Strategies of European Telecom Operators in Challenging Environment
Tarvainen, Tatu (2020)
Tarvainen, Tatu
2020
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120325832
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120325832
Tiivistelmä
The objective of this thesis is to explore and analyse the strategies of European Telecom operators in challenging environment. By year 2016, the European telecom industry’s total revenue had been declining for almost 10 years in a row. This raised a question how some of the leading telecom operators were responding to this challenge in terms of the quality of their strategy in their home markets.
In this thesis, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Tele2 were selected for the analysis as they were considered to be significantly different with each other before the actual research project and based in the different countries. The quality of these companies’ strategies was analysed based on their product and service portfolio, and marketing, strategy and investor materials using Michael Porter’s and STL Partners’ strategic frameworks.
The results show that all of these analysed companies have good strategies that are in-line with their strategic positioning and product and service portfolios. Based on the analysis, Deutsche Telekom has the best-quality strategy as there seems to be virtually no weaknesses in their approach. Vodafone was a close runner-up with some very small weaknesses. Tele2’s strategy also suits its portfolio and strategic positioning but there were small weaknesses in its investor reporting, leading to its third-place ranking in this study.
Based on the results of this study, the approach and the combination of the used strategic frameworks used in this study allowed comparing very different types of telecom operators with distinct strategic positioning. Hence, it is likely that the same approach can be used to evaluate the quality of the strategies of any publicly traded company regardless of the industry. This strategy evaluation method can also be used to evaluate companies that are not publicly traded in case the strategy materials are made available for the analysis.
In this thesis, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Tele2 were selected for the analysis as they were considered to be significantly different with each other before the actual research project and based in the different countries. The quality of these companies’ strategies was analysed based on their product and service portfolio, and marketing, strategy and investor materials using Michael Porter’s and STL Partners’ strategic frameworks.
The results show that all of these analysed companies have good strategies that are in-line with their strategic positioning and product and service portfolios. Based on the analysis, Deutsche Telekom has the best-quality strategy as there seems to be virtually no weaknesses in their approach. Vodafone was a close runner-up with some very small weaknesses. Tele2’s strategy also suits its portfolio and strategic positioning but there were small weaknesses in its investor reporting, leading to its third-place ranking in this study.
Based on the results of this study, the approach and the combination of the used strategic frameworks used in this study allowed comparing very different types of telecom operators with distinct strategic positioning. Hence, it is likely that the same approach can be used to evaluate the quality of the strategies of any publicly traded company regardless of the industry. This strategy evaluation method can also be used to evaluate companies that are not publicly traded in case the strategy materials are made available for the analysis.