Premium
Mobile Services: The price and package isn't right.
London
December 2, 2004 - 80% of mobile users are still not buying
premium mobile services, according to a recent UK
survey commissioned by Highdeal*, leading provider of pricing,
rating and settlement solutions. The ICM survey conducted
in November 2004 suggests UK operators have failed to convince
mobile users to buy additional premium services.
Although
operators are offering increasing numbers of new services (e.g.
video telephony, MMS, mobile email), the research indicates
there is still low demand for these services. In fact, the
majority of the 20% willing to purchase premium services were
only prepared to spend an additional 5 pounds per month. However,
there is encouraging uptake among younger mobile users (16 - 24yrs),
with a third showing an increased willingness to spend as much
as 10% more for premium services.
The
findings raise questions about how premium services are marketed.
Isabelle Roussin, VP Marketing & Solutions, Highdeal said: "Telecoms
is fast evolving into a retail style industry - think Fast
Moving Communications Goods, if you like. It's not about what
you sell; but how and who you sell it to and really knowing
your customers' buying attitudes in order to build refined
pricing models and accurate segmented customer buying profiles - this
is not currently a widespread practice in telecoms."
Roussin
continues, "Operators don't hold centralised customer
life cycle information because this data is being fragmented
in legacy silo systems. So they don't know their customers'
buying behaviour well enough to correctly price and develop
customised bundled services. These new services are not only
many and varied but are also consumed in a number of different
ways, and this needs to be reflected in personalised pricing
structures. This is where rating is integral in determining
accurate pricing for any given service and user offers. More
over, rating allows a new way for charges to be set for interconnect
roaming data, which is advantageous for the customer. We won't
see significant changes in the 80% until these systems are
sorted out."
About
Highdeal
Highdeal
is the leading provider of pricing, high-performance rating
and settlement solutions for emerging on-line and mobile services.
Highdeal enables companies offering these services to create
and implement successful pricing strategies in dynamic market
environments. With over 100 implementations in more than 40
countries, companies around the world rely on Highdeal for
their pricing and rating needs. Please visit www.highdeal.com .
About
ICM
ICM is a full-service consultancy that specialises in
behavioural & opinion research and analysis for telecoms
sector clients. ICM has a wide range of experience in all mainstream
research techniques - both quantitative and qualitative. http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/specialist_areas/telecoms.asp
*
The survey was conducted by ICM in November 2004. 1042 people
(16-65 yrs+) were polled from varying social classes throughout
the UK
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