Business studies course work

T-Mobile cell phone users from the southern states of America before 2002 will remember the company used to be called VoiceStream Wireless. T-Mobile is based in Bellevue, Washington and the company is owned by the bigger mobile phone company Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile is one of the fastest growing nationwide mobile service providers, offering all services to more than 20 million customers in the United States. By the middle of 2005, approximately 80 million customers were served by T-Mobile markets in Europe and the United States, making it one of the top three global wireless carriers.

T-Mobile is the world’s second biggest international mobile telecoms brand, operating in European markets as well as the United States. The business is also one of the world’s leading developers of mobile internet. The company sponsors athletes, researchers, students, artists, educationand healthcare institutions as well as those in need. The aim of my course work is to recommend to T-Mobile how its present marketing mix may be developed in the competitiveenvironmentof mobile communications. I will do this by using a questionnaire to find out what the public thinks is the most important marketing mix.

I will put the data from the questionnaire into graphs and then I will analyse the information. By using the information that I analysed I will suggest recommendations that T mobile could use in order to make their marketing mix better so they make a larger profit. There are seven different types of pricing that can be used by businesses. T-mobile uses several different methods of pricing. This is so they can target different customers and get people to actually buy their products. The main method they use is Competitor pricing. This is when their prices are very similar to that of their competitors.

T-mobile has many strong competitors; some of these are Vodafone and Orange. T-mobile has to make sure that they are not charging a lot more then these other companies but they also must charge enough to make a profit. Another method they use is Differential pricing. This is when they offer different prices for the same product depending on who the customers are. So they may change the price for businessmen who use their phone a lot to phone a few numbers, or they may give free texts to students. Another main pricing method is psychological pricing.

This is when the businesses charges instead of 10 they charge  9. 99. The business almost tricks the customer that they are paying less so it is ok to buy the product. This system is to try to attract the customers as they may think that they are gettingmoneyof their product. This might not be that successful as people very often round the price up so they call it i?? 10 any way but it still can increase sales. T-mobile uses this method for most if not all of their products as you can see in the example below. Another method of pricing is Skimming.

Businesses use this type of pricing when they bring out a new product, with a newtechnology. An example of this is T-mobile is one of the leading companies in internet phones. This means that they can charge a higher price then other companies for those phones. As they are the leading brand they will be able to charge a higher price then other companies. These different types of pricing are some of the ways T-mobile manages to increase their sales. They manage to compete with other brands, target different people, and manages to convince people that they are spending less then they actually are.

Promotion Every business in the world needs promotion, T-mobile has many different types of promotion just like their competitors and if they want to be part of the worldwide group of mobile companies they need very good promotion. T-mobile needs to inform customers about their products and try to convince the customers that they want to buy the product and not to buy it from another company. There are four methods of promotion and T-mobile uses all four methods to promote their products.

The four methods are sales promotion, public relations, sponsorship and advertising. Sales promotion is used by T-mobile it consists of many different methods and T- mobile uses price reduction, and gifts. Price reductions are mostly used when a new product comes out and the company wants to get rid of the old product quickly so they sell it at a low price. It is also used after Christmas or at the start of the New Year. This is also when the company wants to get rid of last year’s product so they sell it off at a lower price.

T-mobile also uses the method of gifts; this is when the company gives something for free when the customer buys a product or spends so much. It is often used before Christmas, Simply top up a minimum of i?? 10 per month Here if the customer pays ten pounds a month they get free texts as a gift. This is good promotion as they will remember that they got a good deal with T-mobile so they may recommend it to friends and may use it themselves again. The main problem with this type of promotion is that it costs the business lots of money which they have to make another way.

Public Relations are another method that T-mobile uses to promote their products. Public Relations is usually free which is a big difference from the other types of promotion, such as free gifts as they cost the business a lot of money. Public Relations are in charge giving stories to newspapers and magazines about the company that the public may be interested in. This could be something like a famous person being involved in the company. It is a fraction of the cost as compared to the price of anadvertisement.

T-mobile also uses sponsorship as a type of promotion, The company sponsors athletes, researchers, students, artists, education and healthcare institutions as well as those in need. Sponsorship is becoming more important for businesses; this is because as more things are shown on television there is a bigger opportunity to the product name shown to a wider audience. Advertising is the biggest type of promotion and it is the one that most people think of as being the most important. T-mobile uses advertising to help promote their products. Their internet site is their main source of advertising.