As per the scenario of this project, it is required for an organisation to evaluate the requirement of strategical, tactical and operational practices for their business. These practices will assist to support strategic direction of a firm in order to attain its target objectives and goals.
• Provide a clear explanation of how external environmental factor affect business strategies of Telecommunication Sector (Virgin Mobile).
• Evaluate internal environment and its capabilities in the context of Virgin mobile.
• Determine the market competitiveness of telecommunication industry of UK.
• Clearly evaluate and analyze available strategic options and direction for Virgin mobile.
INTRODUCTION
Virgin Mobile is a well known part of Virgin Group Limited, which was founded by Sir Richard Branson. It was known to be first virtual Network operator which is a joint venture of Virgin groups and T-Mobile. They tried to follow niche marketing and targeted those consumers which were between the age group of 18-35 years. They promoted themselves by creating various attractive advertisements and opening attractive outlets. They firstly focused o the prepaid customers and then started including post paid customers also. To evaluate their performance company has to perform various analysis such as PESTLE, determination of strength and weakness etc. for the macro environment which are discussed in this report. This report has also covered the strategic capabilities of the company which has lead them to sustain in the market economy and helping them to earn profits. Also the Bowman clock strategy of the company has been depicted in which the firm uses the differentiation strategy that has helped them to create a sense of different image in the mindset of a customers which provide them a break even point (Armstrong and et.al., 2015). Also go through the sample of "How business operates" and also "Business Strategy Telecommunications"
TASK 1
1. PESTLE model for Virgin Mobile
Political Factors
These are policies which are ruled by the government or some political groups in an area. For example, degree of intervening of various political groups in a country's economy, good and services which governing bodies are promoting, level of subsidiaries provided to different firms, tax policies, tariffs and restrictions in trade ,environmental law and stability of political scenario. Virgin Mobile is focused on the prepaid customers; it has enjoyed benefits related to mobile subsidies. Many suitable regulations applied by the government have helped to increase the profitability of company.
Economic Factors
Identification of various movements like interest rates, inflation, disposable income, exchange rates in an economy isidentified through macro-economic analysis, which can have an immense impact. Virgin mobile has already enjoyed the large consumer basin the particular phase of time. They grabbed the opportunity of increasing the customer for the pre pay segment by providing them offers such as simplified tariff structure which was cheaper, as compared to other operators in UK.
Social factors
Macro social and cultural environment identifies various trends in values in society, beliefs, norms and behaviour. It also considers about its effect on the firm due to societal factors such as age distribution , emphasis on safety aspects, rate of population growth , career attitudes etc. GSM mobile set products were having a great sale and it was increasing rapidly which had a great impact on the mobile handset usage and prevalence related to it. You may also refer to this business enviroment sample
Technological factors
The analysis in the aspect of technological factor changes the way of application of certain technologies in the industry. In the current scenario, there is a tremendous change in the technology and industries are changing their strategies accordingly. It has a direct impact on the reduction of cost and has features which are innovative along with certain offerings, resulting in improving the quality of services. Virgin Mobile is the first company which has provided free voice mail services to their customer (Cascio, 2018).
Legal Factors
This factor is related to the legal rules and regulation of a nation through which it operates. Legal factor has the ability to affect consumer law, laws related to competition, employment laws and legislation related to health and safety. These changes can affect the operations and strategies of Virgin mobile and is considered to be one of the critical factors. These laws shall be predicted earlier so that one can tackle their effects on the company.
Environmental factor
Environmental factor is related with the analysis of climatic al and weather changes. With any change in the climate due to factors which has a direct or indirect result such as pollution and global warming. These are regarded as key factors that influence the working of Virgin Mobile. Virgin mobile has taken certain actions to minimise these impacts of their marketing activities directly on the surroundings. Activities such as marketing and communication are needed to be sustainable for achieving great success in economics as well as environmental terms
2.Ansoff's Vector matrix of Virgin Mobile
The Ansoff matrix defines the strategies which are related to the choices of product and market that are available to Virgin Mobile. In markets, it can be related to the customers and their services which are sold to them. It helps to examine every strategy which can be beneficial to organisation and help them to sustain in market by providing a great competition to the competitors mainly EE and Vodafone. It helps them to reduce the gap between where they are operating and the strategies which are being developed for the effective selling of their services where choices or strategies are define as the particular processes which are selected for implementation against some changes in the marketing atmosphere (Utami, 2017).
This matrix is mainly used by the marketing department ofany company for increasing sales among customers. It is further used in marketing audits of Virgin Mobile .It provides four possible combinations of marketing strategies to the specialists, which is as follows: market penetration, market development, product development and diversification. These combinations are used by the marketers of the company fir increasing their growth in the market and creating a competitive advantage
Market Penetration
Market penetration is done with the existing product in the particular market in order to increase the company's share in the market. This strategy possesses minimum risk as the firm has to focus on strategies only that would result in increas
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