Blog articles by Wessel Roose

Understanding decision-making and choice overload in crowded markets

In today’s highly competitive telecommunications market, consumers face an abundance of choices online. To thrive in this environment, your product portfolio strategy should be optimized based on how decision-making is changing. You need to know how customers identify the best carrier and plan for their needs. And that’s where the most accurate customer and market insights can help.

Today’s subscription economy not only presents consumers with more choices, but also more personalized experiences. For telecom, tech and online brands these heightened expectations place even greater pressure on maximizing the revenue per user.

Whereas in the past you could position your products and services based on traditional demographic insights, those rules no longer apply today — especially when it comes to pricing.

Using a subscription pricing model to lay stable foundations

Funda is the top online real estate platform in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. It’s been described as the “Amazon of houses” in its homeland, because it’s said that almost every house that’s sold in the country will have been advertised on its platform first.

The online leader generates revenue by charging realtors to promote residential and commercial inventory on its platform. When there are more homes than buyers, properties are advertised longer and funda sees revenue soar. However, when the market is booming, properties sell quickly, listings come and go on the platform, and revenues dip.

On October 27th, the European Parliament voted in favor of a proposal on net neutrality. As part of this proposal, it was also decided that roaming costs within EU territory will be abolished, starting June 1, 2017. This does not concern all roaming, but “roaming within the range of normal usage”. It isn’t yet quite clear how normal usage is defined, and we have to wait until the end of this year to find out.

In many service markets – like telecom, energy and finance – consumers do not switch providers very often and service providers are having trouble activating these potential customers. Even though some consumers might want to switch due to an interesting offer from a new provider, often they still don’t act.