Evaluating the Advertisement Strategies

Course: B. A (Hons) Management Module: BU315 Consumer Behaviour Facilitator: Abbas Shah Submitted By: Maham Nasim

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

The Telenor Group is a leading provider of telecommunications services worldwide. The company has a strong footprint in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia with a leading position in mobile, broadband and TV services. Telenor started out as a public company in 1855 and builds on more than 150 years of telecom experience. Some facts about Telenor: Telenor Group is currently ranked as one of the worlds largest mobile operator (in terms of subscriptions). Telenor Group provides voice, data, content and other communication services Telenor Group has 184 million mobile subscriptions worldwide. Telenor has telecom operations in 14 countries across the globe. Telenor employees more than 40.000 employees go to work every day in these 14 countries. 1

Telenor Pakistan is the country's single largest European investor, with investments in excess of US$2 billion. It acquired a GSM license in 2004 and began commercial operations on March 15, 2005. At the end of May 2010 it had a reported subscriber base of 23.65 million, and a market share of 24% making it the country's second largest mobile operator. Telenors vision is to help customers get the full benefit of communications services in their daily lives. Going by its vision Telenor is serving a vast consumer base with a number of product categories with differentiated features and benefits. As a brand plans to serve maximum number of consumers belonging to different benefit segments, it is expected to come up with a large variety of services that gives solutions to the needs of a vast number of consumer segments. Advertisement is one of the most significant way through which a brand can communicate their ideas, believes and vision with their customers. Since Telenor is a brand that targets a number of segments having different lifestyles and needs, communication message selected for each segment is unique from the rest. Following given advertisements show how Telenors different products and packages are directed at different benefit segments of the society. Each advertisement has a different message, which goes perfectly in line with the personality, needs and attitude of their selected target market.

http://www.telenor.com/en/about-us/telenor-at-a-glance/

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

A number of cellular companies are operating in Pakistan, out of which Telenor was the first one to diversify its network coverage towards the North of the country. This newspaper advertisement sends a dual message, one that Telenor has network coverage in North also, and secondly Telenor has tried to address the senior citizens of the country, which was a unique idea in context of Pakistans telecom industry.

ATTITUDES/NEEDS
Mktg Activities Learning (Memory) Perception Motives Personality Emotions Culture Values

SITUATION
Problem Recognition Information Search Evaluation & Selection

CONSUMER

Demographics & Lifestyle Social Status

Purchase Post Purchase

Reference Group House Hold

EXPERIENCES

Source: Cathy M Neal, Pascale G Quester & Del Hawkins, Consumer Bhevaiour: Implications for Marketing Strategy, 3 edn, McGrawhill Irwin, Sydney, 2002, p23

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STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

According to the above given model, consumer behavior is influenced by a number of internal and external factors such as culture, values, lifestyle, emotions etc. The influence and intensity of all these factors develop the buying attitude, which eventually leads a consumer towards purchase decision. By looking at the model, it can be seen that Marketing Activities is one of the factors that affect and influence the consumer, therefore it become significant for a market to minutely study the culture, values and lifestyle existing in the environment in which the targeted consumer lives and breath. Telenors idea of targeting the senior citizens segment was unique yet very promising. This is quite common in our society that children live away from their villages and home towns to fulfill academic or professional purposes, by picking on this point Telenor came up with superb advertisements brining solutions for this market segment to stay in touch with their offspring as well as keep them selves busy in various activities such as BBC Mobile Urdu Service etc.

The concept of targeting a new segment was distinctive, however there could be several issues related to this which the marketers should consider. For instance this is a general perception and observation that older generations are more resistant to change as compared to the youth, therefore there could be people who might not find themselves comfortable in using cell phones in comparison to a landline phone.

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

Teens and youth, another significant segment of the society is targeted by Telenors product Dejuice. Punch line for Dejuice says, Its fun to be young. The tag line clearly depicts the adjectives of this segment i.e. fun loving, easy going, care free etc. With significant developments happening in technology, certain trends have been witnessed to be growing popular amongst youth and teen, some of which trends are the growing fashions of sending text messages, social networking sites etc. This is one of the major reason for which cellular service providers like Telenor have come up with products similar to Dejuice targeting the ever energetic teens through lowest call and SMS rates. As the trend of sending forward messages is growing with the passage of time, cellular companies use catchy campaigns like SMS Ki Bharmaar, Pura Hafta Lagatar. Moreover, once again abiding by the lifestyle and personality depicted by this segment of the market, Dejuice has also come up with promotional messages highlighting the factor of lat night call rates etc.

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

The below given model defines two kinds of attributes which determine customers level of satisfaction. This theory believes that 63% of customer satisfaction comes from the physiological attributes. Relating this believe to Dejuices above shown advertisement, factors like eagerness to satisfy the customers needs and innovation does exist, however no light is shed on the functional attributes of the product.

MUST HAVE FUNCTIONAL ATTRIBUTES Meeting Standards Operating trouble free Performing as expected Product uniformity BUYERS LEVEL OF SATISFACTION PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES Being Innovative Eagerness to Satisfy Able to do the right job DELIGHTERS
63% Level of influence on buyers satisfaction
3

These days a number of people complain about the network converge and signal quality of various cellular companies. Due to packages offering lowest call rates and SMS services, the network infrastructure of these cellular companies gets over burdened which eventually cause issues as poor voice quality etc. Zong being a Chinese company came up with extreme low and SMS rates, initially a huge number of people switched to Zong but on a later stage majority of the people were not happy with their purchase decision. Reason being the same, the diversity and quality of Zongs network infrastructure did not allows them to server this big number of consumers. To ensure that the customer is not left in any of such doubts, Zong should have also highlighted the functi onal attributes e.g maximum network coverage, trouble free services etc in their advertisements. Moving on, businessmen of our society are also an important segment for Telenor. Telenor has divided this segment into further two classes i.e local businessmen and the executive business class. To cater the needs of this segment Telenor comes up with an exclusive product names Persona. Persona is Telenors post paid connection, specially focusing on the needs of the business community.

Karen Webb, Consumer Behaviour, McGrawHill

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

The above shown advertisement directly targets the local businessmen of our society. Caption such as free calls to business partners are specially used to catch the attention of this particular market segment. Features and services offered in Telenor persona are totally different from the ones offered with other packages such as Dejuice etc. This is because of the reason that needs and lifestyle of this market segment is way different from the segment targeted by other products and packages. The advertisement shown below targets the other class of the business community, i.e is the executive business class. Lifestyle and needs of the executive business class is way different from the local businessmen therefore benefits and features like GPRS an EDGE enabled network are highlighted in the advertisement. Telenor Personal for Executives also relates to the concept of Social Class. The below given advertisement clearly shows that Telenor has tried to associate their brand with the elite level of business level of the social class therefore the model, her attire, body language and the nature of the message is way too formal and ceremonial in comparison to the advertisements used for Dejuice or other products.

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

Referring to Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, through this advertisement the advertiser has tried to tap the Esteem Needs of the consumer. A customer who is an executive and breathes in a very formal and lavish world. This customer is a person who needs to have his hands full on the latest information, and is greatly exposed to the international environment. Contrary on the other hand a local business man is a customer who is either a shopkeeper or a factory owner, this person runs his business but in a more simpler and informal manner, therefore the advertisements given on the previous page are less complicated and more explicit in nature as they are directed towards the Social Needs of a common businessman. Given advertisement shows that Telenor has also played its part in Situational Advertisement. It is a very natural phenomenon that people tend to depict particular buying behavior in exceptional circumstances such as Eid, Ramzan etc. Usually in such kinds of exceptional circumstances sales graphs are found to go up. The following advertisement particularly addresses the communication needs of individuals at the time of Haj. International Roaming, Low Call Rates to Saudi Arabia etc is used as a stimulus to give a trigger to conusumers purchase decisions and attitude.

STEP Institute of Professional Development Faculty of Business & Management

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Course: B.A (Hons) Management Module: BU 315 Consumer Behaviour

Telecommunication business is at its peak in Pakistan, where the competition is getting intense every day. The current market scenario depicts the situation of price war, where each cellular service provider is trying to beat the other with lowest call rates and charges. This sort of competition usually creates an unhealthy atmosphere in the market. As an outcome of extreme bombardment of information (in form of advertisements, promotions etc) consumers end up in a state of intense confusion. In such a scenario, cellular companies should try to come up with products and packages that address the actual needs and problems of the consumers. For instance these days, a lot of people face issue such as network coverage etc, therefore rather than just focusing on call rates, they should try to resolve these actual issues.

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