*** Pricing ****
Maurice
I have taken it upon myself to argue some points to try to create some balance to what I must say is a very entertaining, and mostly correct, case you have presented on your favourite topic.
Firstly: Marketing
This airy fairy, b...s..t discipline is just that, I agree, but it is the source of success of the worlds biggest company (dare I mention the evil name M..s..t). Their products were never that shit hot, and never innovative, nor was their pricing the key, they just marketed and sold their stuff really well.
Marketing is also alive and well in the wireless industry, it just looks a bit different. What is Caller-ID, really? It is zero cost b...s..t "value added" service that gives the user something to play with, while he is going about using his phone for making and receiving calls. What does it cost the SP? Approximately 10^-78 cents/call I think? This is marketing isn't it. And they will cotinue to come up with new "hair-brained" pricing-schemes and services and will suck more "stupid" users into paying whatever more for one service than another.
Is there anyone else out there that has been a Sales Rep? I was one just a few years ago and the number one rule is: "at least fifty percent of the time, customers will make their purchasing decisions, based on non-rational, emotional, personal, or whatever reasons other than the real issues". This is where marketing and sales, can really have an effect. I think your philosophy gives the consumer far too much credit for being a rational being (!), present company excluded of course!
This brings me to ***P......g**, assuming (!!) that we catch one of those wonderfully educated and rational beings and put them on a leash so they can't get away, we can do some experiments on them. Here he is with his Vodaphone powered Nokia 6110 (no G* sorry, just to keep it simple). He want to make a call and the screen says $7.00/min. Sh...t he says, that's so expensive, but damn it, I really need to make that call, and so he does. This happens to him a few times and then he gets a few good rates and on goes the story. The whole time he is wondering whether he is actually getting a good deal or whether he is subsidising Vodaphone for their inadequate network capacity. So he approaches The "Other" GSM SP in his town (hopefully one exists, I know there's none in my home town)........
Now the b..s..t really starts: "Well sir, given the statistical (!) anyalsis of your call frequency, length and times, and given that you are male, under 150 lbs and your wife has blond hair, we can very accurately predict that your average call cost with us would be much lower than with Vodaphone.".........I don't think I need to continue here as you can see the disaster coming.
The only real way would be for at least 3 SP, offering the "same" (and I am sure the marketing guys will have a word or two to say about that little statement) service to all agree to dynamically list their respective call costs on the users phone and he makes his pick at the time and for each call. Then he gets three bills (but, but the marketing guy says, our payment options and the way we print our bills is so much better than XYZ SP!!)
Anyway, my point is: Listing call cost on the screen: Only of benefit if there is competition and that is such an incredibly difficult and political (oh no don't go there) task that it'll be a while yet! Even when we are there, marketing will continue to be one of those leachy (lawyer like, but no offence to anyone) disciplines that man-kind has created and now he has to live with them.
Regards
Oliver |
