marketing mix and product mix of idea cellular limited

marketing mix for idea cellular

COMPANY PROFILE:
Idea is the 3rd largest mobile services operator in India, in revenue terms, and recorded a subscriber base of over 100 million or 17.28%(Approx.) of the total mobile connections in India as of 31st January 2012. As on 31st January 2012, the company is leading the MNP (Mobile Number Portability) race, with a net gain of close to 11 million subscribers. The company also leads all other competitors in having the most active subscriber base, scoring highly on the VLR statistics. Idea’s Revenue for the year 2011 stands at $3.43 Billion. Currently Idea is the 6th largest mobile operator by subscriber base. Idea cellular acquired 3G licenses in 11 telecom circles for Rs. 5768.59 Cr during the spectrum auction in May 2010.3G services have already been launched in 7 circles out of the 11 circles that Idea has acquired licenses. Idea Cellular is planning to be a world-class internet service provider (ISP) in India. It is working to establish state of the art infrastructure.


CURRENT CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION
Idea Cellular currently segments its customer profile into 2 basic groups:
1) Prepaid Customers and
2) Postpaid Customers
Prepaid Customers are generally the personal use customer group i.e. non institutional. This segment accounted for around 80% of the customer base (2008 figures) and the remaining 20% was accounted for by the postpaid customer base.
The customer base is also segmented into groups according to the monthly revenue generated:
The segmentation here is done as:
1)VIP customers: These are the customers who form the VIP group as the name suggests and comprises of MPs, MLAs, industrialists and other high profile customers. These are given high attention in services as they are key to implementation of services across their regions.
2)Corporate Customers: These are the customers having more than five connections to their name and generate revenues in excess of Rs. 10000 a month. These are usually institutionally driven connections and are post-paid customers. Service quality in terms of Value Added Services provided including preferential customer service treatment is provided to retain these high value accounts.
3) Platinum Customers: These are the customers whose current monthly expenditure on Idea Cellular Services is in excess of Rs.1500 per month. The revenue generated from these accounts includes Voice, Data and VAS services. Around 60% of these are from the post-paid group while the remaining 40% are from the pre-paid group. Institutional Customers account for around 70% of the post-paid base while the remaining are the personal usage customers.
4) Gold Customers: These are the customers providing revenues to the company between Rs.1000 and Rs.1400 a month. The pre-paid base is again smaller in this segment accounting for nearly 35% of the customers. A healthy split is found between personal and institutional usage customers.
5) Silver Customers: This customer group provides revenues in the range of Rs.750 to Rs.999 to Idea Cellular each month. Pre-paid user group is in the range of around 55% while institutional sales account for around 80% of the post-paid group.
6) Medium Volume users: These are the customers generating between Rs.220 to Rs.750 each month. Prepaid customers form around 65% of the group while this group accounts for approximately 30% of the whole customer base of Idea Cellular.
7) Low Volume customers are the customers generating revenues less than Rs.250 per month

Target Market:
The Target Market is the high revenue generating segment of the Platinum and Gold Customers. It is strategic for the company to increase user base in these two segments as they generate a steady income source and most being post-paid, the company is usually assured of ease of collection of bills.
Major Benefits for these customers:
 These are even given treatment in Customer care.
 These are generally high data usage group and hence given dedicated Time Slots when their data usage is detected to maximize usage and revenue generation as a result.
 The Metropolitan and Urban circles have mobile density of 134% as compared to 29% in rural areas. Hence, more focus should be on expanding in rural segments.
 With the advent of 3G services and increasing number of smart phones, operators should focus on advanced value added services like live streams, mobile money etc.
 Strategy makers should think on the pricing policy of postpaid plans of corporates and affordability of the consumers to beat the competition. Company should come with new ideas & innovations to increase the sales & market shares. Company should focus more and more on advertising to promote services in corporate world.

Abstract:
The case examines the advertising strategies of Idea Cellular, a leading telecom service provider in India. It explains how Idea promoted its services through several innovative ads via variety of media like TV, print, out-of-home, and radio. Idea had not hired any celebrity to promote its services till late 2007, in contrast to its competitors.

However, when Idea expanded its geographical presence to cover several telecom circles in India, it hired film star Abhishek Bachchan to endorse its brand in October 2007. Idea's focus in its ads also changed from highlighting its tariff plans and network coverage to using mobile telephony to solve social issues. Idea also developed several websites to support its ads based on social issues.

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Idea also tied up with Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team, Mumbai Indians, and popular players like Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan were used to promote the brand. Idea chose to promote its brand where as its competitors focused on promoting their value added services and tariff plans.