A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MARKETING STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY MOBILE PHONE OPERATORS.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: Telecommunication industry in Nigeria from inception has been the absolute monopoly of the federal government. At the initial stage of its development, it was meant to provide effective means of communication for the colonial administration. However after independence it became so obvious that telecommunication services be developed just after the colonial masters and the foreign trading companies thereafter however, it stated to be viewed as a social service necessary to augment government development effort by providing faster and efficient  means of communication to areas faraway from the centre of administration, commerce and industry.

Nowadays, communication does not only enhance mutual understanding and social integration of disperse communities but also foster harmonious relationship which contributed immensely to the overall socio-economic, political as well as cultural development of human society. MTN industry in Nig

eria is currently undergoing transformation due to the deregulation of policy that has been implemented since the advert of Obasanjo administration. At the moment, there are numerous telephone service providers in Nigeria that are competitor with “MTN” this consists of MTN Nigeria, Zain (celtel) wireless, Globacom, Reltel, Visafone, Etisalat etc. they provide effective mobile phone service for local and international calls. MTN has bean regarded as the most known network in the market today after consulting some consumers of other network.

Consequently this new trend give rise to service commitment of huge financial resources into the marketing activities of  service provider generated in Nigeria. A good marketing programme will enable the company to achieve its operating objective faster.

In this study the researcher makes an attempt to evaluate the marketing strategies in the company’s marketing activities in the area covered by this study.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM: The marketing strategies being used by (MTN Nigeria) is been challenged by myriads of problems which includes poor network services, drop calls, loading of vouchers and checking of balance problems in the billing system, resulting to the increase in customer complaints, challenges posed by competitors and the general down turn in the economy.

Consequently, evaluating the marketing strategies of  (MTN Nigeria) in which information was sourced from the (marketing manager) of MTN Nigeria (David Ibgun), it is denoted that MTN has their problems just as other networks have their problems, so far they have been trying

to see how possible it is to eradicate this problems, but being that communication is a large business to run it might be very difficult to eradicate but rather they can minimize this problems.