Got Mobile? Company Interview

The Company Got Mobile started October 26, 2005 and is currently owned by Peter Chi. Peter Chi was born August 30, 1985; he had managed and helped his parents to further their business ever since his youth, dealing with restaurants, gas stations, doughnut stores, and many other little businesses. After some college, he decided that school was not for him and started working in sales; planning to climb the corporate ladder. He consecutively became platinum in sales at Circuit City for about six months; Circuit City offered him a promotion to become a senior representative. Peter declined the offer because at the same time, he got a job as a T-Mobile event team representative. He also did extremely well selling phones for T-Mobile and would usually be top in sales in the district. Peter discovered that he could do much more with his life and aspired to become an entrepreneur. That gave him an idea of opening a wireless retail store; the reasons why he chose this field was because he had the most knowledge in it, it was fast growing, and also he is excellent in sales proven with his history. Like all retail stores, management is the bread and butter of Got Mobile (Chi). Got Mobile recognizes their SWOT analysis, POLC, STO, motivational, and competitive strategies since the start of business. Though they did not specifically identify it as process theory steps, they had to use these techniques to be where they are today.

Got Mobile is located in Watauga, Texas. The population of the city Watauga is roughly 22,000. "The racial makeup of the city was 87.05% White, 2.27% African American, 0.64% Native American, 3.69% Asian, 0.20% Pacific Islander, 3.91% from other races, and 2.23% from two or more races. 10.66% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race" (WIkipedia).

Peter picked this location for several reasons. The first one being that it is located of a busy road in Watauga, named Rufe Snow. In the city of Watauga, there are 11 wireless retail stores, eight of them having T-Mobile. T-Mobile's popularity and high sales are due to the company itself, and also because of the demographic location (Chi).

Got Mobile applies the four functions of management, POLC. Their mission is to become a master dealer in 5-10 years, supplying phones for other small businesses. There are many small steps that the company needs to accomplish to meet this goal. The organizing perspective focuses on up-to-date technology and knowledge about all wireless retail services though the internet and benchmarking other businesses, financially they are looking for investors to expand the Got Mobile chain, and has the support of Got Donuts if something goes wrong. As for the leading function, Peter motivates his employees by giving out incentives such as bonus' and time off. If the employees are doing something wrong, he would train them and guide them to get it done the right way. The last function is controlling, because Got Mobile is still small, their current strategy in monitoring is to see what the employees are doing firsthand. Another thing they do is they keep a track of sales, seeing how many sales an employee does a month and matching that with incentives or cue a need to modify goals. His outside sales are commission based, earning sales through special events around the area (Chi).

Strategically, their long term goal is expand their stores around the DFW area in Texas, to reach this target they must accomplish the tactical objective. Tactically their goal is to get every service provider in the store, and to get as much activation as possible; also, to increase traffic flow to their store, they will advertise, and offer coupon incentives to attract customers. To hasten this plan, they are also looking for investors in the near future to expand and eventually multiply. With day-to-day activities, operational tasks involves opening the store from 9am-9pm Monday-Friday, and then from Saturday to Sunday 11am-7:30pm. Every night, Peter inputs all the sales on a computer program, vacuums the store, and does an inventory check on the phones (Chi).

Every business comes with strengths and weaknesses, Got Mobile's strength relies on their excellent customer service, what separates them from competitors are their in-depth knowledge about their products and services. Any questions about cell phones and they are able to answer, such as: unlocked phones, service statistics, convenience information, and first hand knowledge of the latest phones because the owner changes phones monthly. Their weakness is traffic flow, since Got Mobile is relatively new, their disadvantage is exposure to the people; not many people know about the store yet, so they often lack customers. Threats they have are the normal competitions that many businesses have; such as other stores in the area, taking away market share. Opportunities they have are the different kinds of carriers they carry. Got Mobile wants to help customer's match their phone needs with whichever service that best fits them. Another opportunity is the moderately high median income for a household in the city, $56,751, which is more than Arlington, Grand Prairie, and Dallas (Wikipedia). Peter is able to take advantage of the extra wealth from the city to target more on a niche of the market that has normal to high credit (Chi).

Sales at Got Mobile have had its ups and downs since the start of the business. Their strategy is to always beat Wal-Marts prices and other competitors; they make sure of this by shopping around and checking the prices. As to differentiate themselves from other competitors, they have outstanding customer service, peter claims that his customer service surpasses his competitions by a mile and more; instead of just trying to pull a sale, him and his staff demonstrates a personal relationship to the client giving them valuable knowledge to serve customer satisfaction. Got Mobile focuses on people with normal to high credit; they do this because they would actually lose money if someone cancels the service and keeps the phone (Chi).

Though this business is still diminutive, it has potential into becoming successful with a bit of luck and a tad more of organizational skills. As for expansion and growth, Got Mobile will necessitate into a more formal way of management and also be requisite to go in depth with the four functions of management, POLC. It is not only sufficient but necessary for Got Mobile to recognize their SWOT analysis, STO, motivational, and competitive strategies to stay in business for the long term. Since wireless retail is a high risk and high reward option, and the fact that Got Mobile plans to expand with additional stores and employees, adapting to their weaknesses, enhancing their strengths, improving customer service, motivating their employees, and other management techniques will be the key premises they would need to work on for their success (Chi).

Two months start-up costs

Store fix up

$15,000

Inventory

$10,000

Advertising

$10,000

Miscellaneous (store items, rent, etc)

$20,000

(Chi)

Works Cited

1) Chi, Peter. Personal interview. 26 Mar. 2006.

2) "Personal Coverage Check." T-Mobile. 6 Apr. 2006.

3) "Watauga, Texas." Wikipedia. 6 Apr. 2006.