Vodafone Company Marketing Strategies - Case Study Example

Vodafone Company Marketing Plan Name: University Name: Course Name: Date: Introduction Marketing is an important strategy that aides a company to succeed in its future plains. Marketing plan brings into consideration ways in which a company can improve its market share (Gómez-Mejía et el 2001). Marketing plan will enable a company to reach new audiences, raise awareness of its brand and sell the company’s products or services (Drucker, 1990). Therefore, marketing plan will help a company to lay down structure that will help a company to succeed. An example of company that sees the importance of marketing plan is Vodafone Company. Vodacom Company has a 50% stake in Hutchison Australia (VHA) and the other 50% is owned by the company (i.e. a 50: 50 joint venture). As at September 30, 2009, Vodacom, Australia has more than 6.3 million customers in Australia. Marketing Objectives Over the years, the company’s strategies in Australia have been focusing on the customers and lead the product. Over the years, Vodacom, Australia has repeatedly developed new services through the use of latest technology (Bingemann, 2012). Vodacom, Australia strategic plan is to lead in product and services, but the overall marketing objective for the company is to: 1.) to maintain existing customers; 2.) to bring modern and latest technologies and mobile services (e.g. mobile internet); increase diffusion of new data service (i.e. Vodafone live!); 3.) Try to get hold of more customers; and 4.) Improving and developing new services in the Australia market (Naman, 2009). Vodacom, Australia has been able to achieve these objectives through updating its range of services and phones offered to their customers and this has enabled them to keep ahead of their competitors (Bingemann, 2012). Also, Vodacom’s distinctive 'How are you? and live!' advertising has helped the company to improve its brand image saliency to all mobile users in Australia. Vodacom, Australia has continued to identify opportunities for their expansion of the company’s footprint, as well as increase their engagement with their partners across the globe (Bingemann, 2012). The company has appointed a number of managers who are responsible for ensuring that the needs of the company’s customers are prioritized within the company (Bingemann, 2012). Vodacom, Australia has an expansion plan that that will help the company to grow its core business of mobile communication and also diversify its services and products. The expansion strategy will help the company to deliver to its customer strong and sustained growth over the next 20 years (Naman, 2009). Target Market(s) and Positioning Market segmentation is a concept found in economics and marketing (Solomon et el, 2012). Market segmentation may be gender, price, gender or interest related. Organizations may develop their own market segments and usually is involved in creation of product differentiation strategies, which enable the company to exploit these segments (Haley, 2000). Market segmentation often gives a company a commercial advantage. Market segmentation aims at identification of potential customers and groups of customers with similar needs and wants (Haley, 2000). The company is able to respond to these needs and in return improve the revenue of the company. Market segmentation can also result in marketing effectiveness of the company (Stacey, 2011). Each day the ICT industry is changing, and the choice of customers also is changing every day. Vodafone, Australia being the largest mobile company in the country, the company has full market coverage with differentiated offerings. The company’s market target is through services and proposition for every segment according to specific customer needs and preferences, and offering different tariffs (Solomon et el, 2012). The company’s market segment has been bundle together as: messaging, data, voice, and increasing value added services such as: cheap SMS facility for youths; per second billing for its users; roaming services for professionals who use to work abroad and facilities for circle user etc. The company also targets other markets where it can make pricing, promotion, and distribution of its services more cost effective and easier (Stacey, 2011). After the market segment has been selected, the company is suppose to position its products or services the customer mind. According to Kotler and Armstrong (1987: 225), ‘a product positioning is the way the product is defined by the customer on its important attributes’ (Solomon et el, 2012). Product positioning will involve implanting the unique differentiation and benefits in customer’s minds. Thus Vodafone, Australia has continued to build their brand value by delivering a consistent, superior and differentiated customer experience. The company’s tagline “Where ever you go our network follows” gives customer using their services indication that they have a vast coverage (Stacey, 2011). The company has also been able to differentiate its services from other telecommunication companies in Australia by delivering the promise of ‘Helping customers make the most of their time’ (Solomon et el, 2012). The company strategy has focused on ‘Happy to Help’, this slogan tend to give an emotional connection with the customers. Vodacom, Australia vision is to be the leader in communication in Australia (Solomon et el, 2012). The company has been on the process of expanding its category from mobile only to other communications. The future plan of the company is to enable the consistent use of the company’s bran in all interactions by customers (Stacey, 2011). The company has been able to develop guidelines in areas such as retail, merchandising, online and advertising. Overall approach to appropriate marketing criteria The battle to win customers is being fought not just for money, range and convenience, but also how an organization or a company will behave responsibly. Vodacom, Australia strategic planning initiatives have had an immense positive effect on the company’s financial planning. Vodacom, Australia strategic plan over the years has focused on the low pricing in its product and services. Low pricing strategy has helped Vodacom, Australia to be among the market leader in Australia (Harmer & Peck, 2004). The company has invested heavily on its strong brand image, which represents excellent value (Harmer & Peck, 2004). Vodacom, Australia has invested in latest technology, and this has enabled the company to increase and improve its customers experience with its service (Harmer & Peck, 2004). Also, the company has been able to capitalize on the mobile banking and money transfer services; these services have been doing well in other parts of the world such as sub-Sahara Africa and in Asia countries. Vodacom, Australia has successful develop multi-format strategies, and these strategies has helped the company to have competitive advantage over its competitors (Harmer & Peck, 2004). Multi-strategy has made it hard for other mobile companies to challenge Vodacom’s scale. In future, the company has been reported to have a strong position in the Australia’s mobile market (Harmer & Peck, 2004). Over the years, Vodacom, Australia has been faced with intense competition. The ability of the company to compete effectively in the Australia market have depended on network capacity (Naman, 2009), quality and coverage, quality of customers services, new technologies, capital resources, pricing of devices and services, improved and developing new products and services that are in accordance with customers needs and demands, quality of sales and distribution network (Naman, 2009). These strategies has helped the company to drive its prices down, thus staying competitive (Naman, 2009). In addition, the company’s strong capital investment has supported the growth in traffic (Naman, 2009). In the past 5 years, the company has invested heavily on data services; this has been attributed by the growth in the demand for data (Stacey, 2011). Data service has continued to boost the company’s earnings, and the data revenue for the past 5 years has increased by 35.5 per cent to 6.4 billion dollars . The decision the management took some few years ago has enabled the company to lead the mobile industry on mobile data and this is bearing fruit (Stacey, 2011). Combination of taking charge of their own transmission and investing in new transmission stations has put the company in an enviable position (Stacey, 2011). Also, the new dual-carrier technology that the company has been able to roll out across its network in Austria, has both capacity benefits and speed and will continue to support the growth in the company’s data business (Stacey, 2011). Vodafone, Australia owned the ‘summer of cricket’ across all state mastheads including heraldsun.com.au, couriermail.com, thetelegraph.com.au, perthnow.com.au, heraldsun.com.au and adelaidenow.com.au (Naman, 2009). This corporate sponsorship has allowed Vodafone to interact with target audiences and engage with them through different elements. In addition to displaying their advertisement in media (Naman, 2009), the company is the ownership of ‘summer of cricket’ section. This platform has enabled the company to integrate their brand into all aspects of the test series (Naman, 2009). Conclusion Marketing plan is an important tool that helps a company to either improve on its product offerings or increase its market share. Customer satisfaction increases the changes of retention and loyalty meaning that the company is able to increase its market share easily. Vodafone began its operation in 2004 dealing with ICT services. The mission statement for the company and availability of internal resources has ensured that the retail chain has been successful (Harmer & Peck, 2004), and the company can be able to introduce new strategies that will enable them to continually succeed in their business. Furthermore, external environment has favor the company and hence they can easily introduce new plans. Vodafone Company has been successful in applying their STO strategy and Marketing mix strategy in the vast Australian market; the company is now in their tenth year of full control of operation in Australia. As per the mission statement of the company to be the leaders in the field of telecommunication, Australia market has help the company to grow the base of it as Australia has a huge potential in ICT sector. References Naman, Shah (2009). Thesis on “Critically analyze the customer preference and satisfaction measurement in India Telecom Industry” submitted at IIPM, Ahmadabad. Vodafone. Official Website: www.vodafone.in Retrieved from 4th August, 2011. Bingemann, M. (2012). Telstra leads the pack for mobile quality. Australian, The (Australia) (1 – All-round Country ed.), 023. Stacey, O. (2011). Network sharing business models and the structuring issues and choices facing operators. Journal Of Telecommunications Management, 3(4), 306-312. Solomon, M.R. Marshall, G.W. & Stuart, E.W. (2012). Marketing: Real People Real Choices (7th edn), Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA. Kotler, Philip et.al (2005). Principles of Marketing. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall. Dransfield, Robert. (2004). Business for Foundation Degrees and Higher Awards. London: Heinemann. Gómez-Mejía, Luis R. & David B. Balkin, and Robert L. Cardy. (2001). "Planning and Implementing Strategic HR Policies". In: Managing Human Resources. 3rd ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: pp. 20-29. Goodstein, Leonard, Timothy Nolan and J. William Pfeiffer (1993). Applied Strategic Planning: How to Develop a Plan that Really Works. McGraw-Hill: San Francisco, p. 8. Haley, George T. (2000). "A Strategic Perspective on Overseas Chinese Networks" Decision- Making". In: Strategic Management in the Asia Pacific. Usha C.V. Haley, ed. Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford: pp. 411-422. Harmer, Wm. & Peck, Terrance. (2004). 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