The paper describes how research was used to assist in the development of a relationship marketing programme designed to increase brand awareness and to position British Telecommunications and its family of alliances as a global telecommunications company with local expertise. BT Global is the international division of British Telecommunications pic working with a number of locally owned BT companies and joint venture partners throughout the world to deliver modern high quality and efficient telecommunications services designed to meet the increasing demands of its customers. A relationship marketing programme targeted at corporate telecommunications decision makers originally designed and launched in the United Kingdom was adapted by BT Global for a number of international markets. In order to draw upon existing experience and identify markets offering the most potential research was undertaken in five countries where the service already exists and in ten possible new markets.
Despite technological and regulatory advances telecommunications' strategic role in business is poorly understood. Management attention is excessively focused on reducing telecommunication costs (which rarely account for more than 1% -2% of total company spend) rather than on strategic applications that add to the business value chain. The promotion of strategic applications requires an informed corporate culture for which there are four prerequisites: effective organisation of the telecommunications function; telecommunications strategy closely linked to corporate strategy; active management of innovation; and synergy between business and technical managers. Survey results are presented for twenty companies with action flagged for performance improvement.
This paper describes possible future developments for telecom managers due to paradigm changes in the telecommunications world and corresponding organizational scenarios within the companies. The results are based on desk research a quantitative study of a representative sample and group of trend-setters in the telecommunication area and successful projects in telecom management. Their current infrastructure with special emphasis on operation and service aspects is reviewed and we derive the emerging trends to outsourcing. The future role of telecom managers is described including their future embedding within the companies and potential competitors. The paper concludes with some guidelines for outsourcing decisions.
This paper looks at the status of telecom and information technology branding and communications in the global market-place. While there has been considerable progress in branding skill and communications discipline by some players it is apparent that there is still some way to go before the sword is fully sharpened. Brand cases are used to demonstrate marketing communications best practices.
The paper examines trends emerging in the telecommunications industry by considering the business and network strategies of a new breed of entrants such as Qwest and Level 3s referred to as bandwidth carriers and considers the assumptions made by bandwidth carriers and the likely implications on the delivery of services. A perspective to the present environment is provided by drawing from the introduction of telephony in the United States and the following early competitive period. The paper identifies key traits shared by early telephony and digital communication and draws lessons useful to understanding present and future developments. The incentives of carriers to vertically integrate during both periods is considered and its likely impact on availability of interconnection. The paper will argue that bandwidth carriers are likely to fundamentally shift the bandwidth sectors cost and market structure. Whether this will result in growth for new bandwidth carriers or periods of destructive competition will depend on the extent to which they will reach users the growth and success of new access providers and the ability to forge partnerships with existing access carriers and ISPs.
The aim of the paper is to describe a method which can be employed in order to find out the psychological motivations underlying people's actions and which was successfully applied in order to understand the psychology of decisions concerning the use of mobile phones. According to the underlying theory people's values influence their attitudes towards products or services and in turn attitudes influence actual behaviour. The method consists of techniques for the statistical measurement of people's values and attitudes and for the analysis of the relations holding among these two psychological variables.
This paper describes a five stage programme to get the best out of innovative new product development research in the telecoms sector. It covers the pitfalls encountered at each stage suggesting solutions based on mistakes made on both client and agency side. The main body of the paper outlines how to discover market gaps run useful brainstormings identify TRUE early adopters and develop the best possible new product development concepts to maximise useful data. The psychology of consumer acceptance of new technological products is discussed in a tentative eight-step model and the paper concludes with suggestions on when to quantify take-up.
An experiment on the use of two different Multimedia Desktop Systems (MDSs) in a remote collaboration environment is presented. A 2x2x4 mixed factorial experimental design was used (n=72). There were three independent variables: video quality (broad band vs. narrow band); group size (point-to-point vs. point-to-multipoint); and tasks. Results show that a major benefit of video lies in its ability to share information about the workspace rather than to share images of the participants themselves confirming that the video-as-data hypothesis is at work. In addition a counter-intuitive finding emerged: the narrow band Multimedia Desktop System was judged better than the broad band in terms of user satisfaction group process and task outcome. This is explained in terms of a distraction effect.
Technology, new products and certain measurable movements tell us that there is a social change under way and the way in which people communicate is undoubtedly at the center of this shift. This paper attempts to shed light on what has been changing for French people on a daily basis and thus to bring into focus the trends on which the telecommunications industry might base its products and services offer.
This paper looks at the use of cultural differences to help segmentation at a socio-cultural level rather than solely at a demographic or psychographic level. It uses Geert Hofstedes cultural dimensions to understand consumer mindsets and attitudes towards technology. This would help marketers communicate and position their products to appeal to a wide variety of consumers with different levels of technological evolution.
This work describes the methodology used in surveying socio- demographic data from customers in the Argentinean telecommunications market. This work reviews the relevance of information within the transformation companies in the Argentinean market; the Argentinean context in reference to information on people; development and implementation of customer data survey methodologies; and the launch of an advertising campaign related to the World Cup France 98 soccer tournament to survey customer socio-demographic data.
Editorial of the papers from the seminar "Competition and innovation in the telecommunications industry".