Organisational Strategic Marketing Policies and Its Impact on Customers’ Brand Loyalty. a Comparative Study of Glo Mobile and Mtn.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL TOPIC: Organisational strategic marketing policies and its impact on customers brand loyalty. (A comparative study of Glo mobile and MTN) BY OLASUPO GBENGA MICHAEL 081002809 DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS MARCH 2013 1. 1 INTRODUCTION In our world today, the main objective of any business concern is to make profit but many organisations find it difficult to meet customers’ needs let alone to enjoy their loyalty due to the challenges of marketing operations in an environment.

The environment of any business has an influence on it success and it determines the performance of operation of such business organisation. The complexity of business environment be it business enterprises, corporate entities or even manufacturing industries are all struggling for survival especially those that are highly competitive like in the telecommunication face an uphill task in their quest to survive business competition with their rivals most especially when it has to do with the sales and marketing of their goods, services or brand.

In other to give them self a competitive edge and advantage over the rival company/ companies.

Telecommunication industries have their share in peculiarity of environment like their counterparts aside its capital intensive factor, other factors such as economic, political, socio cultural and others which are uncontrollable by the organisation cannot be over emphasised. The marketing environment also poses a lot of threat to the survival of organisation in terms competitors, price ranges, and promotion abilities and so on. It is worthy of note that these factors are not constant they keep changing over time.

Hence for a Telecommunication company to use strategic marketing effectively in other to win customers’ brand loyalty, it must in addition to having the cognizance of these factors and be able to adapt to the changes. Haven the cognizance of this makes a company to adopt strategic marketing techniques; newsletter, email, podcasts etc for their product with the view of increasing their general turnover; using brand loyalty as a performance measurement knowing full well that variables such as customer satisfaction, high rate of demand etc can also be used.

It is therefore, the focus of this research work to find out the measure of impact which strategic marketing techniques have on brand loyalty of the customer(s). 1. 2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM The key areas of this statement are; * Strategic marketing * Customer brand loyalty * Quality of service There have been public complaints about the quality of services provided by operators in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria. And this led to the commission imposing fines on the four major mobile telecommunication providers in Nigeria (MTN, Airtel, Glo and Etisalat) in May 2012.

Consequently upon this fine, a meeting was held between the commission and the listed companies where a new set of KPI targets were agreed upon and a glide path towards further improving the KPI’s were agreed via a Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) in June 2012. However, December, 2012 was set as the date where KPI measurements will be taken to ascertain operators’ compliance to the terms as set out in the new KPI targets.

The following are the some of the problems identified in this industry: * The average Bouncing Busy Hour (BBH). * The Cell Setup Success Rate (CSSR). * Drop Call Rate (DCR). Traffic Channel Congestion (TCHcong). * Stand Alone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion (SDCCHcong). * The Cell Capacity.

* Sites impacted by bomb blasts, flooding and fibre vandalisation. It must be stated here again that different business organisations cum sectors adopt different advertising techniques which give them different levels of result in terms of turnover and customers brand loyalty. More so, in other to enjoy customers’ brand loyalty, operators need to carry out an effective strategic marketing. This invariably brings about a clarion call to NCC as the overseer of the sector.

However, cases have shown that a strategic marketing and a well applied strategic advertising idea will almost certain help to boost the brand loyalty and invariably corporate turnover of any firm.

Therefore, in the light of the above set of statements, this study wants to find out customers’ reactions to certain qualities of services rendered by the telecommunication companies of which a careful comparative analysis and study of Glo Mobile and MTN respectively is chosen out of the four companies hitherto outlined. 1. 3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The following will serve as the objective of the study. Conceptualize what strategic marketing policies is * Demystify what brand loyalty is * Determine if there is a correlation between strategic marketing and brand loyalty * Know the various modern/ current strategic marketing * Learn why company must carry out strategic marketing plan * Learn how strategic marketing works towards customers’ brand loyalty * Suggest other strategies such as E- support, promotional e-mails and e- postcards and moderated chat (as usage of text messaging is becoming disturbing and obsolete by the day) * Investigate into the Telecommunication sector Examine the criteria NCC uses in regulating the operations of this sector 1. 4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS This study is designed to address the following research questions: i.

Who are the people responsible for the formulation of strategic marketing policies? ii. What are the strategic marketing policies employed by the two companies? iii. What are the existing state of the organisations and the environment in which they operate and which they likely to operate in the future? iv. How do the organisations cope with the ever changing IT/ Business environment? . What body oversees the operations of telecommunications in Nigeria vi.

What are the various notable sanctions carried out by the body? vii. How do the companies cope with the various NCC laws and regulations? 1. 5RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS According to Asika 1999, Hypothesis is a tentative statement about relationship that exists between two or more variables and need to be tested and subsequently accepted or rejected. The hypotheses of the study are given below. Ho:Organisational strategic marketing is not impactful on customers’ brand loyalty.

Hi:Organisational strategic marketing is impactful on customers’ brand loyalty. 1. 6SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of this study includes the Telecommunication companies in Nigeria; evaluating their appreciation and practice of strategic marketing policies. The firms are to be those engaged in communication sector as these are businesses that have a good and comprehensive exposure to the environment and could have their customer patronage and level of strategic marketing impacts easy to check.

The scope however is to be limited to two selected companies who are situated in Nigeria. The cost of conducting the research for all Telecommunication companies in Nigeria is considered, thus two of them will be studied comparatively.

This research work will make use of both primary and secondary data; questionnaires that will be designed to get information from the companies, customers and other concerned stakeholders like NCC, NBS etc. 1. 7SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The essence of this research work is to promote strategic marketing in relation to customer brand loyalty.

However when this study is completed it will be beneficial to the contributors; the writer, Telecommunication sector, the mobile companies and students and academic researcher. On the part of all above listed it will lead to; i. Better performance in strategic marketing ii.

Fair and Social responsible practices iii. Customer satisfaction and value for money iv. Defining standard value for institutional and governmental regulations v. Expository into current strategic marketing techniques that they are expected to adopt if they are to account for higher customer brand loyalty vi.

Provision of a veritable source document to students and researchers for referencing and further research in a related area 1.

8DEFINITION OF TERMS The below are the terms that are peculiar to this research proposal: i. BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT ii. COMPETITION iii. TURNOVER iv. FIRM v. ADVERTISING vi.

NEWSLETTER vii. E- MAIL viii. PODCAST ix. BUSINESS STAKEHOLDERS; are the units that a business affect them and they affect the business success or otherwise directly. x. VALUES; are societal accepted activities backed by ethics xi.

NCC xii. NBS xiii. KPI xiv. 1. 9CHAPTERIZATION This research work will be of five chapters; CHAPTER 1 General introduction of the work CHAPTER 2 Review of related literature to topic of study CHAPTER 3 The research methodology CHAPTER 4 Data presentation and analysis of the study CHAPTER 5 Summary, conclusion and basic recommendation for the research work 2. 0REFERENCES Paul H.

Rigby; Conceptual Foundations of Business Research; (New York: John Willey $ Sons; inc; 1965). Pg 20- 27