A Study On Marketing Channels Planning And Strategies For China Mobile ZS Branch

The restructuring of the telecommunication industry in 2008 made the major business operators to further accelerate the pace. Along with the market becomes increasingly competitive, a lot of 3G products and services appear in the market. These products and services have to reach consumers through channels, which naturally has set a higher requirement for the channels to conduct 3G business in the future. It is also an obvious challenge to the communication operators in channel management.Major competition between operators has focused on marketing channels expanding. With the continuous changes in both the competition environment and the ideas of competitors, it has raised the various questions to the operators, such as how to maintain and enhance the core competence of channels throughout the entire process, from channel strategy planning, to the development of effective long-term strategy to address challenges in 3G all-service operation era, and to plan for the basic work of channels in 4G era;how to develop the effective and realistic operational plans in the heated competition environment and in the battle of channels expansion; how to advantage from the existing 2G channels superiorities and utilize the effect from channels synergies, etc..This article has based on the theory of marketing channels to discuss the hurdles and challenges China Mobile is currently facing from the macro level. It also discussed the requests to the marketing channels in executing 3G all-service operation. The article then unveiled the existing problem of marketing channels of ZS branch: 3G era has brought competitions to the entire business, while the traditional 2G marketing channel system no longer adapts to the rapid changes in customer needs. In another word, the growth in all-service operation and customer demands is in conflict with the out dated marketing channel system. Therefore, ZS Branch is expecting an innovation in marketing channel system from strategic level. At the same time, in order to extend its core competence in the marketing channels from 2G era and defend the leading position of ZS Branch in 3G era, ZS Branch has to make more effective strategies from both strategic level and sub-strategic level and from both long term and short term perspectives. As a result of this, ZS Branch shall re-consider the design of strategic planning to marketing channels, establish the customer-oriented all-service operational channel support system, and to achieve the integration and collaboration of various channels. In terms of the response strategy, ZS Branch shall establish a centralized management system and virtual operation as well as a unified channel planning and construction to further enhance the power of control and loyalty to the channels, strengthen electronic channels so as to build up strong community direct sales force and develop new types of channels.