Introduction
Etisalat is one of the major distributors of the various telecommunication services not only in the UAE and in the Middle East but also in Northern Africa and throughout Asia. The full title of the company is Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, its headquarters are situated in the UAE, and, at the moment, it appears to provide more than a half of all the telecommunication, mobile, and Internet services in the Middle East (Etisalat Company Profile 2016).
It is also important to underline the fact that Etisalat is recognized as one of the world’s most profitable telecommunication companies with revenues of 48.8 billion dirhams (Etisalat Company Profile 2016). Such success of the company implies the effectiveness of Etisalat’s entrepreneurial strategies. The company has ensured its share of the market due to efficient strategic management and decision-making. For that reason, it is important to define its entrepreneurial marketing strategies. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyze the entrepreneurial pricing decision, the company’s public relations and publicity, and entrepreneurial distribution channel decisions.
Entrepreneurial Pricing Decisions
There are several factors affecting pricing decisions. They can be categorized as the generalized set of factors typical for any market, as well as the factors that depend on the specifics of a certain market or company. In terms of the general factors, several aspects are considered for any company and any product, including “return on investment, cash flow, maximizing profits, fixed costs, and variable costs” (Haron 2016, para. 8). In other words, the initial objective of any entrepreneurial decision in the process of setting prices is to make the maximum profits.
Because Etisalat today is the leading firm in the region, the company has a little less pressure in terms of financial risks if it introduces new products or services. However, there are still some risks to consider that are external, specific for the company or the market, in which it operates. In 2015, Etisalat introduced UAE Wi-Fi by Etisalat, a major project on public access to the Internet. It was important for the company to consider such external factors as the customers’ expectations and elasticity of the demand (Haron 2016). The company introduced a high-performance public Wi-Fi network across the UAE, using first-class technologies. It offered the customers the subscriptions for the Wi-Fi packages for two and ten days and for the price of 25 dirhams and 100 dirhams respectively (Etisalat launches free high-speed Wi-Fi 2015).
The pricing decision had several antecedents. First of all, given the fact that Etisalat covers the biggest share of the telecommunication market, the pricing decision about the project used the elasticity of the market to decrease the number of competitors by using the technology they cannot afford. Secondly, the high speed of the Internet guaranteed due to the fiber-optical network met the customers’ demands.
Public Relations and Publicity
The public relations play an especially significant role for the companies like Etisalat because, on one hand, each of the markets they enter needs an individual approach, but, on the other hand, those markets can be interdependent in terms of publicity (Kirat 2006). Hence, public relations, it is important not only to design a certain project and a marketing campaign for it but also to have some integrity and conceptual meaning to the new product or service.
For example, UAE Wi-Fi by Etisalat incorporated the perspective of the further developments, including the constant upgrades of the quality of the using social and video streaming through the public Wi-Fi, as well as the inclusion of more public locations of various kinds to have Wi-Fi by Etisalat (George-Cosh 2011). Such an approach appeals to the public and shows that the company interacts with its customers by constantly trying to improve the services and to find the locations where the users would like to have Wi-Fi by Etisalat.
Entrepreneurial Distribution Channel Decisions
In the situation of making an entrepreneurial decision concerning the distribution channels, there are two main strategies of either vertical or horizontal integration (Hollensen 2007). In theory, the concept of vertical integration includes the attempts to find the channels for distribution at the different levels of the production service within the same industry, whereas the horizontal one is aimed at finding assets at the same level of production. Of course, in the actual business context, the entrepreneurial decisions include some compromises between the two models of integration into the market because each of the new markets is quite different. Therefore, in the UAE and especially during the execution of the UAE Wi-Fi by Etisalat, the company acts at all levels of distribution, but when entering new markets, it can be more cooperative and use other channels of distribution because such approach makes Etisalat more adjustable.
Conclusion
Overall, Etisalat has ensured a share of the market for itself due to efficient strategic management and decision-making. From the example of UAE Wi-Fi by Etisalat, it is clear that the main assets of the company’s strategy often are pricing decisions, public relations, and distribution channels decisions.
Reference List
Etisalat Company Profile 2016. Web.
‘Etisalat Launches Free High-Speed Wi-Fi’ 2015, Gulf News. Web.
George-Cosh, D 2011, ‘Etisalat to Wire in $15bn Network Upgrade’, The National. Web.
Haron, AJ 2016, Factors Influencing Pricing Decisions. Web.
Hollensen, S 2007, Global Marketing: A Decision-oriented Approach, Pearson Education, New York. Web.
Kirat, M 2006, ‘Public relations in the United Arab Emirates: The emergence of a profession’, Public Relations Review, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 254-260. Web.