Alcatel Telecommunications Equipment Maintenance Services Pricing Issues

Service pricing is one of"7P"-portfolio of service marketing and one of the most important management decisions of business daily operation. There are seldom papers service pricing related and no papers of pricing topics of telecom equipment maintenance service related in the authorized management magazine in domestic and overseas from Jan. 1, 1995 to Aug. 31, 2007. Especially in domestics, the study of service marketing is not researched in depth due to no scholars concern the topics of service pricing. The study on the pricing of telecom equipment maintenance service will help the vendors promote their service level and profit and, lead the telecom equipment maintenance service to be one of the main businesses of telecom equipment manufacturers.The pricing objectives and policies, methodology, psychology and strategy of telecom equipment maintenance service are analyzed by innovational and exploring based on the service marketing and economics theory and the Alcatel practice of the related business from the point of clients'view after the contents and characters of telecom equipment maintenance service are discussed for the first time. The main contents of the thesis contain:The profile of Alcatel is introduced at first. The concept and typical contents of telecom equipment maintenance service are defined for the first time and, the industrial characters of telecom equipment maintenance service are analyzed. The 2 main causes of pricing for difficulty for Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service are analyzed. Alcatel's business is analyzed based on 3C pricing principle. The pricing objectives and specific policies of Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service are discussed too.The thesis indicates the factors related of selection of pricing methodology. It shows that the cost-based pricing and competition-based pricing are not adopted by Alcatel while the best pricing methodology is the value-based pricing for Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service. The value-based pricing methodology is analyzed from the value pricing principle, perceive of value, price negotiation, the function of reference price and its basic steps of points of view. The value-based pricing for Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service in global is also discussed for the main issues.The pricing psychology and its application of Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service are analyzed based on the Expected Utility Theory. The price sensitive of telecom equipment maintenance service is discussed and, the pricing issue of promotion is emphasized too.The pricing strategy of value-based segmented pricing based on availability support level and its procedures are presented for the first time after the Availability Support Level (ASL) is defined for the levels of benefits and quality of Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service. The 3 catalogs of clients are defined for Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service: key client, generic client and low client. The specific pricing strategy includes: pricing of specific ASL, plan of ASL, the optimized pricing of all ASLs and, 3 levels for Alcatel ASLs'are the best.The effective pricing includes 7 steps based on Alcatel telecom equipment maintenance service business in recent years.