Marketing plan for a new technology and telecommunications website www mobilereview vn

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURES Figure 2.1: Top 10 Asian Countries with high Internet user in 2009 Figure 2.2: Mobile Review Magazine - 1st Edition in January 2009 and 2nd Edition i

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ TP.HCM UNIVERSITÉ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY SOLVAY BRUSSELS SCHOOL

Tutor’s name: NGUYỄN VĂN SƠN

Ho Chi Minh City

(2010)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my profound gratitude and great appreciation to my advisor

Dr Nguyen Van Son for his valuable guidance, advice and encouragement throughout

the research study

Special thanks are extended to my colleagues at Thuy Kim Minh Joint Stock Company

for taking interest and giving valuable suggestions to improve the content of this study

as well as providing me the materials needed for the research

Taking this opportunity, I would also like to thank all lecturers, mentors, HCMC Open

University staffs and my classmates for their assistance and co-operation during my

two-year’s time at the MBMM program of Solvay Brussels School

I remain indebted to my family, friends for their valuable encouragement and

unceasing supports in my academic pursuits

MASTER PROJECT IN BUSINESS & MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Tutor : Dr NGUYỄN VĂN SƠN

Researcher : HỒ TRẦN MINH QUANG

Title of Project : Marketing Plan for a New Technology and

Telecommunications Website - www.mobilereview.vn –

Program of Study : MASTER IN BUSINESS & MARKETING MANAGEMENT

TUTOR’S COMMENTS

1 The project embraces high practicality The objectives of the research are

well-defined The organization is logically performed

2 The researcher employs a suitable and appropriate research methodology The

results present some new perspectives which are, to some extent, scientifically

useful With suitable environment situation analyses, the author has introduced

a number of solutions that are highly comprehensive and feasible

3 Nevertheless, the project has shown some inevitable limitations: the analyses

are more qualitative Little quantitative data have been demonstrated

4 In general, the research successfully meets the requirements (of both content

and form) for a project of Master in Business and Marketing Management

I hereby propose candidate Ho Tran Minh Quang to defend for his dissertation in front

of Board of Examiners for Master dissertation of Vietnam - Belgium Master Program

HCMC, 9th of December, 2010

TUTOR

DR NGUYỄN VĂN SƠN

RSS Really Simple Syndication

VNPT Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Top 10 Asian Countries with high Internet user in 2009

Figure 2.2: Mobile Review Magazine - 1st Edition in January 2009 and 2nd Edition in February 2009

Figure 2.3: Mobile Review Magazine – 8th and 9th Editions in May 2009

Figure 2.4: Mobilereview.vn interface – Main page

Figure 2.5: Design and IT Department structure after rearrangement

Figure 2.6: Content Department structure after rearrangement

Figure 2.7: Structure of Article Posting at Mobilereview.vn

Figure 2.8: Average Daily Page Visits Chart of mobilereview.vn from Nov 2009 to

June 2010

Figure 3.1: Average Daily Page Visits Target on mobilereview.vn in 2011

Figure 4.1: Graphic Design and IT Department structure after enhancement

Figure 4.2: Content Department structure after enhancement

Figure 4.3: Structure of Consultancy Section

TABLES

Table 2.1: Internet Users in Vietnam from May 2003 to May 2010

Table 2.2: List of web traffic rank in Vietnam

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page i

Acknowledgements ii

Tutor’s comments iii

List of Abbreviations iv

List of Figures and Tables v

Table of Contents vi

INTRODUCTION 1

Executive Summary 1

Vision 2

Scope and Limitation 2

Structure of Project 3

1 METHODOLOGY 4

Situation Analysis 4

Planning 5

2 SITUATION ANALYSIS 7

2.1 Climate Analysis 7

2.2 Company Analysis 9

2.3 Human Resources Analysis 13

2.4 Competitors Analysis 16

2.5 Visitors Analysis 18

2.6 SWOT Summary 20

3 MARKETING OBJECTIVES 23

4 PLANNING 24

4.1 Internal Improvement 24

4.2 E-Marketing Plans 27

4.3 Public Relations Strategies 29

5 CONTROL 31

6 CONCLUSION 32

APPENDIX 33

INTRODUCTION

Executive Summary

In recent years, the number of computers use as well as the number of Internet access in Vietnam has been increasing dramatically More and more businesses have their own websites to bring their products, services or information

to internet users E-marketing is gradually being exploited and applied in the business environment

Besides, after the trade embargo was lifted in 1994, Vietnam economy has been incredibly developing As the non-stop growth of the economy, the technology and telecommunications booming has also played an important role in our society

The fact is that number of people who own telecommunications and digital gadgets has been increasing rapidly Most of the urban citizens want to approach modern technologies which help improving their living condition Nevertheless, in Vietnam high-tech market, information of products seems to be untrustworthy no matter where they come from Therefore, the needs of gadgets review and technical consultancy in Vietnam are especially higher than ever

Understanding the problem of lacking trustworthy information from consumers, on November of 2009, our website www.mobilereview.vn was established The website mobilereview.vn which belongs to Thuy Kim Minh Joint Stock Company was a website that provide visitors with news, reviews, previews and other information related to Vietnam and international telecommunications and digital gadgets industry

After 7 months, mobilereview.vn did not achieve the results as its owner wishes The number of visitors was extremely limited and the daily page visits was

not as high as our expectation With this bad situation, we decided to set up a precise marketing plan for www.mobilereview.vn

Vision

Our vision is to make mobilereview.vn become the most popular digital gadgets review and consultancy website in Vietnam, where visitors can find any information they need about telecommunications market and digital gadget products

in the most convenient way

Scope and Limitation

To maintain the website mobilereview.vn, we organized our personnel with 4 departments:

_ Graphic Design and IT Department

For those reasons, our project is a combination of situation research and analysis, website improvement, e-marketing plans and public relations strategies Nevertheless, sales activities is out of the scope of this project

1 METHODOLOGY

The project methodology primarily concentrates on evaluating the situation

of www.mobilereview.vn, combines with research and analyses on telecommunications and digital gadgets industry to build a specific marketing plan

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

In this first section of the project, we try to reach to specific information of each factor which puts very important impacts on our marketing planning process There are 5 parts on which we need to highly focus:

+ Climate Analysis :

This important factor shows us a whole view of Vietnam business environment and gives us an opportunity to understand the rapid growth of the economy Moreover, in this section, some statistical figures from the domestic market were used to help us analyzing the Vietnam telecommunications development recently

+ Company Analysis

Overall review of our company situation throughout its operation is necessary Some specific data information about mobilereview.vn are also used to generally evaluate the website status All these analyses give us a chance to examine all the advantages and problems on which the company has occurred

+ Human Resources Analysis

In this part, the personnel situation is evaluated to see how important it means to the website Besides, several benefits and problems which occurred when taking the full advantage of the human resources are also considered

+ Competitors Analysis

We also do a general research on our main competitors of mobilereview.vn

to find out their strengths, weaknesses and market positions Forms and characteristics of each type of these websites are used as referential data for analyzing the competitors situation

+ Visitors Analysis

This is an important part of the analysis process In this part, we will use the qualitative analysis method to find out the real problems of our mobile review website First, we assume some hypotheses about the problems of the low page visits status of our website Then, we use some questionnaire designing techniques

to create a survey which help us understanding the visitors’ needs for information from both global and domestic telecommunications market

+ SWOT Summary

After all the analyzing process are completely done, we use SWOT Summary - a strategic planning method - to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of both internal and external factors, which involved in our marketing plan project This part helps us summarizing and classifying all data which were collected in the previous analyzing processes SWOT Summary is very important in the project because the subsequent planning decisions should be almost derived from SWOT

PLANNING:

Understanding the situation of our website through its operation and collecting enough essential information data related to our project, we start to develop a precise marketing plan for mobilereview.vn based on the objectives which we had defined

In this Planning session, we separate the process into three parts: Internal Improvement, E-Marketing Plans and Public Relations Strategies

+ Internal Improvement:

In this part of the marketing planning process, we try to improve the human resources to fulfill the objectives of mobilereview.vn Besides, facilities enhancement will also be a very important matter for the website’s renovation Moreover, website’s interface and contents will be reorganized to match the visitors’ demands

+ E-Marketing Plans:

E-Marketing plans of mobilereview.vn were defined based on the Concept

of Web 2.0 which give us a chance to approach some modern activities of web improvement such as using links and banners, supporting RSS (Really Simple Syndication), exploiting social network, …etc

+ Public Relations Strategies:

Besides the E-Marketing, public relations strategies were also planned to fulfill the project Some tools and techniques which related to PR (public relations) were applied to give the most powerful impact on our planning process

2 SITUATION ANALYSIS

2.1 Climate analysis

With the incredible rise of the economic growth rate, especially after the US Government decided to lift the embargo towards Vietnam in 1994, the living standard has also been improved and the demands of people become higher This was the time for the telecommunications and technology took their role and play an important part in the society

According to the General Statistics Office, the latest numbers show that Vietnam has 157.8 million subscribers, including more than 140 million mobile subscribers, by the end of July 2010 (46.3 percent higher from the previous year)

Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), with two mobile networks named Mobifone and Vinaphone, accounted for 82.8 million subscribers, including 11.6 million fixed subscribers and 71.2 million mobile subscribers Other networks including Viettel, S-Fone, EVN Telecom, Beeline and Vietnamobile had over 61 million subscribers

According to statistics, the number of mobile subscribers in Vietnam is nearly double the country’s population but the experts think that only 50 percent of the population uses mobile services However, these numbers also bring a very bright prospect of the telecommunications and digital gadgets industry in Vietnam

Moreover, according to The World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2009–2010, Vietnam ranked 54th with the score 3.84 amongst 133 countries (70th with the score 3.79 in 2008-2009) Especially, Vietnam rank first

amongst 24 Low-Income countries in the world NRI measures the propensity for

countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology It is published annually The NRI is a composite of three components: the environment for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) offered by

a given country or community, the readiness of the community’s key stakeholders

(individuals, businesses, and governments) to use ICT, and finally the usage of ICT

amongst these stakeholders - Wikipedia -

Besides, the fast growth of the internet has created a very good environment

for economy development in Vietnam According to the Internet World Statistic,

from 2000 to May 2010, the internet users in Vietnam has increased incredibly from

200.000 users to 24.269.083 users (12,034.5% increase) Moreover, Vietnam is now

on the Top Ten Countries in Asia which have high number of internet users (rank

7th in 2009) That’s a significant sign for any firm to jump on the e-business

industry nowadays

Figure 2.1: Top 10 Asian Countries with high Internet user in 2009

(Source: www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm)

On May of Internet Users Users per Capita (%)

2009, Thuy Kim Minh published a monthly magazine named “Mobile Review” (Trải Nghiệm Di Động) which mainly focus on providing information on both international and domestic telecommunications market

After the first edition which was published on 10th of January 2009, we received many positive reactions from our readers and the turnover was as high as our expectation Besides, our sales team’s efficient activities which had been set up

5 months before January 2009 gave us very good opportunities to do business directly with other telecommunications and mobile phones firms who want to put monthly advertising on our new magazine Moreover, with a well-prepared manpower and data resources, we had driving force to give a decision that our Mobile Review Magazine should be bimonthly instead of monthly Therefore, from

February 2009, Mobile Review Magazine has been published with 2 editions a month

With the goal of the magazine is to bring updated news and information of the telecommunications and digital gadgets market to the readers, we mainly focus

on our content department with the high priority From 1 editors, 4 permanent reporters and 4 part-time reporters in the beginning, after 4 months, we developed the manpower of this department to 1 editors, 5 permanent reporters and 6 part-time reporters With this professional qualification personnel who were carefully trained from the beginning, the Mobile Review Magazine could almost keep pace with the rapid growth of the telecommunications market on both international and domestic field

Besides, the Layout and Graphic design is also an important department of our human resources There were 3 designers and one head-designer in this department These 4 employees handled all the works related to design and layout However, all photo shootings for the magazine’s cover page were undertaken by our third-party studio before transferring the end-products to our design team

Although Mobile Review Magazine had been well-prepared at the beginning

of its operation, with the particular characteristic of a biweekly paper-based magazine, updated news and detailed consultancy are somehow limited Daily news

of the telecommunications market could not be brought out promptly and a very important demand of the consumers - gadgets consultancy - could hardly be satisfied by our paper-based magazine Moreover, with the huge expansion of the internet in Vietnam, we started to think of a more convenient way to reach to our readers who always thirst for the trustworthy and updated information from the telecommunications and digital gadgets market – a new online Mobile Review Magazine –

For that reason, our website www.mobilereview.vn was created It was

designed and developed by BaoSo Software company on September of 2009 On

November of 2009, the website www.mobilereview.vn was officially launched Our vision was that in the next 2 years, we could make mobilereview.vn becoming one

of the most popular online magazine in the telecommunications and digital gadgets industry

Figure 2.4: Mobilereview.vn interface – Main page

Mobilereview.vn contained two main functions which were News and Mobile Phone Review In the News section, we separate it into 3 sub-sections:

_ Mobile Phones news

_ Other Digital Gadgets news

_ Telecommunications Market news

All these 3 sub-sections were daily updated to give to our visitors a whole view of the international and domestic market 60% of the articles in those 3 sub-sections were compiled from foreign sources such as CNET, GSM ARENA, PHONE ARENA, ENGADGET, GIZMODO etc… The other 40% were the news from Vietnam telecommunications market such as updating price, promotion, new phone launching events, etc

In Mobile Phones Review section, we tried our best to publish 4 review articles a week Most of these review articles were compiled and revised from CNET, GSM ARENA and PHONE ARENA, which were very famous mobile phone review sources on the internet

We thought that with updated news and detailed mobile phone review articles, we were about to catch the visitors’ demands and our website could attract more and more visitors However, without a precise marketing plan at the start, after

7 months running the website, some problems occurred Daily page visits was not increasing as much as our expectation With that unexpected result, on May 2010, the company decided to do something to improve the page’s situation and a specific marketing plan for mobilereview.vn was brought out

2.3 Human Resources analysis

Human Resources plays a very important role on the success of our company When Thuy Kim Minh decided to launch www.mobilereview.vn, the existing personnel was practically unable to fulfill the objectives of both paper based magazine and the online magazine The rearrangement of manpower and new staffs recruitment were put into priority

First of all, the Graphic Design department which contains 1 head-designer and 3 designers needs to be expanded One Web Administrator and one Graphic

Designer were hired to strengthen the ability of this department Therefore, the department changed its name into Graphic Design and IT Department which handle all the works from both Mobile Review Magazine and Mobilereview.vn However, those 4 designers and the new web administrator were rearranged to share the works between the paper-based magazine and the website Our former head-designer would be responsible for both magazine and the website One Designers moved from the magazine business to the website business and the Web Administrator’s duty was entirely on the mobilereview.vn

Figure 2.5: Graphic Design and IT Department structure after rearrangement

About the Content Department, there had been 1 editors, 5 permanent reporters and 6 part-time reporters before the website mobilereview.vn operated When we ran our website on November 2009, we decided to recruit 1 more permanent reporter and 2 part-time reporters to ensure both paper-based and online magazine could work smoothly

Same as Graphic Design and IT Department, the personnel rearrangement were also in progress The editor then covered up all the contents being posted on both magazine and the website 2 permanent reporters and 5 part-time reporters

officially moved to the mobilereview.vn team for fully handling the website’s content

Figure 2.6: Content Department structure after rearrangement

Due to the full capacity of qualified personnel and a reasonable re-organizing progress, Mobile Review Magazine and the website mobilereview.vn were both in good situation Our magazine was still published twice a month without any major problems Especially, with the close coordination between all related personnel, the website mobilereview.vn had a quite impressive start

Figure 2.7: Structure of Article Posting at Mobilereview.vn