A Study on the Positioning and Advertising Strategy of Mobile-Phone Brands

Kim Sang-Beom

Major in Advertising

Dept. of Mass Communications

The Graduate School

Yonsei University

Korean mobile-phone market was launched under the monopoly by Korea Mobile Telecom. A genuine competition started since the entrances of Shinsegi in April, 1996 and three PCS companies in October of 1997. Competitive advertising activities are getting more severe and the total advertising expenditure of this category is expected to reach to 80 billion Won by the end of 1997.

A major issue of advertising competition among five participants of mobile-phone industry is observed as a competition of positioning. The objective of positioning strategy is both to increase sales volume in the short term and to manage a brand in the longer term under a competitive situation of multiple brands struggling in a market. It is regarded also as an essential factor for market entry of new brand.

This article is designed to figure out how each brand is currently positioned in consumer minds, to analyze strengths and weakness of each brand and to propose more effective alternatives for each brand. Similarities of each advertisements are also researched to evaluate the utilities of each advertising activity. Multiple attribute model and perceptual map are utilized as an analysis tools.

By the research, Communication Technology is found as the most important and Additive Services are second most important attributes to discriminate brand image from each other. By these two factors, Telecommunication technology and Additive Services, positionings of five brands are divided into three groups. 011 is regarded to have the best image with ideal vector in spite of the less competitive Additive Service power. Three PCS brands (016, 018, 019) are believed to have advantages on Additive Services. 017 was found to have inferior image in general.

To enhance the brand image of 011, advertising should continuously enforce the Telecommunication Technology positioning and hit & run advertising as a supportive tool should be executed to claim the competitiveness of Additive Service power comparing PCS brands.

PCS brands have image advantages in Additive Services which are regarded as less important factor. Therefore, they should enforce the images of Technology Stability, Corporate reliability and Telecommunication Technology in the long run. Strategy for 017 should be focused to separate from PCS brands claiming that 017 is not inferior to 011. Differentiated activities of sales promotion inviting new users are also recommended to support positioning strategy.

No relevance of advertising concepts between each brand was observed yet.

It might be because of short time span since the launch of PCS. Current positionings of PCS brands may have originated not from advertising activities but from PR or words of mouths.

In spite of finding major factors to categorize market and current positionings of five brands, the interpretation of this research has limitation in some degree. It is difficult to assert that two above mentioned factors will be continuously most important factors to explain the market because the Korean Mobile-phone industry is not stable enough and consumers do not understand the product well enough yet. Tracking research and additional research to find out the relation between brand positionings and communication activities of each brand are required to support the conclusion of this research