Strategic Marketing Activities in Vodacom Telecommunication Company in -Tanzania

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders". (2005) Simply put, marketing is the process by which businesses assess the needs and desires of consumers in order to provide products and/or services to meet those needs in the most efficient and cost effective manner. Truly effective marketers do market research in an effort to understand their target market and create marketing strategies based on the characterization of those in the target area.

Marketing- Infilling a market lead ethos thought out, researching on external opportunities to understand current and potential customers, developing the marketing plan and strategy. Managing budgets and market success.

Trends in the market include the growing number of people within the 15-29 age range. Also, phones are being used for much more than just calling, other functions like texting and music playing capabilities have dominated much of a user’s data usage. As for market characteristics, the mobile industry has reached almost 50% penetration with about 130 million subscribers, and reaching its maturity. The cost structure has been very confusing for consumers, with hidden fees, overcharges, and lacks to reward users who do not use their plans to the max. And finally, channels include all service provider stores and retail consumer stores, for example, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy.

The future of the telecommunication industry is an exciting future. No longer can these companies depend on telephone service plans to maintain profit. Each company needs to find other avenues, packages and services that can be sold to existing customers while attracting new customers. The companies

3. Defining the firms marketing scope – basing it on customer satisfaction; comparisons to competitors; and maintaining strategy development

The business case presented focuses on insatiable demand amongst a growing population for a service built on dilapidated, poorly maintained infrastructure, against a backdrop of government deregulation in the telecoms sector. As of 1992, there were a mere 78k telephone lines for the 27m people living in 4.7m households (a population set to double over the coming 24 years), with users suffering success rates of just 25%. Demand was forecast to grow to 500k subscribers by 1996. The recent deregulation of the telecoms sector (via the break-up of TPTC into TPC and TTCL) and the formation of a regulator (TCC) had

“Marketing strategies can have a broad impact on the business in terms of instilling a marketing orientation among all those in the firm: the way of thinking or philosophy of the whole organization. However, marketing strategies can alternatively be seen as dealing only with the development of competitive advantages directly associated with the marketing function such as customer loyalty and distribution channel control. In the latter case, the domain is sometimes even further restricted by sole attention to the various element of the marketing mix rather than the more general issues of customer and channel relationships. There are two key

Marketing is used all the time with every business, from local corner shops to International supermarkets. Marketing is the process of promoting and selling a business’s products or services, it consists of four main elements: product, price, place and promotion. The marketing objectives of a business are the goals set by an organisation while promoting its product or services to potential customers.

Marketing plays the most important role for the success of a business. In this chapter, the business’ marketing objectives are laid out together with the plans or actions that will be needed to achieve these objectives. Furthermore, this chapter includes the profile of the respondents which aided the researchers to create this part of the feasibility study.

On the other hand, the managing marketing implementation is the process that helps customers to keep in mind the strengths of the company. In order to accomplish this, three stages are required to be followed such as an analysis of the markets and trading environment, determination of core markets and brand positioning and last, but not least, setting up flexible programmes for implementation. Controlling the marketing plan should include the flexibility of objectives, empowerment for environmental changes and monitoring, in order to allow new opportunities for the business.

The company will conduct marketing strategies that aim at creating an image for the brand in the minds of the consumers and reminding them customers about their products consistently.

In the marketing world, before releasing a product onto the market a company would carry out research in all spectrums to investigate the targeted audience. Once market research is completed, marketing or advertising is carried out so that the targeted consumers can purchase and the company receives an earned profit from sales. Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2009). Marketing strategies need to tick off consumer needs and demand. Companies follow a set of marketing strategies to be able to achieve their set mission goals. Strategies like segmentation, targeting and positioning of the market is used to analyse the

“Setting objectives for a marketing plan is not simple and straightforward matter. It is an iterative process whereby objectives are set, strategies and action plans are developed, and then it is decided whether the planned objectives are impossible, achievable or easy. Marketing objectives should be difficult, but they must be achievable. The aim is to set objectives that a challenge, but can be achieved with effort. They must be motivating rather than discouraging.” (Westwood, 2002).

The marketing strategy should be tailored around the firm's target market; if this were not the case marketing would be then less successful. Each aspect of the marketing mix would need to be formulated with the target market (consumer) in mind. For example the design of the product would need to be such that it would satisfy the consumer's needs. If it did not consumers would see no need to have it and buy a competitor's product. The price of

‘Strategy’ means a plan of action that is mainly design to achieve the future goal or objective. And in the other hand ‘marketing’ means a business of promoting good or services and selling that with market research and advertisement. So strategic marketing is an explanation of the objective that we need to achieve in future with the help of marketing.