GSBS6005 Marketing Management & Planning Online Tutoring

1.0)            Introduction

Optus is a company owned by the Singapore telecom company, and It started in Australia in 1991. Optus provides products and services serve personal as well as the business consumer. Optus is the second largest telecommunication company in Australia, offering a variety of communication services such as mobile, long-distance and national services, local and global telephony, internet, satellite, and business network services (Optus, 2017). Others include TV subscriptions and services for digital media.

The report focuses on Optus as a brand , and looks in its marketing ,competitions, strategies and external factors that affect the performance of the company. The main aim of the report is to find out where Optus currently stands and how/what can be done based on the findings in order to improve the brands performance

2.0)            Market Situation

2.1)           Overview: 

Optus employees are more than 8,000 in Australia (Optus sustainability report,2019). Optus delivers to more than 10 million customers A broad Telecommunications Spectrum Products and services which include: mobile and mobile Fixed-line telephony services; Broadband; Multimedia and entertainment Services; satellite services; and joint venture Applications and solutions in Telecommunications (Optus sustainability report,2019). The network Optus 4G offers coverage for 97.2% of the Australian population, and Its 5G network recently launched (Optus sustainability report,2019).

2.2)           Target Market:

According to (O’Sullivan, P as cited in Ramli, 2014) The 12 million customers living in Australia are his next big target, and SingTel Optus can keep losing revenue over a short period to raise customers. (O’Sullivan, P as cited in Ramli, 2014) state that rural and regional customers are around 40 per cent of the more than 30.2 million mobile subscribers around Australia and they planned to cover them by wide. Optus offers different products. For example, in General services, the company provides electronics products and internet packages and communications and entertainment subscriptions. In Enterprise Services, cloud-led services, applications, security, and information and communications technology are contributing to the centres of cooperation and communication for organizations through smart and secure network backs. In contrast, in Business services, the company offers communications solutions for small and medium businesses. According to Singtel annual report (2019). As consumers’ lives become digital, the connection with other devices and service is essential. Optus has experience in digital services, access to mobile financial services and rich entertainment content.

2.3)           Size, Growth and Market Share in Australia: 

Optus is the second largest communicate company in Australia. During the quarter to June 30, Optus announced adding 32,000 National Broadband Network (NBN) subscribers (Reichert, 2018). The company reached at 488,000 customers 211,000 more than this time last year (Reichert, 2018). Despite this, Optus’ fixed service revenues remained stagnant due to NBN’s hybrid fibre-coaxial cease-sale, with overall mass market fixed operating revenues of AU$340 million as the voice fell 14.4% to AU$76 million and Broadband has decreased by 15.7% to AU$95 million (Reichert, 2018). Furthermore, pay-TV increased by 6.7% to AU$29 million. Operating revenue in the entire market sector rose by 5.4 per cent to AU$1.8 billion due to a 7.9 per cent increase in mobile sales to AU$1.3 billion. At the end of the period, mobile customers numbered 10.2 million — 5.3 million for postpaid, 3.7 million for prepaid and 1.1 million for mobile Broadband — after adding 407,000 over the past year (Reichert, 2018). The average prepaid revenue per user ( ARPU) fell over the year from AU$20 to AU$19 a month, while postpaid ARPU fell from AU$44 to AU$42 and mobile Broadband increased from AU$21 to AU$22 (Reichert, 2018). Optus has not revealed its mobile market share in Australia but said its 4 G network now covers 96.9 per cent of the population, with 6,895 of its mobile sites upgraded to 4 G and 5,800 of those upgraded to 700MHz (Reichert, 2018). (Optus CEO Allen Lew as cited in Reichert, C. 2018) state that “We increased our investments in networks technology and content to create sustainable competitive advantages and positive customer growth in this quarter. Football continues to be essential of Optus content strategy. We continue to focus on being the home of the international soccer elite in Australia”. “the plans are well advanced to the start of 5G in early 2019 because of With our leadership in network, technology capability” (Optus CEO Allen Lew as cited in Reichert, C. 2018). Optus has announced operating income across the business up 6.6% to AU$386 million, with IT and managed services up 17.6% to AU$173 million; mobile up 11% to AU$72 Million (Reichert, 2018). Data and IP down 1.5% to AU$78 million and voice down 10.8% to AU$64 million (Reichert, 2018). The positive result was because of improvement in IT and managed services to “continued growth in cybersecurity, cloud, and unified communications revenues (Reichert, 2018).

3.0)            Market Mix Strategy Analysis                                                     

3.1)           Product:

The company has a stylish icon to attract the young generation, and the mix of products is mobile devices and Broadband and NBN and a different plan for a call and network use and entertainment products. Fixed broadband products, the customers on its network, was on 1.2 million customers and the users have change HFC and ADSL products across to NBN products (Duckett,2019). In mobile, income increased for the 2019 year to AU$6 billion, 10%. Because of the number of mobile subscribers raise by 1.7% to 10.3 million (Duckett,2019). With that number, Optus now has 6.7 million 4G customers, representing a 6% spike. During the year, Optus starts rolling out its 5G Home Broadband product, which provides unlimited data with 50Mbps speed for AU$70 monthly (Duckett,2019). The telco uses a mixture of Nokia and Ericsson kit for the build and plans to have 1,200 5G mobile sites work by March 2020 across most of Australia (Duckett,2019).

3.2)           Price:

Optus pricing generally is slightly lower than Telstra due to the marketing target. Canstar Blue (2019) state that Telstra’s least expensive is at $50 with 15GB of data, But Optus’ least pricey is estimate at $39 with 10GB of data. Also, Telstra’s $100 plan incorporates 150GB of data, while Optus has a $79 policy with 120GB of data. Optus can create a personal postpaid plan with the data choices beginning at 10GB and going up to 150GB. Optus mobile plans for MVNO partners provide vast amounts of data at attractive prices. Mobile plans engineered to fit the MVNO consumer base. Also, Optus offers attractive deals with different products. According to Canstar Blue (2019) prepaid phone plan to choose from around $10 up to around $100 or more per billing period provided by Optus. Prepaid is an simple and tedious way to get free credit Optus provides long expiry prepaid plans and standard shorter-term plans. With varying amounts of data. Optus prepaid plans generally offer more data, and long-expiry options are available — making Optus a great flexibility choice (Canstar Blue, 2019).

3.3)           Place:

Optus has 352 stores across Australia to provide sales and customer service (Optus Sustainability Reporting, 2018). The stores have an attractive style and function.

   (Optus media centre, n,d).

Also, Optus sales their products through third-party distribution channels but in 2012 Optus decided to reduce these channels and serve their customer to take greater control of the ultimate customer experience under the Optus brand (Optus, 2012). online sales become extremally popular in recent years. Optus has an application called (My Optus app) helps the customer to recharge plan and change it and subscribe to entertainment products and aid customers to solve service issues. In fact, in the mother company, 25% of all consumer sales transactions are done online (SINGTEL GROUP SUSTAINABILITY REPORT, 2019). Also, there are limited products can sell by supermarkets like SIM card. The place strategy of Optus can work as an advertising tool because the company choose a popular place in the main cities.