Vodacom Marketing Mix

4.5 Strategy Formulation: Marketing Mix

The components of a marketing mix, with reference to the

McDonald model summarised in table 2.3, which are product, price,

promotion and place will be described now. These four elements

constitutes the marketing strategy

4.5.1 Product

The new South African mobile data product must have different

features that provide customers with opportunities to chat, play

games, send and receive pictures, change ring tones, receive

information about travel and sporting events, obtain billing

information, view video clips and make video calls. These products

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will be rolled out using Vodafone’s research and development

groups. The products must be adapted to suit the South African

culture. The content of these services must be changed to appeal to

South Africans. Different customers segments will want to use

different product services.

Alan Knott-Craig, chief executive for Vodacom, says that the

reception of mobile data could be an even bigger part of South

African’s lives than voice communication. Vodacom and its 35 per

cent shareholder, Vodafone, have joint forces to bring mobile data

to SA (Klein: 7 November 2004).

Vodacom must differentiate its data service with top of the range

products like the Blackberry. The Blackberry is a unique cellphone

combining easy access to e-mail, calendar and contacts, in an

innovative and stylish format (www.news24.com, 8 November

2004). Figure 4.3 illustrates the Blackberry device.

Figure 4. 11 BlackBerry 6210 Wireless Handheld

Source: RIM

4.5.2 Price

Ahonen (2002: 207) notes that tariffing has a bigger impact than

network dimensioning, sales provisions, handset subsidies or any

other decisions made relating to mobile services. Ahonen continues

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by stating that the underlying premise for tariffing and segmentation

is that some customers are willing to spend more money for a

similar, sometimes identical service than others. This investigation

venture...