Sunday, February 17, 2008

Rumours and bad planning

In the past few years, Malawians have witnessed cut throat competition between mobile phone operators Celtel Malawi and TNM Limited in terms of marketing, promotions and roll out of value added services. Users have also joined in with accusations and counter accusations flying around that copycat tactics are employed by the two when rolling out services and promotions. The recent sales promotion of low cost handsets is no exception.

Rumour has it Celtel Malawi were the first to conceptualize the idea of selling as many as half a million low cost sim-blocked handsets in an effort to prop up their market share. The same rumour says Celtel Zambia recently rolled out a similar scheme using similar handsets. Another rumour however says TNM were the first to think of the promotion but that Celtel beat them at their own game. Which ever rumour is true or not is besides the point here. The point is that someone may not have necessarily done his homework very well.

Celtel announced that they would be selling a Chinese made handset for K3,900 in all it's shops, at filling stations and even at agricultural input outlets. The phones are network blocked and are, in my personal opinion, are actually quite cute. Concerns were expressed that being Zhing-zhong (cheap Chinese products), these handsets would not last past a few days and as such the promotion would fail. The reality on the ground was very different with large queue's being witnessed inside Celtel and other shops for the product. The alien name of the handset (one person comparing it to a Swedish car number plate) didn't deter many a people from owning a handset for the first time.

A few days later TNM brought out their product, a K4,700 Nokia handset set to counter the Celtel offering. They touted their handsets as being more robust as compared to an unknown Chinese brand. They quickly put Celtel on the back foot. Or did they? A certain section of private handset traders cried foul. The handset TNM was selling retails locally for around K7,000, some K2,300 more than the promotion price. The traders saw red. They saw little or no sales at all until at least the whole promotion was over and then that would really depend on when Celtel decided to pull the plug as they have more handsets to sell than TNM and, as is now tradition, TNM would have to run their promotion for as long as their rivals did. Next thing we hear is that there are no more TNM handsets on the market. Rumour has it staff as well as the traders have bought the handsets en-masse and are selling them on the black market at their 'normal' retail price of K7,000.

Whether this rumour is true or not, someone somewhere may not have done his homework very well.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Mugabe not mischevious enough

If comments made by R&B crooner Joe are anything to go by, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe should be embarrassed that his notoriety has not taken his name nor his country's very far. According to the MNet website Joe had never heard of Zimbabwe until recently.
'I did not know anything about this country until I came here,” Joe told a shocked gathering of journalists upon his arrival. He added that, “This is the most beautiful place to be. All this talk about these places being risky is the problem of the Western media and the perceptions it gives, but Akon [the Senegalese-born rapper] is putting Africa on the map.'
Akon brother, you have a huge task on your hands!! Uncle Bob has let us down!

Monday, February 4, 2008

Age ain't just a number

In the last few days a colleague of mine went to a local bank with the aim of accessing a personal loan. He was given the necessary forms and a template of a Letter of Undertaking for his employers to sign. He did all the necessary filling in and signing and took the forms and letter back to the bank. The officer attending to him received the forms and when through them to ensure completion. He then made a statement to the effect that this colleague should not be too confident his application will go through because of his age. No prizes for guessing what he meant. He looked at this young man with a small build and youthful face then thought how he could apply for 'so much money'? How on earth could such a youthful guy have so much money to spend nilly-willy without guidance from his parents or some other authority? For this bank officer, this guy was too young to get such a big loan.

But this officer made a few grave mistakes when he made that statement. Firstly the bank demanded he fill in an application form that he did. The form indicated he put the repayment amount that should be no more than 30% of the amount that is deposited into his account at the end of each month. The amount was within the 30% limit! He also brought a signed letter of undertaking from his employee guaranteeing that they will not only remit his salary to the bank for the duration of the loan repayment period but also pay the outstanding balance should their employee die, resign or somehow default. That is all the bank asked for. Unless he previously defaulted on a loan or was involved in some kind of fraud, I personally see no reason for denying him access to a loan.

Secondly either this officer didn't do his mental arithmetic well or for some strange reason thinks that a 26 year old male is still a boy who can't handle his own finances. It is a known fact, and there are plenty examples in society today, that there are some 40 year old men who have still not grown up and should walk around with pacifiers in their mouths. There are also examples of 21 year olds who have excelled at such a young age and manage successful businesses with healthy turnovers. So age should not be a single reason for rejection of a loan of a few thousands of Kwacha's.

Lastly it should appreciated that not all information collected on application forms will be used to determine eligibility for a loan unless of course that was and is the sole aim of this particular bank. If it is the case then I can rightly assume that women will have problems getting loans as will someone who uses TNM as opposed to Celtel as could be the case if one were simply a clerk and not a manager. In most marketing oriented companies data is collected for purposes of building customer databases that can later be used for marketing purposes or for research. It is also common knowledge that the central bank requires detailed information on customers to enable it deal effectively with money laundering and other criminal activities.

This attitude towards customers in general and the 'youthful' in particular just goes to justify an earlier post I made about the Fear of Failure amongst Malawians. It would seem that age is just not a number for some people. It is a barrier to achieving goals. It is a number that determines whether one succeeds in life of not. In some people's minds it sits at par with other elements such as sex, religion and tribe and must be used at all costs to hinder progress of mankind. It's time to change our attitude to change our country's destiny.