Examining the Long Tail Curve in the Mobile International Roaming Business: An Empirical Analysis on Taiwan’s Telecom Industry
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Wang, Yu-Chen
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Since 1996 Taiwan’s telecommunications market has been fully liberalized. The mobile communications business, which is vigorously developing for the past ten years and was regulated under the ‘light touch’ principle, has become the most successful model of the national telecommunication policy. With keen competition among 2G and 3G operators and number portability service, the mobile industry in Taiwan has been saturated and stepped into the “Little Profit Age”. Most mobile operators are seeking new models of service and expanding existing services, so as to achieve a win-win goal between service providers and users.
To enable the resources adequately to be used in a high productive sector, the “80/20 Law” is usually adopted in conventional business. But based on the “Long Tail” found by Chris Anderson, the “80/20 Law” would probably be modified under the circumstances of Internet development and low cost of searching ways. He found that non-mainstream products can compete with the mainstream ones only if the big channels exist.
The revenue of international roaming business is not as high as other sectors of telecommunications business; however, we found that the international roaming business meets the curve of Long Tail. After analyzing the three forces of forming a long-tail market, we discovered that international roaming itself is a virtual e-commerce to provide pure digital products for users and its marginal cost of inventory and marketing is nearly zero. In addition, the outbound or inbound roamers can easily use the roaming services through recommendation and searching machines under the structure of international interconnection and bilateral agreements. Besides, we also found that international roaming meets all nine principles of establishing a long-tail business that Anderson indicated.
To confront the challenge of network industries, we cannot make a decision under the thinking of “economics of scarcity” by way of ‘segmentation, target and position’ to predict the result; in the contrary, we can use the “economics of abundance” to make everything available for consumers and help them find it. In that way, the business can earn the maximum benefit and long-lasting development.
Subjects
長尾理論
電信產業
行動通信
經營策略
行銷理論
80/20法則
GSM
數位網路科技
微利時代
Long Tail
Telecommunications Industry
Mobile Communications
International Roaming
Managerial Strategy
Marketing Theory
80/20 Law
Digital Network Technology
Little Profit Age
Type
other
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