“A study on (below the line) promotion strategies of telecom industry in western (Up) circle (India) with special reference to Reliance Communications”

Abstract

Over the past two decades, India has grown rapidly from a “command and control” economy to a market-based economy. India is now closely integrated with the global economy and is considered one of the pillars of global economic growth. The process of liberalization started in the mid-1980s and gathered momentum in the 1990s, with the further opening of the economy and the creation of regulatory institutions to march toward fully competitive markets. As a result of liberalization, India’s GDP has been rising by more than 7% annually in the past decade, compared with 3.5% annually from 1950 to 1980.

Indian telecom industry is back on the growth mode after disconnecting several inactive users. Interestingly, after witnessing a fall for the eight consecutive months (between July 2012 and February 2013) the net monthly wireless additions registered an upswing in March 2013.

According to the data of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), total net monthly wireless additions rose by 6.14 millions in March 2013 on monthly basis. Even, experts believe that now operators have attained some sort of stability and net subscriber addition is expected to grow in the coming months.                                                                       Applying the principles of cost leadership, differentiation and strategic focus along with the related ones of building entry barriers, erecting economics of scale, developing marketing competitors Reliance Communications has attained global levels of competitiveness adopting a single unique route to attain competitive status. This paper is an attempt to understand the promotion strategies practiced by Reliance Communications. The study is conducted in Western (UP) region of India. The statistical tools used are chi-square, one way ANOVA, and the finding is the promotion of the products (goods and services) offered by Reliance Communications has a significant impact in increasing sales.

Key Words: Telecom, Promotion Strategy, Reliance Communications, etc.