The fact of Marketing communication tools for VNPT (VinaPhone and MobiFone) to retain customers
The market is also the battle field. To survive in a fierce competitive market to seize higher positions, and even top positions, enterprises need to do their branding. A characterized brand name, which is different from competition will be more effective in getting people’s interest. When you talk about a brand name, all of the aspects of product/service and the image of an enterprise will be in your mind: how is the product (in terms of quality and pricing), what are the ways to approach the product (product distribution) and what is your outstanding impression regarding the product. The impression may come from customer self experience and exploration or using communication tools by an enterprise to stimulate customers to experience and explore. In the current information technology (IT) era, customers do not necessarily think of self exploration anymore since enterprises are using more tactics to attract their attention. For customers, after experiencing a product, if their expectation is met, naturally, a good viral effect regarding the product will be disseminated across user communities due to sharing and “crowd psychology” between community members and vice versa. In this section, I will share information regarding communication marketing of two mobile operators under the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), that are VinaPhone and MobiFone with head to head comparisons with other key mobile operators. The target customers who are focused to get VNPT’s customer care programs are VIP ones. These customers were determined to had monthly billing valued at about VND 3 to 5 millions.
Objectives
Similar to enterprises in other industries, telecommunication operators, be they VinaPhone, MobiFone or Viettel, Vietnamobile, etc. are all approaching basic communication objectives, such as:
- Brand awareness;
- Informational objectives;
- Persuasive objectives;
- Reminder objectives;
- Brand building;
- Change a perception;
- Sell products; and
- Comparing competition.
Resources
Certainly, being two of the three largest mobile operators in Vietnam, VinaPhone and MobiFone are having necessary financial resources and human resources to invest strongly into communication marketing. However, it is hard to negate a fact that, even in their early days with limited financial and human resources, the two operators were already very strict to themselves regarding their branding, including logo design, slogan selection and customer care activities. Their efforts are paid for with their brand names known widely and prestige awards.
Channels
There are multiple communication marketing channels used by VinaPhone, MobiFone and their competitors. However, only channels with diversified message communication methods, that are varied with largest number of followers and deep impact, are selected by these operators to invest into significantly both in terms of finance and efforts. The selected channels include radio-based; TV-based; Internet-based communications; event and program sponsorship, and organization of social marketing and charitable events.
Promotional campaigns
Vietnamese users are very price-sensitive. Knowing this psychology, for many years, mobile operators of all sizes race against each other to launch promotional campaigns, such as offering additional value to top up cards for prepaid subscribers, free internal network calls for post paid subscribers and many new and convenient tariff plans to meet various consumption demands of customers while saving costs.
Naturally, for quite a long time, mobile users, especially prepaid subscribers, always expect a day of “100% additional top-up value” to top up their accounts. Valid for just 2 or 3 days, with high frequency, the “100% additional top-up value” (which is currently banned), “50% additional top up value” have become a “inevitable” promotional campaign for customers to compare operators head to head.
Mr. Nguyen Van Huyen, owner of a top-up card agent in Van Bao street said, on the days of “100% additional top-up value”, number of cards sold rockets up. Even card sellers also wait for the day to top up their accounts. The good thing is they do not need to wait for long since operators alternatively run their promotional campaigns.
Actually, smaller operators have “bigger” promotion on top-up cards compared to larger operators. But from my survey on newspapers, number of customers who care about promotional campaigns of smaller operators is not big, mostly because of limited coverage and subscription base. Therefore, the focus of the market is still on the three big operators, that are Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone. Ms. Pham Thu Hang (Ngoc Khanh, Ba Dinh, Hanoi) shared, on days of “100% additional top-up value” by MobiFone, the one she is currently using, she always buys several VND 100,000 Dong top-up cards because “I need to top up my account anyhow, and it’s much effective doing it that way”. Therefore, Ms. Hang is happy because within May 2011, the MobiFone had up to 7 days of “100% additional top-up value”, divided into two times in the month.
Other promotional campaigns such as free internal network calls, including “call ten minutes for the cost of one” or “unlimited talk for just VND 6,000 Dong”, etc. launched in 2010 that are still attracting interest from both pre-paid and post-paid subscribers.
We can name a number of “hot” promotional campaigns a few years ago, such as the MobiGold subscribers, who registered for a promotional campaign from April 19th 2020, with bi-directional calls and no call barring due to non payment of their bills to April 10th 2011, will get free less than 10 minute calls to MobiFone, VinaPhone subscribers and VNPT fixed telephones. This promotion became effective on December 31st 2011, with just a monthly fees (in addition to subscription fees) of just VND 60,000 Dong. VinaPhone also launched a similar promotion under the name of “unlimited calling”. Next came a promotion under the name of “MobiFone and VinaPhone – VNPT congratulation to International labor day” in 2011 for subscribers of these networks in Hanoi area. The promotion later extended to June 15th 2011, and depending on a selected plan, for the whole year, customers will get free internal VinaPhone network calls, calling to VNPT Hanoi fixed phones / Gphones, calling to MobiFone subscribers and calling to VNPT fixed phones /Gphones nationwide.
Not willing to be left behind, Viettel also launched “call all day for less than VND 1000 Dong” promotional campaign. With a very tiny fees to join a program, this operator’s customers can enjoy making Viettel domestic internal network calls for free for 12 months with a maximum call duration of 10 minutes. In previous campaigns, Viettel disclosed that over 1 million customers registered to join the promotion campaign to enjoy 10 free minutes of calling same network subscribers.
There are also countless number of new service plans launched daily by operators. Each plan has its own benefits, meeting specific demands of a market segment. However, they all target saving costs for customers. And operators always try their best to do better than their competitors of at least as good as their competitors.
However, according to a telecom specialist, these price wars such as free internal network call put these operators in a situation of providing services without profit. Those boring races are one of the reason of the monthly decline of consumer index for the telecom service sector while other indexes increase. “Not for long, operators will have to pay penalty for the impact of these boring races”, said the specialist.
Future plans and directions
In terms of number of mobile subscribers, Viettel is holding number 1 position with roughly 58 million subscribers (according to data from the Ministry of Information and Communication in 2011). However, with two brands Mobifone and Vinaphone, currently, VNPT is ruling the domestic mobile market with more than 83 million subscribers, accounting for 75% of the whole group revenue. With that position, VNPT will not let Viettel to take away its market share easily.
Recently, VNPT proposed to the Ministry of Information and communication a re-structuring project of the group. In which, the most important item is asking for approval on merging two golden egg chickens, the Mobifone and Vinaphone to create a counterpoise with Viettel.
If this “2 in 1” scenario successes, in addition to an objective of protecting its mobile market share, VNPT can also save yearly infrastructure investment capitals. What is more, VNPT can focus on expanding its coverage and investing to overseas markets which is now Viettel’s advantage.
Especially, both Viettel and VNPT have an orientation to invest overseas. Specifically, VNPT opened its U.S representative office and Viettel already expanded its operations to Cambodia and Laos markets. Viettel is successful with launching and provision of services in Cambodia with MetFone network and in Laos, it is the Unitel network with a total subscription base of over 2 million.
Measurements
To measure the effectiveness of communication marketing activities, operators normally use most popular measurement methods, including online surveys, interview-based survey using questionnaires, consolidation of responses and feedbacks from communities and mass media, hiring professional market analysts to do surveys, etc.
(Source: www.Intelligentmedia.vn)