ASSESSMENT OF MARKETING STRATEGY PRACTICES IN ETHIO TELECOM: FROM THE COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the marketing strategy practices of ethio telecom. It described how the marketing strategies were practiced in the company to achieve its goals aligned with target market, segmentation, positioning and the marketing mix to satisfy customer requirements. The research was carried out through the use of case study design employed by using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Both primary and secondary data collection instruments were used to collect data. Closed ended questionnaire survey along with interview was used for the purpose of data collection. The selections of the respondents were carried out by using purposive sampling technique because no other departments were concerned about marketing strategies and the researcher took all the respondents of marketing staffs as a total population of the study. The findings show that the company has identified its target market and used all the 4ps of marketing mix element in the marketing strategies. The price of the company’s product and service are affordable and easily understandable by customers. And its product and service availability and accessibility are good with the practices of both direct and indirect channel distribution strategy. On the other hand, the company’s market segmentation practice is enterprise customer only. Communication effectiveness between marketing department and other departments were poor. Promotionsactivities of the company suffer from lack of brand promotion and lack of employee know how in introducing the company’s product and service In addition there are some major problems that the company faced while implementing it. These are: ineffective communication, structure problem in the marketing division, lack of coordination and network quality problem. Based on these, it is recommended that ethio telecom should investigate its marketing strategy and revisit its current performance against the problem.