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Sikhumbuzo Moyo
“YOU can’t price your product or service in a way that makes everyone happy but you should be sensitive to your customers’ affordability. Pegging prices will therefore require research.Price sensitive customers will not buy commodities they feel are overpriced but also too low prices might mean the commodities are of cheap quality. Find that balance between great product, great price, and still protect the value,” noted one researcher on new marketing strategies.

On Thursday, Bulawayo giants Highlanders, desperate for cash, increased membership subscription fees with the club saying the strategy was meant to take the club back to its owners, the supporters.

Ordinary membership is now $50, up from $30 while life membership shot to $300 from $80 with members now required to pay a renewal annual fee of $100.

The increases have been met with mixed feelings by Bosso followers with a large number totally against the increase as they feel the club leadership is now turning   their team into an elitist club. Perhaps  there is some grain of truth in that because anywhere else in the world, when your product is not selling well you reduce price or improve its value so that it attracts customers.

If membership remained below 5,000 when the ordinary membership card was at $30, what guarantee is there that it   will now make a spectacular rise when   its now $20 more, never mind the life membership which is now clearly out of reach for many?

It’s a fact that the club needs money but it should not be at the expense of its loyal and traditional supporters. What the club needs or needed to do was to devise marketing ways of selling their membership.

Instead of having people coming to the club office to buy these cards, the club needed to go out to the people and sell those cards. Why not decentralise the selling of these cards because surely, for someone in Victoria Falls to board a bus or train coming to Bulawayo for a $30 card or even $80 totally defeats logic. The club was in Victoria Falls during the offseason on a team building exercise, one can only hope that they took with them membership cards.

The club needs to find the balance between great product, great price, and still protect the value of the club.

A study by Global Business and Organisational Excellence on Real Madrid under the presidency of Florentino Pérez could as well be of great assistance to Highlanders.

When Perez took over in 2000, the club was $288 million in the red and Perez vowed to cancel that debt and turn around the club into a mega financial force.

In September 2000, Pérez presented his project for the club’s future. It was founded on the following pillars: the formulation of a feasibility plan to wipe out the club’s debt, in conjunction with the historic debt that had been weighing so heavily on the club’s accounts.

Secondly, the club’s expansive marketing policy has managed to diversify the income, giving increasing weight to revenues coming from the marketing area. The club’s specific commercial revenue totalled $149 million during the 2004-2005 season, representing 45 percent of total revenue. The club’s aim was for the income from marketing to continue to grow and to reach around 50 percent of the club’s total income.

Perez implemented a number of strategies, that also involved its supporters and members. Members were and still are regarded as “the official Real Madrid” fans. Part of the benefits of being a fully paid member include a free subscription to the club magazine, Hala Madrid, discounts in stores and club products. The club has more than 300,000 members and 15 million supporters.

Highlanders members apart from just voting for an executive, do not enjoy any benefit but the club deems it fit to increase its membership fees.

What they need is to think outside the box, to try and find out why people are not buying membership cards instead of adopting an “I don’t care attitude” and closing out, for example, a vendor at Egodini from becoming a Highlanders Football Club card carrying member.
Highlanders has never been an elitist organisation that thrives on the benevolence of cash barons or those who are relatively well off.

This is a people’s institution that has thrived on the goodwill of their contributions regardless of their socio-economic status. It is this realisation that must and should inspire the decision making and policy projections of an institution supported by millions of people.

The decision by the leadership to hike membership fees with little or no mention of any pragmatic, economic and context relevant benefits attached to the membership, while it could be of good intent, takes the club away from its rightful owners. If membership can not grow at $30 and $80, what will make it suddenly balloon  given the prevailing economic challenges? The move is meant to chase away genuine supporters. It is such announcements that feed into the belief that Bosso is on a retrogressive auto mode which require urgent attention before the worst happens. Determining membership of Highlanders on the strength of financial capacity, regardless of the demands of the day can never be a cherishable idea. It absolutely threatens the democratic dispensation  that has been enjoyed for years by followers  of this great club whose roots are straight  from royalty. Highlanders must reconnect with  its people. Highlanders is not a golf club and hence the leadership must urgently consider reviewing the joining fees to affordable levels.

It’s yet to be known which economics and marketing model inspired this announcement.

As it stands there are no tangible benefits for being a Highlanders Football Club card carrying member.

A quick check with South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns revealed that members were paying, depending on the card scheme that one would have chosen, a maximum of 200 rand per year.

“We are now in the process of coming up with a new model for our membership that will also include a number of benefits as we are working with a reputable mobile telecommunications company. Come  back to us in a month I’m sure we would have covered a lot of ground,” said Eazy Mampye, the Sundowns’ national chairperson yesterday.