Entry strategies for paging services industry

Abstract

The paging industry in India is one of the emerging industries that have emerged in the country in the wake of liberalization. The telecom privatization progress started with the aim of providing universal access to modern telecommunication services, has been the precursor of many an important change in the Indian telecom sector. The most significant of these is obviously opening the paging, cellular and the basic telephone services to private operators. This move and the subsequent entry of multinational players such as AT & T, Motorola, Korea telecom and Shinawatra International have made the study of these emerging industries imperative for study from the point of view of competitive strategy. The paging services industry in India consists of Indian service providers in collaboration with foreign equipment manufacturers. The two most significant features of the industry are that it is a regulated industry in aspects such as the number of competitors allowed to operate the services, the tariffs that can be charged, and the conditions for the entry and secondly the ignorance of the consumer about the product and the need it satisfies. Under these conditions, of importance is the ability to differentiate the services being offered. The right selection of point of entry and the strategy followed at entry is also equally important. The paging industry in India has seen the players adopt different kinds of product or (services) positioning strategies for differentiating the service. All of them have gone in for extensive consumer education followed by strong marketing skills to increase the penetration of the product. Another point to take note of is the dependence of the service provider on the equipment provider. The learnings from the paging industry that are applicable to the emerging industries of the future (technology was driven and regulated) are the linkages between the service provider and the technology supplier. Another important learning is the consumer focus that is essential in this industry. Whereas the idea of consumer, focus enjoys almost universal applicability, what makes it important here is the absolute at the lack of differentiators to the consumer. This necessitates an added stress on consumer servicing on the part of the players.