Vodafone in a new market environment

Vodafone Egypt was established as the second mobile operator after Mobinil on 1998, according to Egypt's direction to encourage foreign investments to enter the Egyptian market. At that time there was a great political stability and the government provided all the facilities needed for investors to come to the country.

Vodafone faced a fierce competition from the first operator (Mobinil) which had higher customer base and better marketing campaigns, yet Vodafone on the other side, depended on Ericsson as the main provider of cell sites and network technology which is the latest technology at this time, and provided the best customer service to its new customers and set new standards in the market.

On the first 2 years there was an increase demand to cover the whole country and customers were happy with each new cell site installed as this will enhance their experience, and always the customer satisfaction surveys were reflecting their trust in the network quality.

Vodafone faced suddenly an aggressive media and public campaigns claiming that cell sites are causing sever health hazards like brain cancer and drowsiness, the situation have been escalated and there was a great fear from installing any cell sites near urban areas, and even some people destroyed the cell sites installed in their house or fields near their villages.

Vodafone had to take an actions immediately before this public rage would stop all its operations in Egypt, so they contracted a public relation company to raise the public awareness about the technology being used, and that it is totally safe, also made some newspaper interviews with well-known telecommunication engineers that denied these rumors, in the same time they printed flyers and distributed in all its stores to assure their customers that they are abiding to the European and the Egyptian health and safety regulations when it comes to the cells sites installing in urban areas.

Please Answer the following questions:

1. Identify at least 3 Macro environmental factors that affected Vodafone, stating if this effect was positive or negative. Justify your answer from the above case.
2. Identify at least 3 Micro environmental factors that affected Vodafone, stating if this effect was positive or negative. Justify your answer from the above case.

Which response and strategy, Vodafone have decided to take to face the media attack regarding its cell sites effects on