Analysis Of Reliance Jio's Marketing Strategies

The marketing plan is to be based on a company (Reliance Jio) of your choice. You are expected to analyse the current market conditions, target market, marketing mix and then formulate recommendations.  

It is suggested that you do NOT choose successful multinationals such as McDonald’s, Apple, Sony, Nike etc. Instead select a company that has a product or service that is a fairly new introduction into the marketplace OR is in the decline stage of the product life cycle.

Reliance Jio Limited is a subsidiary organization of the Reliance industries limited which is actually the largest private sector organization in the nation of India. It can be considered as the first telecom service, which had been able to hold pan India unified License. This license had allowed the organization to provide all telecommunication services that include mobile personal communication (Satyanarayan et al., 2017).

Reliance Jio had been able to capture the fast growing digital audience of the nation with about 800 million mobile connections as well as 200 million internet users. Reliance thoroughly believes in the potential of India to lead the world with its capabilities in innovation. Therefore, researchers are of the opinion that Reliance had successfully envisaged creation of a digital revolution in the nation.

Reliance Jio had already aimed in enabling transformation by creating not just a cutting edge voice and a broadband network but also a powerful ecosystem on which a range of such digital services are enabled this is referred to as the unique green field opportunity (Kalyani, 2016).

Jio had been successful in creating integrated business strategies, which were mainly based on three important focuses. These are the affordable smart phones, broadband networks, as well as the availability of the rich content and applications. Jio had now become a successful as well as unique combination of telecom, digital commerce, high-speed data, media as well as payment services. Reliance Jio had thereby promised to shape the future of the nation by providing it with end-to-end digital solutions for the businesses, institutions as well as households. It had tried to bridge the rural-urban divide by its affordable services and schemes seamlessly (Jio, 2018).

This assignment would thereby highlight the target markets as well as the positioning of the brand in the nation. It would also shed more light on the marketing mix concept and would discuss in details about product, place, price, people, promotion, physical evidence, processes and partnership.

STP stands for Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. This can be explained as the three-step marketing that includes effective implementation of each of the step successfully. This gradually leads to a step close towards the company goals. This mainly includes finding the correct set of customers as well as focusing on them and thereby creating a perception of the own brand in the views of the consumer that have positive impact on the loyalty towards the brand.

STP: Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Studies are of the opinion that every organizations need to decide on the segment that it will focus its activities. This needs to be based on five important factors, which are segment size, segment growth, segment profitability, current as well as potential competitors and even different types of capabilities present in the market. Jio had been able to meet up most of the strategies as the 4G network in the nation had great potential for growths and profits (Chinthala et al., 2017). This aspect is found to be in the budding stage and therefore Jio has great chances or making most of it. The use of Smartphone in the nation is growing at an exponential rate and therefore, this had promised great benefits in the sector for Jio.

Once the target market has been been determined, it is important for the organizations to put more focus on the improvement of the campaign success by targeting the selected segment. Jio had used a great tactic for targeting the selected segment. From June to July, the organization was seen to provide unlimited high-speed internet on the 4G network and 4500 minutes for the first three months free. This had forced many of the consumers to but the Smartphone’s and the sim cards who wanted to enjoy the free services (Nair, 2017). The nation was already facing huge number of problems with the slow internet issues that created problems for internet downloads and other internet related functions. Therefore, it had satisfied the consumers who bought these sim cards and word of mouth publicity and god advertising resulted in more selling of the free sim cards and the free services. Therefore, even after the trail period had been over, the satisfaction received by the consumers had made them use the services with very affordable packs for three months. In this way, they had correctly targeted the mass with the proper strategy.

After the selection of the target market and devising and implementing the tools and techniques for targeting the segment, the next part is the positioning in the market. It mainly means how the consumers perceive the brand. Jio had positioned its smart phones depending on the prices and sales. Their strategy of providing free voice calls and high-speed internet had made it lead a different league than its competitors and therefore, it had been able to gain more popularity (Kulkarni & Vel, 2019). According to a leading daily of the nation, it had already served 50000 customers already in 2017 and had become the third leading smart phone in the nation.

Product Description

Product:

Reliance Jio is a network operator of mobiles. It is mainly seen to include 4G LTE wireless services. It is not seen to provide 2G or the 3g services and can be considered as the only service provider of VOLTE only services. It was also seen that Reliance Jio was the venture that had launched beta services to its different employees as well as partners for the first time on December 27^th, 2015. The company had been also seen to launch commercial services in the year 2016 on 5^th of September. On 25ths of January 2016, LYF smart phones were introduced which were named as water 1 and Water 2 as well as Flame 1 and Earth 1. On May 2016, different types of multimedia apps were also developed and were released on Google Play (Agarwal, 2017). They are seen to include different products that had attracted huge number of consumer due to its wide number of services. These include Wireless router – Jiofi, Wallet app – JioMoney Wallet, HD online video library – JioCinema,  Backup tool that is Cloud-based – JioDrive, Transfer content – JioSwitch, Magazine and news aggregator – JioXpress News, Music player – JioMusic, Instant-Messaging app – JioChat Messenger, Magazine e-reader – JioMags, TV channel live service – JioTV, Manage digital services and Jio account – MyJio, VoLTE phone-stimulator – Jio4GVoice.

Price: 

Jio had attemped to promote internet usage within the country. It had also tried to ensure that internet can be afforded by all people from all spheres of life. Therefore, it took an initiative of providing free of cost sim to all people against their Aadhar card number and unique mobile number identity. Jio was successful in selling 14 lakhs sim card only within the first few days of the launch Jio had also published reasonable pricing plans where the consumers are charged reasonably for the data consumption that they undertake (Kaur, 2018). Reliance Jio phones which include the LYF series were priced reasonably with a security deposit of 1500 that could be withdrawn by the user after the usage of the phones for three years. The devices were seen to start at very reasonable rate of Rs 2999 and Jiofi that are routers were priced as low as Rs 1999 which was revolutionary in the telecom industry in the nation.

Place:

Reliance Jio is an Indian company that has a Pan-Indian presence. It has its head quarters in the region of Navi Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra. Studies have provided data which have shown that it has a widespread and strong distribution channel. They are found to be the owner of the 1,800 MHz and 800 MHZ bands in 6 and 10 circles respectively amongst the total 22 circles which are prevalent in the nation. This organization is also found to be the owner of about 2300 MHZ spectrum that is licensed for the pan-India usage until the year 2035 (Kumar et al., 2018). It has also been seen to enter into deals with the Reliance communications for effective sharing of 800 MHZ in seven other circles, which are addition to the other, ten already owned by the organization. it has also come into a pact with BSNL for using intra-circle roaming facilities in the national roaming mode. The network is available across all the twenty two telecom sectors in the country which include several regions all over the nation. All major states and cities are covered under Jio services. It has already reached in 1800 cities and across more than two lakhs villages that gad covered the rural segments as well as besides the urban segments.

Place Description

Promotion:

Jio had been successful in promoting extensively and in a planned manner through various campaigns that cover social media, television, outdoor media publishing activities, print media and many others. Moreover, it had correctly targeted the population of the nation by involving very famous brand ambassadors for the promotion of the brands. They have included iconic stars like Shahrukh khan as well as Amitabh Bachchan (Singh, 2017). Therefore, due to extensive promotion in the urban as well as in the rural areas, the service and brand information had reached every corners of nation covering all urban, sub-urban and rural arenas. Hence, the promotion has led it to experience high levels of profits with huge amount of loyal customers.

People:  

Jio had focused on providing employees as well as customers a developed ecosystem that had let them leverage the digital life to the fullest in the nation. It has been found that the vast majority of the individuals who are working in the organization come from a socio-economic environment that is divers and dynamic. This helps them with an innovative working climate with different viewpoints and interesting strategies that help Jio to come up with innovative schemes and business plans (Rishi et al., 2018). Employees are treated with respect and are given full scopes for career development and growth that increases their job satisfaction. They are provided with respect and are given enough autonomy for leading processes the way they wish to.

Process:

Jio is seen to provide huge number of mobile applications besides providing regular service of 4G internet and voice calls over the nation. They are seen to develop interest mobile applications, which are free to download from the Google play-store but requires the Jio sim that the owner needs to possess. Some of the most popular examples are seen to include the JioMags, JioTV, JioChat Messenger, JioCinema, JioMusic, and many others. Jio-fi is another router based internet system that had been also launched in different selected parts of the country (Makalaxmi et al., 2017). This can be described as the Jio based Wi-fi services at homes and offices.

Partnership:

Jio shares spectrum with Reliance communications and has also signed a pact with BSNL. They had also announced partnership with Samsung as well. Jio payment bank had also established partnership with State bank of India.

Physical evidence:

Jio digital life campaign is promoted by reliance Jio so that they can attract the youth of the country with the broader vision. This vision includes the leadership of the country to develop in terms by the effective digitizing the Indian society. They are mainly aiming to attract the cohort of people belonging to the age groups of 18-35 years who are looking for enjoying fast internet services in the affordable prices (Gupta, 2017). Hence, this is seen to fulfil all the criteria for Reliance Jio to attain the successful marketing mix.

Price Description

Conclusion and recommendation:

Reliance Industries had successfully launched a very new venture called the reliance Jio that had created revolutionary modifications in the expectations of the consumers requiring telecommunication services. They have correctly devised their strategies of venturing the bidding phase of 4G services in the nation providing superfast internet services to the people of the nation. They had correctly reached to both rural and urban areas and had successfully developed affordable plans that can be used by all people from all–socioeconomic backgrounds. They had helped in overcoming the slow internet issues that India had suffered for long and had therefore developed a strong consumer loyalty base. However, other competitors like Airtel India and Vodafone are trying their best to keep parity with the services that Jio is providing. Hence, it might happen that the loyal consumer base might get distributed to other competitors if they cannot continue to release innovative plans and interesting affordable packages (Haq, 2017). Therefore, the Jio team needs to be continuously innovative in their offerings to keep up with the competitive telecommunication companies in the market in the nation.

References:

Agarwal, N. (2017). Expectation and Perception Level of Reliance Jio Services in Guwahati City.

Chinthala, G., Madhuri, H., & Kumar, K. (2017). Customer satisfaction towards telecommunication service provider—A study on reliance JIO [J]. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research, 7(2), 398-402.

Gupta, D. (2017). Reliance Jio effect: MTNL offers 2GB of 3G data per day, BSNL gives 10GB data per day under'Unlimited Broadband plan. Asian Journal of Research in Chemistry.

Haq, N. (2017). Impact of Reliance JIO on the Indian Telecom Industry. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research (IJEMR), 7(3), 259-263.

Jio.com (2018). Home: Digital Life. [online]. Retrieved from https://www.jio.com/ [accessed on 31^st october 2018]

Jose, C. A. (2017). Effect of introduction of reliance jio on the competition environment in the telecommunication business in india. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, 241.

Kalyani, P. (2016). An Empirical Study on Reliance JIO Effect, Competitor's Reaction and Customer Perception on the JIM'S Pre-Launch Offer. Journal of management engineering and information technology, 3(5), 18-36.

Kaur, J. (2018). A case study on market leaders and challengers of the Indian telecom industry (mobile phone segment) with special reference to reliance JIO‘s strategies and performance challenging existing firms. Journal of Research: THE BEDE ATHENAEUM, 9(1), 44-51.

Kulkarni, S. A., & Vel, K. P. (2019). Reliance Jio—Late, but the Latest and Later?. In Business and Management Practices in South Asia (pp. 203-222). Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Kumar, A., Balaji, M., Krishna, U., & Yadav, M. (2018). Jio-Bharti Airtel Data War and Strategy. In Harnessing Human Capital Analytics for Competitive Advantage (pp. 171-179). IGI Global.

Mahalaxmi, K. R., & Kumar, S. (2017). A study on service quality and its impact on customer’s preferences and satisfaction towards Reliance JIO in trichy region.

Nair, S. (2017). Role of Sentiment Analysis in consumer research: A case study of Reliance Jio. Journal of Contemporary Research in Management, 12(1).

Rishi, B., Kacker, A., & Gupta, S. (2018). Entry of Reliance Jio in the telecom industry: a ripple in the ocean. Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, 8(3), 1-17.

Satyanarayana, D., Rao, K. S., & Naidu, S. K. (2017). The impact of Reliance Jio on the Indian mobile industry-A case study on mergers and acquisitions of the idea–Vodafone and Airtel–Telenor. IJAR, 3(3), 209-12.

Singh, R. (2017). Impact of Reliance JIO on Indian Telecom Industry: An Empirical Study. International Journal of Scientific Research and Management, 5(7), 6469-6474.