T-mobile's target markets

T-mobile has a target market composed mainly of family-oriented consumers, allowing the company to offer a variety of products to meet the needs of the entire family, from basic cell phone for the young children to latest Blackberry for the working parents and college-aged children. They also have services and features geared towards this target market, such as the "family allowance" feature, allowing parents the ability to set and control how many minutes, text messages, downloads, and even the numbers they call. They also rolled out with a new service called "T-Mobile @Home," which is a Vonage-resembling land line alternative. By offering their target family consumers the ability to shed multiple service providers and simply get their cell phone and landline service by the same provider (for only 10 dollars a month extra), they create a sense of completeness and a "family-focused" service package. They also have a signature plan focused on creating a tighter family connection - Myfaves. A plan allowing each family member to select 5 people (numbers) they want to talk to with no charge and no penalty towards their minutes. They do not even have to place their family in their myfaves, because they are automatically able to talk to each other free with myfaves family plans. In commercials, T-mobile pushes this plan and almost all of their commercials feature a family talking about their myfaves selection and about the connection they share with their family and friends. Like T-mobile's known slogan, they "stick together."

T-mobile does have other target markets however - college students/young adults and small business owners.

T-mobile offers the latest hi-tech devices with the latest online community networking sites already built into them. The T-mobile Sidekicks offer a Myspace interface with their data plans and Blackberry devices have the Facebook interface available right out of the box. These two online communities are very big with college students and young adults, and T-mobile utilizes this addiction of online communities with the similiar addiction with staying in constant connection that young people all share. T-mobile also offers data plans, text messaging features, and plans for alot cheaper than competitors, making these hi-tech devices alot more afforadable and within reach for these financially not-as-stable individuals.

These hi-tech devices also draw the small business owner into the T-mobile community as well. With an array of Blackberry devices, Windows-enabled pdas, and other hi-tech devices, T-mobile is able to capture the attention and the needs of the busy, hectic business owner. Also, with cheaper rate plans and data feature packages, small business owners take advantage of the savings they can achieve by picking T-mobile, which T-mobile definitely advertises (they just recently started marketing how much on average one can save switching to T-mobile). Another factor drawing in small business owners is the T-mobile @Home, which allows them to get a land line alternative for $10 dollars a month, cutting costs and bundling their wireless and business land line needs all into one provider.


Although T-mobile does branch into these diverse target markets, their main market is the family-focused market, shown by their intense relationship with the communities they are located in. T-mobile has a program called T-mobile huddle up, which is a community volunteer program for their employees. The employees go out to schools and into the community and help out where help is needed, whether it is fixing up a playground, helping kids at school, or anything else needed in the neighboring T-mobile community. It started four years ago and takes place throughout the country. They even have a alternative recycling program, where employees can help get old phones and phone accessories to recycle to help donate to T-mobile huddle up's cause. It is a great program and it also focuses in on the behavioral side of the consumer, showing how T-mobile is trying to be part of the community and help "stick together" with their consumers.