Eagle Mobile Company

Abstract

The present paper has as central subject the Eagle Mobile Company. This firm represents one of the most successful mobile-phone companies at the moment in Albania .

The current study explores the effectiveness of incorporating voice- SMS system into Eagle Mobile and type of strategies used by company to increase customer attraction.

The methodology proposed for undertaking the research consist in a quantitative method- Questionnaires. A number of 200 questionnaires are going to be applied to students from Tirana University- Economic Department. The questionnaire is built using from both close- ended questions and open questions.

This research hopefully will provide information regarding possible strategies meant to attract new customers in mobile phone industry. Findings could be used as a model for other companies activating in the same area or, why not, to complement the scholar marketing discipline.

1. Introduction

1.1 Background of the researched topic

Eagle Mobile represents one of the most successful Albanian company and brand in terms of Telecommunications. The company started in October 23rd 2003 with the Albanian government as integral part of the operator of fixed telephony in Albania- Albtelecom. The privatization started in 2005 and was finalized on September 28, 2007 when one of the biggest companies in Turkey Çalik Group purchased 76% of the shares along with its partner Turk Telekom.

The other part of shares 24% belong to the Albanian government . From this moment Eagle Mobile had known a successful growth . The company success is represented by different discount packages, when people subscribe for multi services plan (Varley, 2007).

After only one year after the entrance in the market, Eagle Mobile has over 570 thousand subscribers. The number of subscribers represents a record because it was reached just in 18 months .

Programs to secure customer loyalty have been used by marketers for many years. For example, credit cards like those issued by American Express and the banks have offered regular customers a range of valuable benefits (O’Brian & Jones, 1995).

In recent years, loyalty schemes have attracted considerable interest as a wider range of companies practice one of marketing’s most familiar strategies, namely, “if you see a good idea—copy it”(Uncles, 1994, p337). Loyalty programs which seek to bond customers to an organization or its products and services by offering an additional incentive pose an interesting dilemma for many organizations. Although these schemes often attract widespread customer interest, they are difficult to support from first principles.

In order to attract new customers, especially the youth niche, the company developed an innovative service- Voice SMS . Eagle Mobile subscribers need to dial '*' followed by the number of the person they wish to send the message to, and speak a short message for up to 30 seconds in any language. The recipient gets a notification message from the sender and automatically listen the message and are able reply to the Voice SMS left for him. “Eagle mobile subscribers can also dial *0* to hear new voice messages, or retrieve previously listened voice messages by dialling *1*. Voice SMS messages can be replied to, forwarded, saved, or deleted ”.

Melnyk, V., Stijn M.J. and Tammo H. A. (2009, p 3) quoting Oliver (1999) and Reichheld (2001) underlines the importance of customers loyalty subject in different sectors: “Customers loyalty has been the object of intense interest in both the business and the academic worlds”. Rust, Zeithaml, and Lemon (2002) indicate that the concept of customer loyalty is the heart of customer relationship management and is “the raison d’être” of omnipresent loyalty programs (Kivetz, & Itamar 2002; Van H, & Bijmolt 2005; Yuping & Yang 2009)”. In the fight for getting new customers and transform them from occasionally clients into regular customers, Eagle Mobile has some good examples of succeeding their goals due to companies attempt of generating new customer’s attraction strategy. For example, an American firm, Case Design/ Remodelling, is a company which tried to find a way to increase repeat business the strategy. This is why Case Design/ Remodelling’s marketing directors created Case Dollars- a program that had known a real success (Professional Remodeler, Vol. 11 Issue 6). (Jun2007). This program was meant to reward all clients by offering them 5 percent of their actual project price as a reward that can be credited to other projects within one year. The only condition of this project consists in a 10% limit: the used bonus should not represent more than 10% from the total value of the new requested project (Professional Remodeler, Vol. 11 Issue 6). (Jun2007).

On the other hand Bronn (2008) proposes another method, much cheaper for customer retention- Public Relations. His study reveals that quality relationships and reputation mostly result from an organization's behavior than from corporate messages or attractive promotions or considerable discounts. Bronn (2008) is definitely convinced that PR’s positive results in marketing are attributed to the fact that customers and their satisfaction and loyalty have direct and sometimes immediate effects on a company's performance.

Furthermore, another research undertaken by Tsay (2008) suggests that appealing to intrinsic qualities of a customer is supposed to be a successful strategy, when developing a customer retention program. Tsay (2008) states that “Companies need to build loyalty based on intrinsic qualities before they can expect a reward to do any good”. The author of this research considers that Eagle Mobile appealed to customer intrinsic qualities when the company accepted to get involve in charity events .

Despite the huge effort that companies is putting in developing attractive programs in order to increase repeated purchase, Krass (2003), quoting AMR Research Inc suggests that 12 percent of all CRM implementations are failure. This is an aspect that Eagle Mobile should be aware of. Also another important aspect is underlined by Krass (2003), when the author indicates that only by understanding a customer’s loyalty, a company can respond appropriately.