The Brief
The telecommunications market contributes to the South African economy in many ways; with times changing, many private and government sector departments’ requirements also change.
With this view, our client wanted to understand the needs of the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) enterprises in particular.
Interact RDT was enlisted to collect data from various SOHO and SME informal markets research in order to determine their telecommunications needs.
The project needed to assist our client in strengthening their positioning and growing their market share and revenue in the abovementioned segment.
Our Solution
We implemented in depth interviewing in order to collect the data necessary for the project. Only companies with 100 employees or less were targeted for interviews. There was no further breakdown of numbers as it was more effective to recruit by sector rather than business size.
Companies in the Greater Johannesburg area were interviewed, and we tried to get an even spread of both the unskilled, skilled and professional sectors.
Only persons who pay the telecoms bill within the company were asked for an interview from each company called. Persons in the unskilled sector were not called as they do not have their businesses listed. Their appointments were determined by the availability of the person who pays the telecoms bill and were set up by surprise drop in.
Forty interviews were conducted within the various sectors and business types, with each interview lasting between 45 min to 1 hour.
The Outcome
Once the interviews had been completed, the resulting data was analysed and a detailed insights presentation was delivered to our client.
The presentation highlighted opportunities for our client in terms of which sectors to partner with and what kind of packages were most appealing,
It also fulfilled the outlined research objectives such as understanding product and service needs, understanding purchase and usage behaviour, identifying niche segments and testing potential product offerings and ideas.
The wealth of both qualitative and quantitative insights provided, ensured that our client was not only informed about their target market, but most importantly that they were equipped with an understanding of how to better cater to their needs.