Telecom
sector is the fastest growing sector and advertising here plays an intense role
in capturing the market share in this sector. Analyst says, India offers truly
exceptional growth potential. Penetration of mobile services is still less than
5% in a country with over one billion inhabitants. Telecom operators such as Airtel,
Hutch and RPG, feel that advertising does have an important role to play. Every
player in this industry spends a substantial amount of their profit in advertisement.
The cell phone is no longer an island. Mobile technology is connecting the world
with a billion invisible bonds and growing. We have now passed the one billion
mark of mobile users. It has become the lifeline for all individuals of the community.
The
term services are rather general in concept, and it includes a wide variety of
services. There are the business and professional services such as advertising,
marketing research, banking, mobile services, software, legal and medical services.
Faced with such a broad spectrum, we need to define the concept of service from
a marketing view-point. Kotler offers one such definition: "A service is
any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially
intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may
or may not be tied to a physical product". As in the case of a product, in
the case of services also starting point for understanding the marketing dynamics
is the "want-satisfaction" of the customers. It is important to correctly
identify the particular want(s) which your service is fulfilling, since this will
provide the clue for the most appropriate marketing strategy. A restaurant provides
satisfaction to its customers on the basis of type and quality of food, its decor
and environment and the behavior of it staff and its location in a busy commercial-cum-office
complex. For instance, "class touch" was started as the restaurants
started serving exclusive Western and Chinese cuisine with expensive décor,
a live band, beautifully liveried waiters and a high-price menu. The venture was
a flop right from the start. On the advice of marketing consultant, the restaurant
changed over from serving elaborate, expensive meals to a fast food character
providing quick, reasonably priced meals for consumption both within and outside.
Today this restaurant business is a big success. It was the correct identification
of the "want-satisfaction" which made it successful? To be successful,
one has to first identify the basic need which is being fulfilled by the service,
and second, find ways and means to differentiate it from that of the competitors
so that you can increase number of customers and also command their loyalty. |
