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LOOKING ATFUTURE 859in three ways, as indicated by its chairman, Naveen
Jain (Fletcher, 2000):
(a) When signing up with Infospace, merchants and
Internet service providers, are assured of reach
millions of wireless customers.
(b) Merchants are required to pay for a percentage
(about 2–25%) for each business transaction gen-
erated from the wireless portal.
(c) Wireless providers are obliged to pay a per-
subscriber, per month fee.- Keep brand identity in wireless portal. The service
provider is free to negotiate with content providers and
merchants who are shown on its portal as long as they
agree to carry the brand name in their contents. Cur-
rently, Rupp (2002) reported that BT (British Telecom)
has adopted this business model, and it seems to be
successful in terms of reducing churn rate (the rate at
which subscribers stop using the service) and enhanc-
ing ARPU (average revenue per user). - Charging for contents. “The business model based
on paid content is simple and transparent—content
providers know what they want and what revenues they
will get,” said Eden Zoller, the Senior Analyst of Ovum
(Fricke, 2001). This is because subscribers are expected
to pay for the content, which has perceived value,
personalized and suitable for the reception by their
mobile devices such as PDAs or Web-enabled mobile
phones.
MEASURMENT OF MARKETING
PERFORMANCE
Performance-Measurement Management
Korhonen (2001) indicated the following factors for
performance-measurement:- Traffic levels within the network (traffic load on the
radio interface and the utility of resources within the
network nodes). - Verification of the network configuration (verifications
are based on fact findings). - Resource-access measurements (at regular time inter-
vals across the network). - Quality of service (QoS; attributes as experienced by
subscribers). - Resource availability (availability of the chosen re-
sources at different phases of the life cycle of the
system).
The performance-measurement reports are expected to
produce at a particular frequency known as the granular-
ity period. Measurement samples are collected during the
granularity period. The results can be kept in the local net-
work entity as files or sent to the concerned parties all at
once. The network manager can access these files when-
ever he or she wants to. Finally, data must be presented
to the configuration-management application.
In addition, it is necessary to have a strong system of
fraud management for detecting and preventing fraud in
mobile telecommunication networks (Korhonen, 2001)to ensure that quality wireless services are provided to
customers.Marketing Effectiveness and
Efficiency Measures
Steuernagel (1999, p. 106) defined the effectiveness and
efficiency as follows:- “Effectiveness is the degree to which the marketing
process—advertising, sales channels” converts poten-
tial targets into customers. There are many way to mea-
sure it, such as
(a) revenue versus sales expense,
(b) customer gain versus sales expense,
(c) revenue versus marketing expense,
(d) customer gain versus marketing expense,
(e) store traffic or lead generation versus advertising
expense,
(f) customer satisfaction (e.g., overall satisfaction,
monthly statement clarity, missed or error calls
over the past 30 days, etc.), and
(g) customer churn. - “Efficiency is a measure of long-term revenue versus
the total cost to get and keep the customer—the ra-
tio of unit output to input.” It may cover the following
measures:
(a) increase in revenue,
(b) gross sales per salesperson (vs. peers in the same
channel),
(c) leads and sales generated by promotional cam-
paigns, and
(d) expected revenue per customer divided by the sales
and marketing.
LOOKING AT FUTURE
The following represent future challenges for wireless
marketers:Customer churn rate,
Wireless consumer applications,
Data mining,
Mergers and acquisition,
Standards adoption,
Security concerns,
Customer relationship marketing,
Roaming hurdles,
Billing challenges for GPRS, and
The rise of the application service provider (ASP), which
offers cost savings.To be successful in the dynamic wireless business, it
is necessary for marketers to “work closely with other
company departments to form an effective value chain
that serves the customer” (Kotler & Armstrong, 2001,
p. 677). A value chain involves commitments from various
departments of an organization—for example, product
design, production, marketing, logistics, and delivery—to