Why can't phone calls be like a Coke?

Why can't phone calls be like a Coke?

Why can't phone calls be like a Coke?


Originally uploaded by asarva.

Phone calls are pretty much sold as services. Sign up and we will bill for your use - of the service, its features, its variations. Home phone servie. Long distance - in- state, interstate, international by country, time of day, by caller class (business? residence?), calling a mobile or fixed line, and by the way do you have a feature pack or special ringer or whatever the hell else?





The great thing about a Coke is you know exactly what you are getting in that can. The unit size is definite, taste is familiar. Anything else about it you can straightforwardly judge: is it cold? leaky? old? You can read the price off the nearby sticker. You can turn it around and read what's in it, in case you happen to be from Mars and haven't seen one before.





You pay now and you take the thing you bought on the spot. Return it if you want. If you use it halfway and are unsatisfied, try out the store's policy. Talk to the person standing right there and give them your "unused portion".





And you can market in ways that Coke does. You can multibrand a line of products to grab space in the channel using lots of "flanker" products. You can introduce a product that "pulls" through retail without much marketing support. You can sell in the most remote places - where the retailer doesn't even know what he is selling but it hardly matters since the package sells the contents.





Not so with the phone company. There is no physical commodity. Nothing to sell in a store. Nothing to fix or return or demonstate ownership. You have no clue what your actions will cost you - "I didn't know that AOL dial-up number was long distance!!"





Mobile phones are different because you have to buy the phone to use the service. So their is a product in the service. The issue is, they are still marketing this stuff as if it were cable TV. An abstraction rather than physical commodity. As phones move from being big-ticket, life-changing purchases to being cheap electronics, the service model will have to change. Less like buying a satellite dish and more like buying a camera.