Pokerstars

BSc(IM)

Author: Atli Már Ólafsson

Instructor: Faiza Saeed

The marketing mix at Pokerstars

How they are getting to their existing and potential customers

Aarhus School of Business

2009

Executive summary

The aim of this thesis was to map the marketing activities in the online poker industry. This industry is relatively new but has grown with unbelievable speed the last couple of years. Pokerstars is the biggest company in this industry and has been for few years now. The main part of this paper therefore went into analyzing their marketing mix, which was then followed with SWOT analysis and a market research. This was done in order to answer the questions about how the marketing mix at Pokerstars looks likes and how their marketing strategy is influencing their existing and potential customers.

It was found out that the most important part of the service marketing mix’s 7 Ps for Pokerstars were Product, Promotion and People. The software players use to play is one of the key factors for players when choosing a site. How the site is promoted is also extremely important, since the competition is increasing, the poker sites has to let potential players know what they have to offer and tell existing players why they should not try other sites. This is often done with various sales promotions. The customer support is also very important, as it is the only contact the player has to the people working for Pokerstars.

The results for Pokerstars can be considered very satisfying. All players know who they are and they have more players than all the other sites combined. Their software and customer support is very good and they are getting closer to Fulltiltpoker when it comes to players awareness about sponsored players at these sites. They are getting new players even though they do not offer as big bonuses as their competitors, which really shows their strength.

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