Telecom - Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and At&T - Case Study Example

The main objective of purchasing is to preserve the excellence and worth of a company’s goods, to reduce cash tied-ups in register, to sustain the flow of outputs and support the organization’s aggressive position. Purchasing involves development and evaluation of the products’ specifications, reception and processing of requisitions, promotion and evaluation of bids, examination of goods, suitable storage place and release. Thus, it can be said that purchasing is one of the important decisions which needs prior assessment of various factors.

The purchasing or buying cycle consists of five major steps1. Purchasing Cycle Source: 1 The buying cycle model according to Weele talks about five factors namely awareness of needs, assessment of alternatives, alleviation of risk, decision and last but not the least achievement of results. With the increasing effects of globalisation and changing business scenario, cellular services have become part and parcel of human life. Increasing need for cellular services has brought quite a few companies into the market.

Verizon Wireless, Sprint Wireless and AT&T are three of the popular companies of United States that have successfully catered the need of the customers for certain years. The success of these companies lies on the fact that they could impressively hit the requirement of the prospective customers. The companies came up with foray of alternatives which had been the second stage of the buying cycle model. Verizon wireless provides wireless voice and data products along with services of broadband data.

Video services and network accesses are also available to the customers of the company2. Sprint Wireless also provides data and voices services in wireless segment to its customers. Moreover, it provides wireless network with both CDMA and iDEN networks for the customers of United States3. AT&T also provides certain other benefits like WI-FI services, the facility of U-verse which is primarily required to send SMS along with high speed broadband and video services. Moreover, the wireless 4G facility and high speed downlink packet access are also provided by AT&T4.

The next stage of the buying cycle is the alleviation of risk. While considering the risks, the existing and the prospective customers of any cellular service basically considers the factor of network connectivity. In this context, it can be said that AT&T and Verizon Wireless have higher market penetration in terms of network connectivity in comparison with Sprint. Verizon is also way ahead when compared to two other companies with respect to other add-on services like Bluetooth. The next step of the buying cycle i.e. decision is the most important.

The trend of the market depicts that Verizon having better services, also leads in the market share which ultimately depicts that customers have decided to be with the services of the company. In order to ensure long term sustainability, Verizon Wireless needs to ensure that the customers (both existing and the prospective) achieve their desired objectives. The other two companies, on the other hand, need to ensure that they provide services in such a way that they can attain greater market share in due process.

Positioning Positioning is an effort to influence the customer perception for a brand or product in relation to its competitive brands. Positioning is one of significant tools of marketing to highlight a brand