T-Mobile is the name for the subsidiary companies operating under a parent telecommunication company, Deutsche Telekom AG. T-Mobile is present in a number of countries including Poland, Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic and the United States (Kalb, Schwartz & Buscher, 2012). Founded in December 1999, T-Mobile has continued to thrive in the market by keeping their products relevant to the ever-changing telecommunications business dynamics. Particularly, T-Mobile subscribers have gradually increased in number with the 2017 statistics indicating a total of 72.6 Million subscribers. This is a great transition because, in the 2012 financial year, the company stood at 33.4 million subscribers (T-Mobile, 2018). Again, with the recent stewardship of the current Chief Executive Officer, John Legere, the company has profoundly transformed into making huge revenue margins. This study focuses on demystifying the strategies behind the multinational’s marketing and how the CEO’s leadership style blends with their notable success.
Marketing is about how a product attains an appropriate price and is channeled to the right place in the market through promotion. This is to specify the 4P’s of marketing; price, product, promotion and place as pivotal points in assessing the market and achieving the desired outcomes at every stage of the model. T-Mobile has utilized product design to exemplify their brand against the competitors. Just like Verizon, Sprint and AT&T, the company deals with data, call and text plans designed to fit different segments of consumers (Malhotra & Kubowicz Malhotra, 2013). They recently developed a subscription plan for the military personnel, which has unique features to fit the military servicemen and veterans. Some customer focus on the plan is stipulated in the ability of the military men to communicate with their loved ones while inflight at missions abroad. This is a product designed from a user experience outlook because it specifies the problem gap that other competitors have not yet realized. It is indisputable that any military man will go for that product specifically because it is designed to solve the problem of their mobility and deployment trends. Additionally, T-Mobile stands out with their pink color branding. The pink color selection defines how the company is nonconformance to the norm, but a haven for innovation.
After designing products that appeal to their customers, the company blends their plans with affordable prices. T-Mobile prices are subsidized to fit the consumer, and this has been the apparent reason for the increased subscribers. This phenomenal influx has destabilized the domination of the competitor company’s. Moving on, T-Mobile positions their sales and service points at strategic places. From retail stores, websites, best buy, Radioshack store among other international outlets, the brand has attracted more receptions from customers without forgetting their pink color branding is conspicuous to customers’ eyes. Finally, promotion methods adopted by T-Mobile have projected change, especially with the Legere’s rollout of the “Uncarrier Movement” to set free the customers from 2-year contractual terms (Yelton, 2016). Competitor companies like Sprint and Verizon have since followed to scrap their contractual terms as well. Also, T-Mobile has promotion techniques such as data rollovers, charge-free music streaming.
Undoubtedly, T-Mobile is gaining competitive advantage from marketing strategies discussed above by integrating the consumer needs in the products they design. This is consequential from tremendous market research. By tracking customer trends, the organization can predict better trends to follow, which is essential for marketing strategies. The telecommunications industry is quite structured differently as customers flow in one direction probably because most people use a single communication line (Gensler et al., 2013). So an up trending market is a perfect representation of how customers prefer the brand. This will place the company in a competitive trend for a while.
T-mobiles marketing strategies are a success contributed to by the leadership of the CEO John Legere. Legere is a complete part of the company since he consistently makes sure he walks the brand. The leader rarely puts on unbranded T-shirts. He walks the T-Mobile brands and logos everywhere he goes. This defines passion and dedication. Also, the brand leader has amassed a big following on social media. He has more than 2.8 million, 43000, and 27000 followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram respectively (Rosenberger, 2017). This is a corporate marketing strategy as people can converse with him more often. Also, the leader is bright, outspoken and possesses integrity virtues of executing market plans. By consistently being part of problem-solving with his employees and the enterprise stakeholders, the leader is able to solicit effective market strategies which turn out to work accordingly.
Other vivid personas of the executive are his concern for customers. He has consolidated social media community made up of T-Mobile users, non-users, fans and the general public through a Sunday routine live video streaming with a hashtag “SlowCookerSunday.” While carrying on with the recipe preparation, viewers can connect with him at a personal level while simultaneously drawing more attention to the T-Mobile apron he is usually on. These leadership qualities invoke customers’ attention and keen observation of the T-Mobile brand and their affordability turns around customer perception and they get to try the brand.
The looming merger between T-Mobile and Sprint will be a formidable business move to improve their brand marketability. Apart from broadening the customer base, both organizations will form a bigger capital source through increased stakeholders. This will position the consolidated entity stronger to stand against the competitive Verizon and AT&T enterprises. In a business partnerships perspective, a merger benefits mostly the organizations that have equal business strengths to duplicate their abilities. T-Mobile expects complete retention of the customer base by giving them more confidence in their competence and relevance in the market.
Conclusively, T-Mobile Telecommunication Company has optimized on their marketing strategies in respect to the product they deliver to the customers, the price they embed on their products is subsidized to fit the customers need by specializing on customer segments, and the products that fit their dynamics. Promotion is essential to distribute products and services. T-Mobile blends a customer-oriented promotion plan which keeps them close and loyal to the brand. Again, the places of executing services are in accurate proximity with the consumer’s making the brand accessible for everyone. More importantly, John Legere’s leadership style of resilience, handwork, determination, and customer-focus has effectively influenced the brand recognition, especially when people associate it with the leader’s ability to mingle and socialize on different platforms.
- Cell Phones | 4G Phones | iPhone and Android Phones | T-Mobile. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.t-mobile.com/
- Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C. (2013). Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of interactive marketing, 27(4), 242-256.
- Kalb, K. J., Schwartz, M. H., & Buscher, T. H. (2012). U.S. Patent No. 8,090,613. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
- Malhotra, A., & Kubowicz Malhotra, C. (2013). Exploring switching behavior of US mobile service customers. Journal of Services Marketing, 27(1), 13-24.
- Rosenberger, B. (2017). CEO Brand Development: The Role of Executive Brand Motivation. In CEO Branding (pp. 65-84). Routledge.
- Yelton, A. (2016). Who are smartphone users?. Library Technology Reports, 48(1), 5-8.
