It is still illegal to install Firefox Mobile on iPhone, since it has a Javascript,
that crashes with Apple Licence. We would like to know what platform will be the most popular
in the future in order to focus our developers' attentions on that platform. Information about users'
preferences will be obtained through consultations with experts. Watching purchasing behaviour
and analysing the number of sales of mobile carriers will also help to build the customers' choices
scenario.

• Research Question #2: Which features of internet version of browser should we include
in the mobile version?
• Survey method: online, phone, paper surveys, watching purchasing behaviour (social me-
dias).
• Type of sample: mobile phones users, experts.

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Last but not least, we have to focus on our customers: what do they want in the new product?
Since Firefox Mobile is born as a mobile version of Mozilla Firefox, it has to keep its main fea-
tures. In addition to these, there are many other choices to be done. Main topics are: security (of
websites), touch/non-touch screens, zoom and scrolling pages, layout, applications, saving con-
tents ... This is a traditional marketing question for general public.

Conclusion
Mozilla is an online company: whenever it is possible, we will use online surveys.

We have a very limited budget for marketing researches: online surveys are cheap and can
reach a very large number of users.

We have to be very conscious about different groups of customers (market segments): a first
marketing segmentation has to be done between Internet users and non-Internet users. Then we
concentrate on Firefox users and non-Firefox users. Next segmentation is about users’ technical
skills: there are basic, standard and experienced users.

We could motivate people to participate in our surveys by giving away small merchandise prizes
(e.g. cups, caps, T-shirts). This guarantees a wider range of users answering our questions.

IT world is developing very quickly that means that the time frame of our research is very lim-
ited.

Porter`s five forces analysis
The analysis refers to the competitive environment of a company and is used as the initial
stage of formulating competitive strategies. It is based on the model of five interrelated
factors that affect on each other, which occur in every economics’ sector.

Threat of new entrants
There is not a big threat of new entrants in internet browser market. Our team has pointed out sev-
eral different reasons for such a statement:

Switching costs for customers depend on their knowledge and usage of a browser. More experi-
enced the user is, lower the switching costs are, because heavy users usually seek for the best per-
formance&features combination and do not have trouble switching between different browsers.
On the other hand new, inexperienced light users are afraid of changes and do not switch browsers
so easily and as the world internet usage is still growing we predict that, in the world, the majority
of users are light users so there is not a big threat of switching.

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Capital requirements for a new entrant are huge. Established internet browsers have been “in the
game” for at least 2 years and have put tens of millions into development of their products. In this
market there are 3 companies with revenue bigger than 20 billion $, which makes it almost impos-
sible for new entrants to be competitive.

As we have mentioned earlier there are 3 huge brands (Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome) compet-
ing in our market along with us (Firefox) and Opera; it makes it thus really hard and expensive to
establish a competitive brand identity.

Distribution is an important factor in our business. Big, strong internet IT companies have better
access to distribution lines as small companies; Google is able to place links and banners driving
people to their Chrome download site “everywhere” (YouTube, GoogleDocs,…), Apple has spe-
cial download pop-ups offering to download Safari along traditional programs like iTunes and
Quicktime.

We think that maybe the biggest possibility for a small, new entrant lies in the government poli-
cies, more exactly on EU`s and USA`s fight against Microsoft to end their monopoly over default
browser on newly installed Windows being Internet Explorer. If Microsoft will be eventually
forced to offer a free choice of default browser smaller companies will slightly better starting pos-
sibilities to penetrate this market.

Power of costumers
We are greatly dependent on Google`s search royalties deal that actually forms around 91% our
revenues. Consequently they have very strong bargaining power and there is high degree of de-
pendency from our side.

Our main buyer is previously mentioned Google to whom Firefox drives a lot of traffic through
search bar, so buyer profits from this deal are big as our market share is currently almost 25%.

Also one of advantages is lack of available substitute products.

Firefox is also very dependent on number of users – our bargaining arguments with potential cus-
tomers would be lowered if our market share fell as we would not be able to drive so much traffic
to external providers (Google, Amazon, EBay, etc.) as we do now.

Competitive rivalry
As we mentioned in our focus- Firefox possess ca. 22 % of all market shares. The most dangerous
competitors for us are Internet Explorer (in fact he own approx. 67 % of market) and Safari (which
has ca. 8 %). In this situation Firefox place itself on second position and is constantly gaining sup-
port from the users, what we are showing on the chart below.

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In
the market also exist two smaller competitors: Google Chrome and Opera which together gather 2
% of market shares. We think that there is a high degree of competition between Firefox, Internet
Explorer and Safari. The market is constantly growing and will provide great revenues in future,
so competition will still grow. Also the thing worth mentioning is that IE`s market share is con-
stantly decreasing, so this could also be a proof of high degree of competition, even though the
theory says that there is not such severe competition if the market leader is well established and
there are just a few competitors.

Possibility of differentiation exists in applying new features but it is very limited as other compa-
nies with big development teams are able to quickly adapt new great features of competitors.

As previously mentioned switching costs depend on different types of consumers.

Distribution channels are quite a big opportunity as there are many possible emerging markets
(e.g. mobile, Wii, e-readers, etc.).

Growth of our market is immense – 300% in last 8 years and around 10% estimated growth rate
for next years makes it one of the most profitable and influential markets in the future.

We would also like to point out that differentiate development culture (open-source, small pas-
sionate internal team, devoted community) is probably Firefox`s biggest advantage over rivals.

Substitutes&suppliers
Substitute products are not a big threat for our industry. Internet browsers will not be extinct at
least in the near future. There may be some potential … products as interactive television, operat-
ing system integrated desktop applications that use internet sources (e.g. Adobe AIR, etc.) that
will maybe cut a piece of market share from internet browser market but it is still too early to talk
about it.

Also it is hard to talk about the force of suppliers on our industry – as a company that produces
software we do not have material or big service suppliers, actually our only suppliers, if we may
call them that, are our external open-source developers and the whole community itself that con-

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tribute to our product with ideas, programming and knowledge base and we are consequently very
dependent on their willingness to help developing Firefox.

Conclusion
Internet browser industry is a bit specific in terms of suppliers and substitute products in compari-
son to other, more traditional industries. We see an awkward relationship between Google and
Mozilla Firefox as Google is both the biggest costumer and a competitor. Increase of Google
Chrome`s market share would be a big threat for Firefox as it would lower its bargaining power in
negotiations with Google for next search royalties contract (current one expires in 2011). Going
further we see Google and also our other big competitors as the main force affecting our market
position and Firefox will have a lot trouble trying to develop as quickly as competition and also
differentiate from them. However there is one quite positive conclusion from the Porter`s analysis
– entrance barrier for new entrants is enormous and we do not expect more competitors in the near
future as we are able to see that even quite good, established competitors as Opera are not able to
attract big market share (Opera has 0,71% of market share).

Market segmentation
The objective of any segmentation research project is to identify distinct sub-groups that exhibit
different behaviors, attitudes and perceptions than other segments. In the case of the web browser
market, we essentially wanted to take a snapshot of the entire Internet population at a moment in
time to see what segments exist, how big they are (population size), online usage patterns and
most importantly what are the differences between them. We have also taken into account the
knowledge that we have gathered from previously made market analysis.

We helped ourselves segmenting the market with the extensive marketing research campaign,
which was conducted in the last quarter of year 2008 for internal use of Mozilla Corporation (con-
ducted by comScore).

As we think that in our industry Psychographic (Who?) and Profile (Where?) characteristics the
research we have used focused on following behavioural (How?) characteristics of users:
• Avg. Usage days
• Avg. Page Views
• Avg. Minutes
• Avg. Browser sessions

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Such (behavioural) characteristics are usually very hard to determine and measure but, as men-
tioned, we were lucky to find an adequate and reliable marketing research and a bit of segmenta-
tion that has been done by Mozilla.
The research has been done on USA pattern of about 1 million users and has been focusing on de-
termine behavioural patterns of different user groups. The only comment that we have on it is that
we are not sure whether an USA pattern is reliable in showing a quite good “picture” of the whole
world. Actually the penetration level of internet in USA is very high and internet has there been
widely present for several years so maybe the percentages of usage by minutes is different from
the whole world where there are quite a few growing markets with a lot of light users. But still,
any information about market and its behavioural patterns is very useful and we can make some
conclusions from it.

The result is seven different user segments, here we will just describe three, which we are focusing
on (for others look at appendix section):

• Primary retention: Firefox users, heavy browser usage, 10% of all minutes online, 3% of
all users – segment that represents our most passionate existing users; segment that is
worth focusing on because we already have advantage over competitors and probably
does not need much funds, users of this segment are mostly influenced by social networks
(blogs, twitter, etc.)

• Increase engagement (primary): Dual browser users, that do not use Firefox as their
primary browser, instead they spend much of their online time using Internet Explorer,
segment represents 7% of all minutes online and 2% of all users; quite interesting segment
in terms of market share and fact that they already have Firefox installed on their com-
puters, so marketing would not have to be very aggressive and expensive

• Primary acquisition: segment that represents non-Firefox heavy browser users, 52% of
all minutes online and 15% of all users; very attractive market segment, heavy users are
easier to reach and switching costs for them are very low, which makes it a bit easier for
us to attract them – they are keen on unique features of browsers and technical character-
istics of browser (page-loading speeds, RAM usage, etc.)

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Conclusion
We have put together two tables with approximate calculations of market attractiveness and com-
petitive position (check appendix section) of each specified market segment. From those calcula-
tions we are then able to position our segments in the global attractiveness matrix (Low:0-4, Mod-
erate:4-7, High:7-10).

GLOBAL ATTRACTIVENESS MATRIX
MA/CP Low (1-4) Moderate (4-7) High (7-10)

High (7-10) PA, IEP PR

Moderate (4-7) SR, IES, SA

Low (1-4) LU

We have decided that the best
choice would be to focus on
three segments that are posi-
tioned in the green part of
above matrix (Primary Reten-
tion, Increase Engagement pri-
mary and Primary
Acquisition). The reasons for
our decision lie in our very
limited marketing budget
(slightly above 6 mio $ in
2007) and small internal marketing team.

In the process of choosing the right target marketing strategy we found out that even though we
will use a variation of focus marketing strategy, our key three focus segments differentiate from
each other in many characteristics. We are not able, for example, to target Primary Retention mar-
ket segment with the same marketing methods as Primary Acquisition. Primary Retention market
users are already established Firefox users and are obviously quite fond of it, in comparison to Pri-
mary Acquisition segment users that are heavy internet users, but obviously do not think that Fire-
fox is the best browser for their use and will probably have to be more aggressively targeted as the
retention segment. And because of such reasons, we finally decided to use differentiated market-
ing strategy and thus target limited number of segments with different marketing approaches.

19 | P a g e


Marketing mix
A quot;Marketing Mixquot; is the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that work together to achieve
company's objectives, they are: product, price, promotion and place. Broadly defined, optimizing
the marketing mix is the primary responsibility of marketing. By offering the product with the
right combination of the four Ps marketers can improve their results and marketing effectiveness.
Making small changes in the marketing mix is typically considered to be a tactical change. Mak-
ing large changes in any of the four Ps can be considered strategic. Upon the previous made thor-
ough market analysis and its segmentation we will therefore be able to outline the basis of Mozilla
Firefox marketing mix.

Product
The Mozilla Firefox brand is already a well established and known brand. It comprises a cool logo
and a rememberable name. Actually, it is has been voted among top ten brands in 2005 survey
made on Brandchannel.com, beating such names as Sony and eBay. Even though the survey has
not been made among “normal” consumers, it is still a prove of Mozilla`s right direction in posi-
tioning the Firefox brand with its community marketing strategy.

The product is also flexible in a way that it suits perfectly to custom needs of individual and we
think that Mozilla should emphasise this even more; the consumer is able to completely change
the skin, add hundreds of add-ons, personalize menus, etc. Actually this kind of features are aimed
at heavy users, which we, as the market segmentation proved, are primarily targeting. Some addi-
tional features aiming at these segments are: smart search bar, password manager, integrated anti-
virus support, live user support, etc.

Placement
Mozilla Firefox is a desktop computer software product with only one main direct distribution
channel – internet. Thus the main distribution place is their official website mozilla.com, espe-
cially for PC (Windows) and Mac platform systems. Regarding the Linux platform systems, the
main distributors are companies and organisations creating Linux distributions (e.g. Red Hat, Nov-
ell/SuSE, Debian, etc.).

We decided to separate distribution places in three groups: the first one targeting our primary re-
tention and increase engagement segments (both comprising of current Firefox users), the second
one targeting our primary acquisition segment and the third one distributing our future mobile ver-
sion of browser – Fennec (currently in beta version):

20 | P a g e

1. group: browser download option (possibility of downloading new versions within the
browser)
2. group: default browser installation option within Windows (lookup: political aspect in
PEEST analysis) and Linux distributions, minor download sites (e.g. Softpedia, CNet,
etc.), through other Mozilla products (Thunderbird, Bugzilla, etc.),
3. group: Primary distribution channels in the beginning of Mozilla Fennec`s life should be
preinstalled versions of the application on mobile phones (partnerships with mobile carri-
ers and/or mobile phone producers). The other and probably (at least) in the very begin-
ning the only distribution medium will be internet (download options on primary Mozilla.-
com site and other minor sites).

Promotion
In our promotion activities we are focusing on three main parts as already mentioned in the place-
ment section and are of course using internet as our primary direct marketing medium:

1. group: we will try to establish and promote our existing Campus representatives campaign
engaging student volunteer promoters at campuses. Viral marketing activities (word of
mouth techniques through social media, bloggers, etc.) are of course of great importance,
because it is a cheap and possibly very effective way of promotion, especially in our case,
where we are trying to get attention of heavy browser users which are most likely to use
modern social services and are thus influenced by a subset of internet influencers. Organiz-
ing plenty of events (road shows, conferences, etc.) has always been a part of Mozilla`s
spirit so we think, that they should continue in this direction and even try to widen their
promotion activities throughout the world with help from local representatives. Trying to
promote Firefox through partnerships with schools (default installed browser, guest pro-
motion lectures) is maybe another possible option of gaining some of the younger audi-
ences, which are actually using internet and consequently browsers a lot, but are maybe
not aware of different browser possibilities. Special launch promotions like the world-fam-
ous Guiness World record for the most software downloads per day on the launch of Fire-
fox version 3 in May 2008 are another examples of great promotion activities, that actually
prove Mozilla`s right direction in attracting specified market segment.
2. group: As we are very devoted to our passionate community and know that the “good
word” coming from them helps us spreading our market share and influence, we will en-
gage and motivate them even more through our Mozilla web-site network (main site –
Mozilla.com, Spreadfirefox site, mozillaWiki, etc.), good publicity in the traditional and
ever-growing new media and organize special events (above mentioned launch events, de-

21 | P a g e

velopers conferences), give out some free merchandise goods (stickers, t-shirt, cups, usb-
sticks, etc.) as a neat and affordable sales promotion technique ...
3. group: Spreading Firefox for mobiles will be a great challenge for the Mozilla team and
we think that initially the promotion activities should focus on marketing the new mobile
“possibility” through the existing distribution channels; the desktop version of Firefox
(small banners on opening page) could be a great way to stimulate and inform our current
desktop users to try the mobile version of their beloved browser. Promotion should also be
focused in viral marketing campaigns (e.g. small cartoons featuring fox and fennec mas-
cots) and small advertisements on popular mobile-related internet sites (banners) and
magazines.

Conclusions
Our Marketing Mix doesn't deal with the third quot;Pquot; (Pricing), clearly because Firefox is a free prod-
uct. As we have mentioned throughout the marketing plan, Firefox revenue is based on its search
royalties deal with Google and so we are not able to specify any pricing possibility.

Since we have a limited budget for marketing, we are forced (and proud) to use non-traditional
marketing strategies: viral, guerrilla and organic, that are actually all based on the passion and en-
gagement of our community.

Placing and Promotion of Firefox are strictly connected: distribution channels (mostly websites)
are also promotion channels (events are shown and organized through our web pages). As a con-
clusion, Mozilla Corporation is almost totally based on modern e-marketing techniques.

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References
Book
Jobber, D., & Fahy, J. (2006). Foundations of marketing. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education.

Web sources
http://www.mozilla.com
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox
http://blog.mozilla.com
http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/pest/
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_09.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis
http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_PEST.htm
http://www.impactmozilla.com
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/02/06/the-european-commission-and-microsoft/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis
http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/09FC84C-
C497D1569852570F800723E7A
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://marketshare.hitslink.com
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fennec
Understanding the other 80% http://dbottoms.net/2008/12/30/other-80/
http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx?year=2005&langid=1000
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/campusreps

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Appendix
Market segmentation
Spotted market segments, which are not described in the main section:

• Secondary retention: quite similar to above segment, main difference is in the amount of
usage, segment represents 2% of all minutes online and also the same percentage of all
users; not so interesting segment for us

• Increase engagement (secondary): segment, that is very similar to the above one, main
difference in less browser usage, represents 2% of all internet minutes and 1% of all inter-
net users; not attractive segment

• Light users: Firefox and non-Firefox users are a part of this segment, consists of users
that do not browser very much – 14% of all minutes online in comparison to 65% market
share by user count; big segment, but very difficult to target and also probably too expens-
ive for our limited budget, possibility of targeting in the future if Microsoft will be ob-
liged to let users choose browser during installation of OS (in this case Windows system)

• Secondary acquisition: similar segment, again with lower browser usage (heavy-moder-
ate) than above one, represents 13% of all minutes online and 12% of all users; fairly at-
tractive segment with quite high market share, but maybe a little to “expensive” to focus
on

MARKET ATTRACTIVENESS
WEIGHT PR SR IEP IES LU PA SA

Customer needs and 0.5 8 7 7 7 2 7 7
behavior

Segment size and 0.3 7 4 7.5 5 6 8 6
growth

Macro trends 0.2 7 6 7 5 5 8 6

TOTAL 7.5 5.9 7.15 6 3.8 7.5 6.5

COMPETITIVE POSITION
WEIGHT PR SR IEP IES LU PA SA

24 | P a g e

Opportunity for com- 0.6 8 8 7 7 6 7 7
petitive advantage

Capabilities & re- 0.2 6 6 6 6 5 6 6
sources

Industry attractiveness 0.2 7 5 6 5 7 8 6

TOTAL 7.2 6.8 6.5 6.3 5.9 6.9 6.5

25 | P a g e

Mozilla Firefox - Marketing Plan

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