Are they giving customers what they want?

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One age-old question that all companies ask themselves is: “Are we giving our customers what they want?”

This question forms the bedrock of Intex Management Services’ latest research project into the perceptions of mobile radio users and purchasers in North America. This independent survey suggests that for some companies the answer would be “very nearly,” and for others it would be a resounding “no.” The only universal conclusion is that no supplier is perceived to give its customers entirely what they need.

IMS sent a detailed questionnaire to 5,000 people in North America involved in the purchasing and use of mobile radio products. From this mailing, a detailed database of responses was compiled. A breakdown of the industry sectors and organization sizes of the respondents appears in Figure 1.

The survey confirmed Motorola’s dominant market position. The company was perceived to be the best manufacturer of both terminals and infrastructure. (Terminals include mobile and hand-held radio transceivers.) However, the sky is not entirely dark for all the other manufacturers. The survey identified several chinks in the Motorola armor where users clearly perceived that the manufacturer was underperforming. Figure 2 presents the best-perceived terminal manufacturers in the survey.

If Motorola were to look over its shoulder in the race for the North American mobile radio market, it would most likely see Kenwood Communications. Kenwood had consistently good results for infrastructure and terminals and was particularly strong in competitive pricing and product quality.

The surprise package of the survey must be Vertex Standard, which edged out M/A-Com Wireless Systems for third place. Vertex Standard had a good perceived performance level in most areas — particularly on the technical side.

Surprisingly, considering its large market share, M/A-Com took fourth place. Even more worrisome for M/A-Com must be the fact that it performed markedly worse in the infrastructure rankings. It is possible that recent name and ownership changes have affected its performance or have created doubts in the minds of users and purchasers.

The survey led to several fundamental conclusions, including:

• Every major manufacturer was perceived to have one or more key weaknesses.

• There seemed to be specific areas where smaller manufacturers and distributors had a distinct advantage over the larger suppliers.

As well as measuring the perceived performance of suppliers, the research also measured the importance of various service-, product- and company-related factors when buyers purchase mobile radios.

This part of the report found that companies and organizations of different sizes and from different industry sectors required strikingly different things from their mobile radio products and suppliers. The most interesting fact was a distinct correlation between the size of the organization and the single most influential criterion affecting the purchase of mobile radio products. Figure 3 compares company size and the importance of two of the main factors measured. For this figure, only “competitive price” and “high product quality” are shown because these were identified as the two major factors for companies of all sizes.

Carlaw is a market analyst for the Communications Research Group at Intex Management Services, Wellingborough, United Kingdom. The report described in this article is a small part of the IMS mobile radio report portfolio. Carlaw can be reached by email at [email protected] or by telephone at +44 1933 402 255.