Nokia Picks Up Award for Brazilian Market Research

Nokia's Brazil Mobile Communications Research has received the Marketing Research Award for "Best Research for Telecommunications and IT industry" in 2003. The awards were adjudicated by Marketing Magazine, AQR (Association for Qualitative Research) and The Marketing Society and presented to Nokia and its partner research agency The HPI Research Group for their research into mass-market consumer opportunities in Brazil's burgeoning mobile communications market.

Craig Smith, Editor of Marketing says, "The awards were based on three key selection criteria; validity and usability for the client organization (i.e. Nokia), timing of the research, a fresh approach to the research problem and most importantly of all impact on the client organizations bottom line. Nokia's research met all these criteria and more, the timing and intelligence of the research meant it had a significant impact on the entire mobile communications community in Brazil, a major emerging mobile market."

The overall aim of the study was to identify and illustrate to operators in Brazil the size, scale and nature of opportunity for ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) growth in a region showing all the signs of a potential SMS boom with the advent of GSM, the rapidly expanding ownership of mobile phones amongst the broader, mass market consumer base and removal of inter-operator barriers.

Hannu Hietavirta, Head of Regional Marketing for Nokia Networks in Latin America says, "Understanding the local markets and consumer behaviour is a key pre-requisite for our business. With this study we wanted to get a better understanding about the different segments in Brazil and people's motivations to use SMS. Our aim was to focus on simple, easy-to-use SMS based services that could be implemented right away - giving the operators immediate ARPU increase opportunity. The research proved invaluable for proving the business case for SMS."

The study involved 800 face-to-face interviews with mass market, mobile phone owners. Interviewing was conducted across four cities, selected to reflect as much of the differing cultural and demographic differences across the Brazilian market as possible, within budget. At the same time, using four locations, with 200 interviews in each, this allowed for some analysis within each location.

"Identifying the impact of cultural aspects to preferred content and to the way people communicate in a multicultural mobile market was a fascinating challenge. For instance we found that the Brazilian market shows great promise for mobile advertising, especially in retail and sports. In the end, mobile communications is a very personal experience and part of individual's overall frame of reference," adds Johanna Mikkola, Head of Business Consultancy, Nokia Networks.

The Marketing Research Awards 2003 was a multi-industry competition with altogether 11 categories."

Posted to the site on 31st July 2003