The executive president (CEO) of Vodafone Portugal stated today that Digi’s entry into the Portuguese market is not having a dramatic customer flight impact, stressing that the operator does not want to compete on price.
“I can’t say that the impact that the new entrant is having on Vodafone is an impact of dramatic customer flight,” said Luís Lopes, in a meeting with journalists at the operator’s headquarters in Parque das Nações, in Lisbon, regarding the celebration of the company’s 33rd anniversary.
“We don’t want to compete on price, we want to compete on offering what is called ‘value for money'”, he continued.
He admitted that there is a segment of the Portuguese consumer who only wants price, but “the majority of Portuguese people and companies want ‘value for money’, they want to have quality at a good price, it’s a different thing”, he highlighted.
“I am convinced that this is the main reason when an entrant enters the market and prices, in some cases, 80% cheaper than those charged by the operator, what one would expect, if people only want price, is: ‘this must be a complete drain on customers'”, he said, but this did not happen.
Vodafone “today has the number of customers it had when Digi entered”, he added.
“Obviously we lost customers to Digi and obviously we also gained some customers in this period of time”, highlighted Luís Lopes, reiterating that the brand and essence of the Vodafone company “do not compete on price”, but “on quality and offering the best price for the quality it provides”.
Vodafone “is largest in the countries where Vodafone operates directly, in Europe the largest countries we have where we operate directly are Germany, England, Turkey, and then Portugal”, the CEO also said.