Globe wants what???
By Randell Tiongson on December 24th, 2009“It’s important to know how our prepaid customers think. If you’re a telco, how do you convince a farmer to spend his money on prepaid load over food?” – Ernest Cu, President and CEO of Globe Telecoms
From http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/12/19/09/getting-know-sophisticated-prepaid-user
What was that? Globe wants to convince farmers to spend their money on prepaid load over food? Did I read that correctly? Whatever happened to business ethics, corporate social responsibility or just plain decency? I know that profit is the main reason for business, but this is another issue and it’s absolutely, well… wrong!
Poverty is the country’s biggest problem; lack of financial literacy is a leading reason why poverty is very difficult to battle — then we have corporate giants who even brag about how they want to milk us Pinoys the limited money we have.
This makes me even more passionate about the advocacy to bring financial literacy to Pinoys! Hmmm, maybe I should also change my telecom provider.
My answer to Ernest Cu is that “you don’t! you just have to convince farmers that globe can help their livelihood”
not a good idea to make money… mission to help improve quality of life should be the focus
Poor choice of words by the guy.
I agree with Zadkiel. Stop scamming your customers and treating them like simpletons, and treat them as partners in your business.
I’m not enraged. The answer to the question is if Globe can show that spending for load is capital, i.e. it could be used to make more money so that farmers could buy more food a little later.
I don’t really believe in CSR since whatever the consumers will do, it’s their choice —good or bad. Since we Filipinos have limited money left anyway, the “drive to milk our money” will benefit both parties — improved services on the part of the consumers and more sales for these companies.
If that does not happen as it should, we might as well ditch Globe telecoms. Always remember that in a market system, the consumer is king.
I think we should look at the context where Mr. Cu made this remark. I’ve met the guy when he gave a talk to HSBC executives and he strikes me as a very level headed fellow, who has a sense of social responsibility, a trait imbued in all Ayala executives from whose group of companies I came from many years ago.
probably just another bad analogy… still, what a thing to compare, food and load.