Research Proposal: Adopting Green Marketing and Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia
Statement of the Problem
With the continuing rise in environmental awareness and concern, companies recognize that it pays to be green. As well as acting in an environmentally responsible way, it is important for companies to communicate their green credentials (BNET Editorial, 2007). Consumer awareness of environmental issues has grown considerably in the past few years and presents a good opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves through green marketing. However, it also presents risks if handled incorrectly. Instead of building brand loyalty, spurious green claims can alienate the very market organizations are trying to appeal to. The bottom line is; don’t just say green – be green (Peter Lisney and Midlands Business Development Ltd, 2008).
Although no consumer product has a zero impact on the environment, in business, the terms “green product” and “environmental product” are used commonly to describe those that strive to protect or enhance the natural environment by conserving energy and/or resources and reducing or eliminating use of toxic agents, pollution, and waste (J. Ottman, 1997). Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins write in their book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution that greener, more sustainable products need to dramatically increase the productivity of natural resources, follow biological/cyclical production models, encourage dematerialization, and reinvest in and contribute to the planet’s “natural” capital (P. Hawken, A. Lovins, and L. H. Lovins, 1999). Escalating energy prices, concerns over foreign oil dependency, and calls for energy conservation are creating business opportunities for energy-efficient products, clean energy, and other environmentally sensitive innovations and products—collectively known as “cleantech” (Business Week, 2005).
In 1994, Philips launched the “EarthLight,” a super energy-efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb designed to be an environmentally preferable substitute for the traditional energy-intensive incandescent bulb. The CFL’s clumsy shape, however, was incompatible with most conventional lamps, and sales languished. After studying consumer response, Philips reintroduced the product in 2000 under the name “Marathon,” to emphasize the bulb’s five year life. New designs offered the look and versatility of conventional incandescent light bulbs and the promise of more than $20 in energy savings over the product’s life span compared to incandescent bulbs. The new bulbs were also certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star Label. Repositioning CFL bulbs’ features into advantages that resonated with consumer values—convenience, ease-of-use, and credible cost savings—ultimately sparked an annual sales growth of 12 percent in a mature product market (G. Fowler, 2002).
Philips’ experience provides a valuable lesson on how to avoid the common pitfall of “green marketing myopia.” Philips called its original entry “Earthlight” to communicate the CFL bulbs’ environmental advantage. While noble, the benefit appealed to only the deepest green niche of consumers. The vast majority of consumers, however, will ask, “If I use ‘green’ products, what’s in it for me?” In practice, green appeals are not likely to attract mainstream consumers unless they also offer a desirable benefit, such as cost-savings or improved product performance ( K. Alston and J. P. Roberts, 2006). To avoid green marketing myopia, marketers must fulfill consumer needs and interests beyond what is good for the environment (A. Ottman et al., 2006).
Aims and Objectives
This research aims to define green marketing and green marketing myopia from different point of view and determine how organizations adopt green marketing and avoid green marketing myopia. It presents a model namely eco-effective product design (Adapted from Frei 1998) to understand how green product manufacturing organizations develop their products.
Broad Research Question
To determine how organizations adopt green marketing and avoid green marketing myopia.
Literature Review
Green marketing refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way. The obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service's "greenness" as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly. The not-so-obvious assumption of green marketing is that consumers will be willing to pay more for green products than they would for a less-green comparable alternative product - an assumption that, in my opinion, has not been proven conclusively. While green marketing is growing greatly as increasing numbers of consumers are willing to back their environmental consciousnesses with their dollars, it can be dangerous. The public tends to be skeptical of green claims to begin with and companies can seriously damage their brands and their sales if a green claim is discovered to be false or contradicted by a company's other products or practices. Presenting a product or service as green when it's not is called green washing. Green marketing can be a very powerful marketing strategy though when it's done right (www.about.com).
There is a degree of confusion over the term “green marketing.” Some believe that it refers solely to the promotion or advertising of products with environmental characteristics such as “recyclable,” “organic,” or “environmentally friendly.” While these terms are widely used by “green” companies, green marketing is a much broader concept, one that can be applied to consumer goods, industrial goods and some services. Green marketing incorporates a variety of activities, including modifications to products, changes to the production and distribution processes, packaging changes, and modifications to marketing communications (BNET Editorial, 2007).
Green marketing has been around for longer than one might suspect – in fact, a workshop on ‘ecological marketing’ was held by the American Marketing Association in 1975. Since then, the definition has been refined and segmented into 3 main buckets:
Retailing Definition: The marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe
Social Marketing Definition: The development and marketing of products designed to minimize negative effects on the physical environment or to improve its quality.
Environmental Definition: The efforts by organizations to produce, promote, package, and reclaim products in a manner that is sensitive or responsive to ecological concerns.
All three of these definitions speak to the fact that green marketing involves informing consumers about initiatives organizations have undertaken that will benefit the environment, with the overall goal of improving sales or reducing costs (Torque Customer Strategy 2008).
Reducing the company’s impact on the environment is the right thing to do and can even save the money. Effectively communicating organization’s environmental policies tells the customers, workforce and shareholders organization care. It builds loyalty, enhances the brand and should grow sales. Going green as a company not only crosses all boundaries within a business, it also extends to customers and suppliers. That’s why getting the message across both externally and internally is critical if organizations are to take full advantage of the efforts (www.midlandsbusinessdevelopment.co.uk).
Green marketing must satisfy two objectives: improved environmental quality and customer satisfaction. Misjudging either or overemphasizing the former at the expense of the latter can be termed “green marketing myopia.” In 1960, Harvard business professor Theodore Levitt introduced the concept of “marketing myopia” in a now-famous and influential article in the Harvard Business Review (T. Levitt, 1960). In it, he characterized the common pitfall of companies’ tunnel vision, which focused on “managing products” (that is, product features, functions, and efficient production) instead of “meeting customers’ needs” (that is, adapting to consumer expectations and anticipation of future desires). Levitt warned that a corporate preoccupation on products rather than consumer needs was doomed to failure because consumers select products and new innovations that offer benefits they desire. Research indicates that many green products have failed because of green marketing myopia—marketers’ myopic focus on their products’ “greenness” over the broader expectations of consumers or other market players such as regulators or activists. Aside from offering environmental benefits that do not meet consumer preferences, green marketing myopia can also occur when green products fail to provide credible, substantive environmental benefits (J. Lawrence, 1991).
Roper ASW’s 2002 “Green Gauge Report” finds that the top reasons consumers do not buy green products included beliefs that they require sacrifices—inconvenience, higher costs, lower performance—without significant environmental benefits (Roper ASW “Green Gauge Report 2002). Ironically, despite what consumers think, a plethora of green products available in the marketplace are in fact desirable because they deliver convenience, lower operating costs, and/or better performance. Often these are not marketed along with their green benefits, so consumers do not immediately recognize them as green and form misperceptions about their benefits. When consumers are convinced of the desirable “non-green” benefits of environmental products, they are more inclined to adopt those. The analysis of past research and marketing strategies finds that successful green products have avoided green marketing myopia by following three important principles: “The Three Cs” of consumer value positioning, calibration of consumer knowledge, and credibility of product claims (A. Ottman et al., 2006).
Methodology
The nature of this research is explorative, therefore, qualitative method is required. I found secondary data, case based study and interpretative approach would be an appropriate strategy as there exists some previous research in the similar area. To understand how green product manufacturing organizations develop their products a model namely eco-effective product design (Adapted from Frei 1998) is used.
Figure 1: Model of eco-effective product design. (Adapted from Frei 1998)
Data will be collected from ten business organizations selected using random sampling technique as previous researchers used more or less same amount of randomly selected samples for similar type of study. Primary data will be collected by personal interview. Unstructured questionnaire will be used to collect data. Data will be analyzed using interpretative technique.
Research Implication
Green marketing is gaining significant attention from both CEOs and consumers. Given that a carefully crafted green marketing strategy can earn credibility with customers and provide a platform for revenue growth, it’s an area worthy of additional consideration (Torque Customer Strategy 2008). Bangladeshi business organizations can save energy, reduce cost and increase revenue by adopting green marketing strategy. The result of research will assist decision makers, managers, businessmen, academicians, practitioners and other concerned to do better understanding of green marketing, green marketing myopia and how green product manufacturing organizations develop their products. This information will help the business organizations adopting green marketing by avoiding green marketing myopia. Green marketing myopia has led to ineffective products and consumer reluctance (A. Ottman et al., 2006).
Timeline
Period Activities
15 days Preliminary Preparation
15 days Fieldwork and Data Collection
10 days Data Analysis
10 days Draft Report Preparation
10 days Final Report Preparation
References
Peter Lisney and Midlands Business Development Ltd 2008. Green Marketing Strategy Checklist v1, p.01.
K. Alston and J. P. Roberts, “Partners in New Product Development: SC Johnson and the Alliance for Environmental Innovation,” Corporate Environmental Strategy 6, no. 2: pp.111–28.
A. Ottman et al "Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia: Ways to Improve Consumer Appeal for Environmentally Preferable Products",http://www.greenmarketing.com/articles/Stafford-MyopiaJune06.pdf (Retrieved on 07 September 2009).
J. Ottman, Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation (Lincolnwood [Chicago]: NTC Business Books, 1997).
P. Hawken, A. Lovins, and L. H. Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1999).
Business Week, “Alternate Power: A Change in the Wind,” 4 July 2005, pp.36–37.
G. Fowler, “‘Green Sales Pitch Isn’t Moving Many Products,” Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2002.
Frei, M. (1998). Die öko-effektive Produktentwicklung – Der Beitrag des Umweltmanagements zur
Entwicklung umweltgerechter Produkte. Dissertation Nr. 12593 der ETH Zürich, Zürich.
T. Levitt, “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review 28, July–August (1960): pp.24–47.
J. Lawrence, “The Green Revolution: Case Study,” Advertising Age, 29 January 1991, p.12.
Roper ASW “Green Gauge Report 2002: Americans Perspective on Environmental Issues” November 2002, http://www.windustry.com/conferences/november2002/nov2002_proceedings/ plenary/greenguage2002.pdf (Retrieved on 07 September 2009).
Torque Customer Strategy 2008, www.torquecustomerstrategy.com (Retrieved on 07 September 2009).
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/lr/green_marketing/289619/1/ (Retrieved on 07 September 2009).
www.bnet.com (Retrieved on 07 September 2009).
Saturday, November 26, 2011
STUDENTS PREFERENCE OF WARELESS INTERNET SERVICE
WiMAX Research Background
WiMAX is the standards based technology that was developed in the early 2000, though we can say that its not mature enough as compare to other technologies for example; Wi-Fi, 3g GPRS. At the moment most of the organizations are considering to deploy the WiMAX technology because it can help them to generate handsome amount of revenue and the value added services to their customers. As far as the threats to WiMAX technology are concerned the major threats are authentication, encryption and availability. Bangladesh Internet service providers have over 1.0 million (10 lakh) subscribers and BTCL has about 30,000 internet users. Mobile phone and PSTN operators have approximately 5.0 million (50 lakh) internet users. According to Grameen Phone 3.4 million subscriber access through hand set and Edge Modem. The government is going to allow 170 more private firms to provide internet connections. The government has given the licenses to two companies to launch WiMAX for providing the internet service allover the country at a low cost.
Literature Review
In this technological world, we have so many technologies that help us in every aspect of our daily life such as transportation, communication etc. WiMAX is also one of the emerging technology that provide us high speed mobile data and telecommunication services. WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access and it is based on IEEE 802.16 standards. It works same as Wi-Fi does but it is more improved and efficient than WiFi and it can route data to Wi-Fi that is Wi-Fi devices can take advantage of WiMAX connection. WiMAX technology provides higher speed connection up to 70 Mbps over the area of 30 miles. There is no need for line of sight connection between subscriber terminals and the base station in WiMAX technology and it can support hundreds if not thousands of subscribers from a single base station. It is also specified in 802.16 standards that it will supports low latency applications such as voice, video, and Internet access at the same time.
WiMAX is the next-generation of wireless technology designed to enable pervasive, high-speed mobile Internet access to the widest array of devices including notebook PCs, handsets, smartphones, and consumer electronics such as gaming devices, cameras, camcorders, music players, and more. As the fourth generation (4G) of wireless technology, WiMAX delivers low-cost, open networks and is the first all IP mobile Internet solution enabling efficient and scalable networks for data, video, and voice. As a major driver in the support and development of WiMAX, Intel has designed embedded WiMAX solutions for a variety of mobile devices supporting the future of high-speed broadband on-the-go.
Problem Definition
Management decision problem Should the students’ purchase WiMAX service?
Marketing research problem To determine the students’ preferences and purchase intention for WiMAX.
Objectives
Broad Statement
To determine the students attitude toward WiMAX Internet Service.
Specific Components
1. To determine the service attitudes of WiMAX.
2. To determine the appropriate charge for the service.
3. To determine the appropriate package.
Problem Variables
1. Dependent Variables Students’ preference for WiMAX Internet Service.
2. Independent Variables
Speed
Monthly Charge
Network Coverage
Simplicity
Promotion
Billing System
Duration of Package
Initial Price
Value Added Service
Research design
Type of research
Descriptive research will be conducted to describe the characteristics of Internet users (students) and to make predictions about Internet use.
Data collection method
Data required for this study to identify the attitudes of students toward Internet use will be conducted by personal interview. The personal interview will be conducted to determine the factors that influence the attitude of students toward Internet use.
Sampling design
Target population Elements: Students
Sample Size: 30
Sampling Unit: Public university & Private University.
Extent: Dhaka City
Time: 2009
Sampling Technique Nonprobability: Convenience Sampling
Scaling Technique 9 point likert scale
Data Analysis
Data will be analyzed using cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is a class of techniques used to classify objects or cases into relatively homogeneous groups called clusters.
Cluster analysis will use in this study for the purpose of :
1. Segmenting the market.
2. Understanding buyer behaviors.
3. Identifying opportunities for WiMAX service.
Cost and Timing:
This research might incur cost 3500 for different purpose, and the cost will be managed from the assignees of the research. It will take approximate 13 days to complete. The days are needed for the following reasons.
Possible starting day
Possible completion day
Possible submission day
WiMAX is the standards based technology that was developed in the early 2000, though we can say that its not mature enough as compare to other technologies for example; Wi-Fi, 3g GPRS. At the moment most of the organizations are considering to deploy the WiMAX technology because it can help them to generate handsome amount of revenue and the value added services to their customers. As far as the threats to WiMAX technology are concerned the major threats are authentication, encryption and availability. Bangladesh Internet service providers have over 1.0 million (10 lakh) subscribers and BTCL has about 30,000 internet users. Mobile phone and PSTN operators have approximately 5.0 million (50 lakh) internet users. According to Grameen Phone 3.4 million subscriber access through hand set and Edge Modem. The government is going to allow 170 more private firms to provide internet connections. The government has given the licenses to two companies to launch WiMAX for providing the internet service allover the country at a low cost.
Literature Review
In this technological world, we have so many technologies that help us in every aspect of our daily life such as transportation, communication etc. WiMAX is also one of the emerging technology that provide us high speed mobile data and telecommunication services. WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access and it is based on IEEE 802.16 standards. It works same as Wi-Fi does but it is more improved and efficient than WiFi and it can route data to Wi-Fi that is Wi-Fi devices can take advantage of WiMAX connection. WiMAX technology provides higher speed connection up to 70 Mbps over the area of 30 miles. There is no need for line of sight connection between subscriber terminals and the base station in WiMAX technology and it can support hundreds if not thousands of subscribers from a single base station. It is also specified in 802.16 standards that it will supports low latency applications such as voice, video, and Internet access at the same time.
WiMAX is the next-generation of wireless technology designed to enable pervasive, high-speed mobile Internet access to the widest array of devices including notebook PCs, handsets, smartphones, and consumer electronics such as gaming devices, cameras, camcorders, music players, and more. As the fourth generation (4G) of wireless technology, WiMAX delivers low-cost, open networks and is the first all IP mobile Internet solution enabling efficient and scalable networks for data, video, and voice. As a major driver in the support and development of WiMAX, Intel has designed embedded WiMAX solutions for a variety of mobile devices supporting the future of high-speed broadband on-the-go.
Problem Definition
Management decision problem Should the students’ purchase WiMAX service?
Marketing research problem To determine the students’ preferences and purchase intention for WiMAX.
Objectives
Broad Statement
To determine the students attitude toward WiMAX Internet Service.
Specific Components
1. To determine the service attitudes of WiMAX.
2. To determine the appropriate charge for the service.
3. To determine the appropriate package.
Problem Variables
1. Dependent Variables Students’ preference for WiMAX Internet Service.
2. Independent Variables
Speed
Monthly Charge
Network Coverage
Simplicity
Promotion
Billing System
Duration of Package
Initial Price
Value Added Service
Research design
Type of research
Descriptive research will be conducted to describe the characteristics of Internet users (students) and to make predictions about Internet use.
Data collection method
Data required for this study to identify the attitudes of students toward Internet use will be conducted by personal interview. The personal interview will be conducted to determine the factors that influence the attitude of students toward Internet use.
Sampling design
Target population Elements: Students
Sample Size: 30
Sampling Unit: Public university & Private University.
Extent: Dhaka City
Time: 2009
Sampling Technique Nonprobability: Convenience Sampling
Scaling Technique 9 point likert scale
Data Analysis
Data will be analyzed using cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is a class of techniques used to classify objects or cases into relatively homogeneous groups called clusters.
Cluster analysis will use in this study for the purpose of :
1. Segmenting the market.
2. Understanding buyer behaviors.
3. Identifying opportunities for WiMAX service.
Cost and Timing:
This research might incur cost 3500 for different purpose, and the cost will be managed from the assignees of the research. It will take approximate 13 days to complete. The days are needed for the following reasons.
Possible starting day
Possible completion day
Possible submission day
VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN COMPETITIVE EDGE
Effective viral marketing campaign for Bangladesh: an analysis
ABSTRACT
Global competition on the marketplace requires thorough planning and careful investment of capital. Start-up companies with a limited budget need to reduce cost wherever feasible. Eliminating promotional costs by using viral marketing is a big saving for a company and viral marketing has become the number one option to create dynamic brand awareness. The power of online influence, namely, “word of mouse” plays a key role in the spreading of a message. The key driver in viral marketing is the effectiveness of unsolicited, electronic referrals to create awareness, trigger interest, and generate sales or product awareness. Viral marketing process influences consumers’ actual behaviors, particularly in a cluttered business environment. In this paper I want to show how viral marketing influence consumer decision making process and tried to relate a model with this process. The research output identified tie strength is more effective for viral marketing than demographic similarity. Demographic similarity had a negative influence on each stage of the decision making process. The tourism sector of Bangladesh can be developed by using this model. By creating a Chat room or virtual group the country can developed the tourism product. People from other country will join the chat room and gathers information about different tourism site of Bangladesh. A Web link will support them to have virtual tour to different tourist site. The foreigner will verify the product and get enough viral information. They compare the viral information with virtual tour and videos, and finally start viral marketing to friends and copartners. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological contributions of my work and of managerial implication of these findings for global marketer interested in strategies for leveraging peer-to-peer referral networks.
INTRODUCTION
The Internet greatly facilitates consumer communication. E-mail, face book and other social communication site allow consumers to share information far more easily than ever before. This interconnectivity is a global matter that facilitates both positive and negative word-of-mouth. This distribution of information can not be easily controlled by marketer or brand manager. It also challenges the existence of geographical market, and hence the ability to conduct local marketing strategies.
From the point of view of marketer viral marketing is the best possibilities that challenge the existing Communication system of the company. The goal of viral marketing is to use consumer-to-consumer communication as opposed to company-to-consumer communication to disseminate information about a product or service, thereby leading to more rapid and cost effective adoption by the market.
Message distribution can either be intentional on unintentional. Consumer sometimes send message to their friend via facebook when they are delighted by purchasing a product. The most common version of intentional viral marketing occurs when consumers willingly become promoters of a product or service and spread the word to their friends; they are driven to do so either through an explicit incentive or simply out of a desire to share the product benefits with friends. As example, creating a facebook group and yahoo group promote the tourism sector of Bangladesh toward the people of this country and abroad.
The viral marketing concept and this example suggest that marketer can leverage the power of interpersonal networks to promote a product or service. The concept assume that electronic, peer-to-peer communications are an effective means to transform communication networks into influence networks, capturing recipients’ attention, influencing interest, and eventually leading to adoption or sales.
E-mail seems here to stay, and there is no doubt that peer-to-peer, e-mail based communication will continue to play an informational and influential role on recipients’ behavior. The inauguration of spam, unsolicited bulk e-mail, and e-mail based electronic viruses has made recipients suspicious of most unsolicited e-mails. Consumer experience a high level of noise in their day-to-day electronic communication and for viral marketing campaigns to be designed more effectively, there is a need to better understand which online referrals are likely to cut through the clutter and which are not.
To better understand why and how viral marketing can be effective, we must understand its pass-along process and its underlying mechanism of influence. While the existing word-of-mouth communication inform us, it is important to note that electronic referrals differ from their “offline” counterparts in two significant ways: they are electronic in nature, no face –to-face communication and those referrals are usually unsolicited, they are sent to recipients who not looking for information, and hence are not necessarily willing to pay attention to them.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it. In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product. Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.
Viral marketing is a term coined to define the productive ways a marketing message is made available. And corporates are using the medium to circulate brands and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus, as efficiently as Information Technology has entered households and businesses. Firms are now structuring their businesses in a way that allows them to grow like a virus and lock out the existing brick and mortar competitors through innovative pricing and exploitation of competitors' distribution channels. The beauty of this marketing technique is that none of it requires any marketing. Customers, who have caught the virus, do the selling.
Organizations are realizing this only too well these days as they jump on to the social media and viral marketing bandwagon to gain visibility and immense popularity in a short span. Recently, Moonfruit, the little known web designing firm, unleashed its cool campaign where it rained Apple iPhones on people who followed it on Twitter or Re-Tweeted their promotional message. Marked by remarkable success, where the company enjoyed enormous brand awareness, resulting in increased sales queries and orders, the campaign became so popular that Twitter had to intervene to make sure Moonfruit didn’t hijack Twitter in the course of its promotions. And the promotional campaign was a miniscule cost when compared with the success that the company derived.
This power of new generation marketing tools like Twitter and Facebook are being tapped into generously, not just by companies in the business of digital products and services but also by organizations that sell brick-and-mortar products for the real world. Lastminute.com, the travel, entertainment and lifestyles portal recently launched a Viral Video of the YouTube kind, where a man in underwear walking along the road in Britain is encountered by former BBC weather forecaster, Michael Fish, who uses a big fish as his bat to beat ice on him.
Objectives of the study:
The main objective of the study is to find out the ways how viral marketing can be effectively used in Bangladesh. In the light of this main objective, the specific objectives of the study are as follows:
1. To identify the types of viral marketing campaign applicable for Bangladesh.
2. To find out whether stronger relationship or geographical dissimilarities affect viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh.
3. To identify effective strategies for viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh.
4. To identify the problems of viral marketing.
5. Finally, recommendations for improving viral marketing in Bangladesh.
Methodology of the study:
Nature of research design:
The descriptive research design is used in this study.
Sample size:
In this study, students of various public and private Universities have been selected for the survey. The total number of sample is thirty.
Data collection:
Non-probabilistic sampling technique has been preferred for the study. Most of the data of the study has been collected from primary source. A structured questionnaire has been used for the purpose of colleting primary data for theoretical justification of the study. Different local and international published articles, websites and different text books related to viral marketing had also been reviewed.
Data Analysis:
In this study, multiple correlation coefficient, R², which is also called coefficient of multiple determination has been used to determine the strength of relationship between tie strength and demographic similarity which have a contribution in explaining the effectiveness of viral marketing. To measure the relationship ‘7 point Likert Scale’ has been applied.
FINDINGS:
Types of Viral marketing campaign:
Now-a-days viral marketing campaign is popular and very frequently used marketing strategy that relies largely on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. In order to generate exponential enhancements in brand awareness along with the help of self-replicating viral processes, viral marketing and viral advertising use pre-existing social networks. The term "viral advertising" itself signifies that the idea behind this marketing talks about passing on and sharing interesting and entertaining content, which is usually sponsored by a brand looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images, and even text.
Increase competition, rising media rate and scattered consumer concentration rise expenditure traditional marketing campaign in Bangladesh. However, almost every internet marketer likes to promote his product through viral concept. Viral marketing earned popularity in a very short time because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, great affordability, good targeting, and the incredibly rapid response rate. However, the ability to obtain a large number of interested people at an extremely economical budget remains its most powerful attribute. Viral marketing, therefore, can be an effective marketing campaign tools for the marketers of Bangladesh.
The use of the internet and the effects of e-mail advertising, the business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing. Consumers become annoyance with the spam mail or junk mail. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. This would be a positive word-of-mouth recommendation.
Types of viral marketing campaign applicable for Bangladesh are:
• Pass - along: A message which encourages the user to send the message to others. Usually, it tries to form a chain where a message placed at the bottom of the e-mail prompts the reader to forward the message further.
• Incentivized viral: In this type of marketing, a gift or a reward is assured for either passing a message along or providing someone else's address. This can dramatically increase referrals. This significantly increases referrals and becomes all the effective when the offer demands another person to take action.
• Edgy Gossip/Buzz marketing: Edgy gossips are basically ads and messages capable of creating controversy by challenging the restrictions of taste or suitability. Talk on the given controversy often lead to buzz and word of mouth advertising. As for instance, before a movie is released, starts mostly create controversies like getting engaged or arrested, or become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention to them. A little more refined and subtle form of this marketing campaign is called undercover viral marketing campaign.
• Undercover: A viral message presented as a cool or unusual page, activity, or piece of news, without obvious incitements to link or pass along. In Undercover Marketing, it is not immediately apparent that anything is being marketed
• User-managed database: With this type of viral marketing campaign users create and manage their own lists of contacts through a database given by an online service provider. They invite other members to participate in their community and thus create a viral. It is basically a self-propagating chain of contacts that grows and persuades others to sign up also.
Affect of stronger relationship or geographical dissimilarities in viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh:
In Bangladesh relationship plays an important rule in successfulness of any campaign. There is a strong relationship with friends and family members. So, if any one belongs to friends or family groups send a message or product advertisement, it creates value to the recipients and they curiously read the mail and most of the time forward it to the members of the group. This whole process creates a viral effect to the members of the friends or family groups. The stronger relationship creates reliability, so they read any message or shows positive appeal for the product or for the cause suggested by their friends. Geographic dissimilarity have stronger influence, people unknown person have no physical existence because they are from geographically dissimilar region. The value, norms and behavior of geographically dissimilar people are different. So the product or cause suggested by them has no influence to the people. Before starting the viral marketing campaign the first thing is to choose the friendship group or family groups, which work as a point of reference for the product or for introducing an important cause.
I conducted the study on 30 respondents both manually and via e-mail. I do not use third party e-mail address because of non-response error and limited time to conduct follow up studies on non-respondent. The study is important to gain the real scenario of viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh. The study also found which product has more viral effect in generating awareness.
H1. The stronger the tie, the more likely viral communications are to generate awareness.
H2. The more demographically dissimilar the tie, the more likely it is to generate interest.
Tie strength, H1 is supported(R Sqaure= .856). Tie strength significantly influenced the decision of the recipient to open the e-mail he or she received, hence facilitating awareness.
Model Summary
Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate
1 .893(a) .856 .832 1.86990
a Predictors: (Constant), tie strength, demographic similarity
Demographic similarity is, as expected, the only dimension that had a significant impact in models. Under these testing condition, electronic referrals from demographically dissimilar ties had more influence than referrals demographically similar ones at each stage of the decision-making process.
Factors Positive influence Negative influence No influence
Tie Strength 70% 30% 0%
Demographic Similiarity 30% 60% 10%
Figure : Comparison of responses between Tie Strength and Demographic Similarity.
Coefficients(a)
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig.
B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) 2.295 1.461 1.571 .128
Tie strength .382 .175 .381 2.185 .038
Demographic similarity .209 .147 .248 1.422 .166
a Dependent Variable: viral marketing communication
The strength of the relationship stipulated by the regression equation can be determined by using appropriate measure of association. The strength of the relationship is measured by square of multiple correlation coefficients, R Square that is also called the coefficient of multiple determinations. From R Square value it is clear that there is a strong relationship between dependent and independent variable.
There are two dependent variables –tie strength & demographic similarity. From t ratio it is obvious that tie strength makes more contribution in explaining the effectiveness of viral marketing than demographic similarity.
Effective strategies for viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh:
Many times a successful viral marketing campaign can be developed through pre-existing social networks or online communities like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, or digg. By using the information on these social networks marketers can determine what your market wants and needs. Implementing an effective viral marketing strategy is a good way to get people talking about your business. Viral marketing or "word of mouth" marketing is what we want, and it’s the best way to get our business to work for us. But how can we implement an effective viral marketing strategy? The viral marketing campaign tools and techniques described below can also be used to develop an effective strategy for the business of Bangladesh.
1. Give products or services away:
"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary (Wilson, 2000). People love FREE stuff. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. The idea is that we attract people’s attention with free services or products then begin to sell them the entire package. Even in a worst-case scenario when we can’t convert a consumer into a sale, you are still providing the consumer with a service for free which will in turn give us positive feedback.
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
FREE stuff shall be easy for people to receive. If they have to click 3 times and fill out a form most likely they will not go through all the trouble. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation.
3. Reward for referrals:
Another way that encourages viral marketing campaign is reward for referrals. Referrals can be rewarded for referring a new client so that referrals will continue to spread your message. Many companies offer a finder’s fee for new clients that come from referrers. This can generate incredible word of mouth. In this day and age every other person is interested in the Internet and wants to know how to gain exposure. If marketers can keep people happy they will definitely spread the word and help make your viral marketing campaign a success.
4. Takes advantage of others' resources:
The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors, who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.
5. Be Controversial:
Creating controversy is one of the most effective viral marketing tools. Controversy stems gossip. People love to gossip, so if you can find a way to harness some decent gossip, the marketing takes care of itself. One doesn’t need to be rude or try to personally hurt anyone but often when one presents his/her opinion in a strong voice there’s a good chance that someone will disagree. Hollywood spends a lot of marketing dollars on who’s doing what. In turn they create a great deal of buzz.
6. Utilizes existing communication networks:
Most people are social. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion. Utilizing these social networks of people is a simple viral marketing tool.
7. Create Own Buzz:
Create own blog where one can talk about all the new and exciting things that are happening in the company. Blogging is a great way to keep interested viewers involved and keep them returning to company’s site. When users begin to return to company’s blog, it builds a community. The company has to make sure that it keeps up with the community and comments. It is very important to make sure one’s has a voice when someone is responding to his/her blog. This is also a very good platform to exercise your controversial opinion.
8. RSS Feeds –
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is generally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories. RSS Feeds are now used to automatically
distribute content to blog and to distribute articles to web sites owners and ezine publishers throughout web.
Scope of Future research
This paper more importantly opens the way to further experiments and manipulations. For instance, one may use this methodology to investigate the best incentives to trigger “send to a friend” behaviors, and to study the stages most affected by such incentives. Researchers interested in brand equity may also find this methodology valuable for studying whether of not old and reputable companies are more likely to effectively leverage their consumers’ personal networks, or if new lesser known firms are equally capable of triggering such behavior; they also wish to examine which stages of decision making are most likely to be affected by superior brand equity. There is also a scope to examine cultural differences impact on trust, intimacy, or social power that have a influence on viral marketing
MODEL DEVELOPMENT
No
Yes
Figure : The Viral Marketing Model (Figure by John-Robert Skrob)
Mailing lists are the basis for contact among the national and international users. The purpose of the community is to provide a free service for everyone who uses software. Quick and practical help is given to everyone who needs it. Software is difficult to learn, therefore, a beginner’s guide, which can be found in the software archive, gives valuable information about the most frequently asked questions. More technically complicated problems and training material can be got from service providers found under the Consultancies. The listed companies are selected according to their competence in projects.
Customer recommendation is the key to Internet advertising. Implementing recommend-it- Buttons on the Website is one way to ease the transfer of information to others. In addition, a link in the e-mail signature should be integrated with which the origin of the marketing communication channel can be shown. To attract more user to the company homepage a linking strategy needs to be developed. Reciprocal links with carefully targeted complementary sites are free and draw potential customers. A list of prospective buyers enables the company to make contact with the individuals and explain the value of the product to them. Members of specific trade groups are interested in the latest innovations and can receive such information through newsletters. Setting up a moderated virtual community including chatrooms allows the user group to gather and exchange vital information pertaining to software in real time. Observing and participating in chatrooms dealing with company themes can be used to spread information about the product. A company member can give founded advice as to the application and purpose of the software and what advantages derived from implementing this software.
The tourism sector of Bangladesh can be developed by using this model. By creating a Chat room or vertual group the country can developed the tourism product. People from other country will join the chat room and grather information about different tourism site of Bangladesh. A Web link will support them to have vertual tour to different tourist site. The foreigner will verify the product and get enough viral information. They compare the viral information with vertual tour and videos, and finally start viral marketing to friends and coopartners.
RECOMMENDATION
Research implication in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is going to digitalization. Digital Bangladesh means it will be an e-state; all of its activities like governance, commerce, education, agriculture etc. will be powered by computer and Internet. Today the entire world is gradually becoming a digital planet. Almost every state is heading towards a knowledge based society and Bangladesh cannot stay away from the advantage out of it.
The development of ICT will help a massive expansion of viral marketing companies can reduce the promotional effort and expenditure. It will help the country to promote the product in inexpensive way. The emerging product of Bangladesh for viral marketing is the tourism sector . The primary promotion will be conducted by Non-Residence Bangladeshi(NRB). Then the Viral message will help as an assistance to their activity.
Managerial implication
In light of our theoretical model and empirical findings, it should not be surprising that online markerters seeking to implement “send to a friend” and viral marketing campaigns have faced substantial challenges. The study found that while close relationships can be effective in capturing recipients’ attention and creating awareness, they had no influence at later stages. It also suggested that not all social network is equally important for peer-to-peer referrals. Attempts to initiate viral marketing mechanisms in the absence of close relationships among the actors in a network may be ineffective.
LIMITATION
Viral marketing is a new phenomenon that keeps evolving in a dynamic marketplace, and both firms and consumers are adapting to it. The limitations are as follows:
1. To participate in the study is a choice process of consumers and it’s not indicate that they will purchase the product.
2. The study only contained data about perceived tie strength and geographic similarity, it does not considered financial incentives that influence viral marketing.
3. The highly connected net of consumers can have undesirable side effects if the product is not liked. A network of unhappy customers can have a negative effect on word of mouth.
4. The probability that satisfied customers pass on the message is equally as intense as the spreading of negative incidence for dissatisfied customers. Customers match their dissatisfaction over a product or service with the Internet, influencing their immediate social contacts as well as the loose associations.
5. The personal experience is authentic and there is no personal gain involved which makes the voiced discontent credible.
6. This negative word of mouse propaganda reaches thousands of potential customers in a very short time, endangering corporate image and the success of a marketing campaign.
7. The concept of viral marketing is to have customers transmit a message to others. Company influence is reduced to the formulation of the message and that is only in the very beginning of a viral campaign.
CONCLUSION
Viral marketing gathers precise information in real time. Influence of source expertise should also be stronger in viral communication. Traditional word of mouth communication is richer, more complex, and thereby giving more pervasive impact, but it is more expensive. Viral marketing help businesses to break through the clutter. In global market place viral marketing works better. Global mass media is much expensive and it required different message formate than the home country. Thus increase cost. Viral marketing create a competitive edge in a inexpensive way. Creating product awareness viral marketing create a competitive environment in global market place.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bruyn, Arnaud De & Gray L. Lilien(2008), Word-of-mouth influence through viral marketing. www.elsevier.com/locate/ijresmar
Chaffey, Dave et al. (2003), "Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice", 2nd Edition, England: Pearson Education Limited
Decker, Reinhold and Ralf Wagner (2002), “Marketingforschung”, München: Verlag
Domingos, Pedro (2005), “Mining Social Networks for Viral Marketing”, University of Washington, http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/pedrod/papers/iis04.pd
Helm, Sabrina (2000c), “Kundenempfehlung als Marketinginstrument“, Wiesbaden:
Gabler Verlag.http://www.competence-site.de/emarketing.nsf
Heyman, Darian SR (1999), "The Basics of Viral Marketing". http://www.clickz.com/experts/archives/mkt/onl_mkt_comm/article.php/818581.
Hoffmann, Donna L.and Thomas P. Novak (2000), “How to acquire Customers on the
Web”, Journal of Harvard Business Review, May 2000; Vol. 78, Issue 3.
Jurvetson, Steve and Tim Draper (2000), “What is Viral Marketing?”,
http://www.dfj.com/cgi-bin/artman/publish/steve_may00.shtml
Kotler, Philip (2003), “Marketing Management”, 11th Edition, Pearson Education.
Ransdell,Eric(1999), “Network Effects”, Fast Company.
Recklies, Dagmar (2001), “Viral-Marketing”,
http://www.themanagement.de/pdf/Viral%20Marketing.PDF
Richardson, Matthew and Pedro Domingos (2002), “Mining Knowledge-Sharing Sites for Viral Marketing”, University of Washington: ACM Press,
www.cs.washington.edu/homes/pedrod/papers/kdd02b.pdf,
Skrob, John-Robert(2005), Open source and viral marketing, University of Applied Science Kufstein, Austria. www.fh-kufstein.ac.at
Strauss, Judy et al. (2003), “E-Marketing”, 3rd Edition, New Jersey, Prentice Hall
Zien, Jason (1999a), “Internet Customer Acquisition Costs”,
http://web.archive.org/web/20000823222920/internet.about.com/industry/internet/librlib/ weekly/1999/aa123099a.htm
Zien, Jason (2000), “Viral Marketing for Internet Web Sites”,
http://www.edove.com.tw/vm/writing_015.html
Viral Marketing – Why Not Using It Could Kill Your Business. www.viralinternetmarketing.co.uk
Viral Marketing and its Enormous Potential. www.chillibreeze.com
Marketing-promotional-tools-for-the-digital-world(2009) http://ayushveda.com/blogs/business
Topic: Effective viral marketing campaign for Bangladesh
01. Viral Marketing is most important for global competition.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
02. Peer-to-peer communication reduce cost of traditional marketing.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
03. The stronger the tie, the more likely viral communications are to generate awareness.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
04. The more demographically dissimilar the tie the more likely viral marketing is to generate awareness.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
05. Tourism sector is best to promote through viral marketing.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
06. Viral marketing is not effective product promotion strategy.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
If you have any suggestion regarding viral marketing, please mention it.
Thank you for your valuable input.
Signature
ABSTRACT
Global competition on the marketplace requires thorough planning and careful investment of capital. Start-up companies with a limited budget need to reduce cost wherever feasible. Eliminating promotional costs by using viral marketing is a big saving for a company and viral marketing has become the number one option to create dynamic brand awareness. The power of online influence, namely, “word of mouse” plays a key role in the spreading of a message. The key driver in viral marketing is the effectiveness of unsolicited, electronic referrals to create awareness, trigger interest, and generate sales or product awareness. Viral marketing process influences consumers’ actual behaviors, particularly in a cluttered business environment. In this paper I want to show how viral marketing influence consumer decision making process and tried to relate a model with this process. The research output identified tie strength is more effective for viral marketing than demographic similarity. Demographic similarity had a negative influence on each stage of the decision making process. The tourism sector of Bangladesh can be developed by using this model. By creating a Chat room or virtual group the country can developed the tourism product. People from other country will join the chat room and gathers information about different tourism site of Bangladesh. A Web link will support them to have virtual tour to different tourist site. The foreigner will verify the product and get enough viral information. They compare the viral information with virtual tour and videos, and finally start viral marketing to friends and copartners. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological contributions of my work and of managerial implication of these findings for global marketer interested in strategies for leveraging peer-to-peer referral networks.
INTRODUCTION
The Internet greatly facilitates consumer communication. E-mail, face book and other social communication site allow consumers to share information far more easily than ever before. This interconnectivity is a global matter that facilitates both positive and negative word-of-mouth. This distribution of information can not be easily controlled by marketer or brand manager. It also challenges the existence of geographical market, and hence the ability to conduct local marketing strategies.
From the point of view of marketer viral marketing is the best possibilities that challenge the existing Communication system of the company. The goal of viral marketing is to use consumer-to-consumer communication as opposed to company-to-consumer communication to disseminate information about a product or service, thereby leading to more rapid and cost effective adoption by the market.
Message distribution can either be intentional on unintentional. Consumer sometimes send message to their friend via facebook when they are delighted by purchasing a product. The most common version of intentional viral marketing occurs when consumers willingly become promoters of a product or service and spread the word to their friends; they are driven to do so either through an explicit incentive or simply out of a desire to share the product benefits with friends. As example, creating a facebook group and yahoo group promote the tourism sector of Bangladesh toward the people of this country and abroad.
The viral marketing concept and this example suggest that marketer can leverage the power of interpersonal networks to promote a product or service. The concept assume that electronic, peer-to-peer communications are an effective means to transform communication networks into influence networks, capturing recipients’ attention, influencing interest, and eventually leading to adoption or sales.
E-mail seems here to stay, and there is no doubt that peer-to-peer, e-mail based communication will continue to play an informational and influential role on recipients’ behavior. The inauguration of spam, unsolicited bulk e-mail, and e-mail based electronic viruses has made recipients suspicious of most unsolicited e-mails. Consumer experience a high level of noise in their day-to-day electronic communication and for viral marketing campaigns to be designed more effectively, there is a need to better understand which online referrals are likely to cut through the clutter and which are not.
To better understand why and how viral marketing can be effective, we must understand its pass-along process and its underlying mechanism of influence. While the existing word-of-mouth communication inform us, it is important to note that electronic referrals differ from their “offline” counterparts in two significant ways: they are electronic in nature, no face –to-face communication and those referrals are usually unsolicited, they are sent to recipients who not looking for information, and hence are not necessarily willing to pay attention to them.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it. In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product. Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.
Viral marketing is a term coined to define the productive ways a marketing message is made available. And corporates are using the medium to circulate brands and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus, as efficiently as Information Technology has entered households and businesses. Firms are now structuring their businesses in a way that allows them to grow like a virus and lock out the existing brick and mortar competitors through innovative pricing and exploitation of competitors' distribution channels. The beauty of this marketing technique is that none of it requires any marketing. Customers, who have caught the virus, do the selling.
Organizations are realizing this only too well these days as they jump on to the social media and viral marketing bandwagon to gain visibility and immense popularity in a short span. Recently, Moonfruit, the little known web designing firm, unleashed its cool campaign where it rained Apple iPhones on people who followed it on Twitter or Re-Tweeted their promotional message. Marked by remarkable success, where the company enjoyed enormous brand awareness, resulting in increased sales queries and orders, the campaign became so popular that Twitter had to intervene to make sure Moonfruit didn’t hijack Twitter in the course of its promotions. And the promotional campaign was a miniscule cost when compared with the success that the company derived.
This power of new generation marketing tools like Twitter and Facebook are being tapped into generously, not just by companies in the business of digital products and services but also by organizations that sell brick-and-mortar products for the real world. Lastminute.com, the travel, entertainment and lifestyles portal recently launched a Viral Video of the YouTube kind, where a man in underwear walking along the road in Britain is encountered by former BBC weather forecaster, Michael Fish, who uses a big fish as his bat to beat ice on him.
Objectives of the study:
The main objective of the study is to find out the ways how viral marketing can be effectively used in Bangladesh. In the light of this main objective, the specific objectives of the study are as follows:
1. To identify the types of viral marketing campaign applicable for Bangladesh.
2. To find out whether stronger relationship or geographical dissimilarities affect viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh.
3. To identify effective strategies for viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh.
4. To identify the problems of viral marketing.
5. Finally, recommendations for improving viral marketing in Bangladesh.
Methodology of the study:
Nature of research design:
The descriptive research design is used in this study.
Sample size:
In this study, students of various public and private Universities have been selected for the survey. The total number of sample is thirty.
Data collection:
Non-probabilistic sampling technique has been preferred for the study. Most of the data of the study has been collected from primary source. A structured questionnaire has been used for the purpose of colleting primary data for theoretical justification of the study. Different local and international published articles, websites and different text books related to viral marketing had also been reviewed.
Data Analysis:
In this study, multiple correlation coefficient, R², which is also called coefficient of multiple determination has been used to determine the strength of relationship between tie strength and demographic similarity which have a contribution in explaining the effectiveness of viral marketing. To measure the relationship ‘7 point Likert Scale’ has been applied.
FINDINGS:
Types of Viral marketing campaign:
Now-a-days viral marketing campaign is popular and very frequently used marketing strategy that relies largely on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. In order to generate exponential enhancements in brand awareness along with the help of self-replicating viral processes, viral marketing and viral advertising use pre-existing social networks. The term "viral advertising" itself signifies that the idea behind this marketing talks about passing on and sharing interesting and entertaining content, which is usually sponsored by a brand looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images, and even text.
Increase competition, rising media rate and scattered consumer concentration rise expenditure traditional marketing campaign in Bangladesh. However, almost every internet marketer likes to promote his product through viral concept. Viral marketing earned popularity in a very short time because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, great affordability, good targeting, and the incredibly rapid response rate. However, the ability to obtain a large number of interested people at an extremely economical budget remains its most powerful attribute. Viral marketing, therefore, can be an effective marketing campaign tools for the marketers of Bangladesh.
The use of the internet and the effects of e-mail advertising, the business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing. Consumers become annoyance with the spam mail or junk mail. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. This would be a positive word-of-mouth recommendation.
Types of viral marketing campaign applicable for Bangladesh are:
• Pass - along: A message which encourages the user to send the message to others. Usually, it tries to form a chain where a message placed at the bottom of the e-mail prompts the reader to forward the message further.
• Incentivized viral: In this type of marketing, a gift or a reward is assured for either passing a message along or providing someone else's address. This can dramatically increase referrals. This significantly increases referrals and becomes all the effective when the offer demands another person to take action.
• Edgy Gossip/Buzz marketing: Edgy gossips are basically ads and messages capable of creating controversy by challenging the restrictions of taste or suitability. Talk on the given controversy often lead to buzz and word of mouth advertising. As for instance, before a movie is released, starts mostly create controversies like getting engaged or arrested, or become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention to them. A little more refined and subtle form of this marketing campaign is called undercover viral marketing campaign.
• Undercover: A viral message presented as a cool or unusual page, activity, or piece of news, without obvious incitements to link or pass along. In Undercover Marketing, it is not immediately apparent that anything is being marketed
• User-managed database: With this type of viral marketing campaign users create and manage their own lists of contacts through a database given by an online service provider. They invite other members to participate in their community and thus create a viral. It is basically a self-propagating chain of contacts that grows and persuades others to sign up also.
Affect of stronger relationship or geographical dissimilarities in viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh:
In Bangladesh relationship plays an important rule in successfulness of any campaign. There is a strong relationship with friends and family members. So, if any one belongs to friends or family groups send a message or product advertisement, it creates value to the recipients and they curiously read the mail and most of the time forward it to the members of the group. This whole process creates a viral effect to the members of the friends or family groups. The stronger relationship creates reliability, so they read any message or shows positive appeal for the product or for the cause suggested by their friends. Geographic dissimilarity have stronger influence, people unknown person have no physical existence because they are from geographically dissimilar region. The value, norms and behavior of geographically dissimilar people are different. So the product or cause suggested by them has no influence to the people. Before starting the viral marketing campaign the first thing is to choose the friendship group or family groups, which work as a point of reference for the product or for introducing an important cause.
I conducted the study on 30 respondents both manually and via e-mail. I do not use third party e-mail address because of non-response error and limited time to conduct follow up studies on non-respondent. The study is important to gain the real scenario of viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh. The study also found which product has more viral effect in generating awareness.
H1. The stronger the tie, the more likely viral communications are to generate awareness.
H2. The more demographically dissimilar the tie, the more likely it is to generate interest.
Tie strength, H1 is supported(R Sqaure= .856). Tie strength significantly influenced the decision of the recipient to open the e-mail he or she received, hence facilitating awareness.
Model Summary
Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate
1 .893(a) .856 .832 1.86990
a Predictors: (Constant), tie strength, demographic similarity
Demographic similarity is, as expected, the only dimension that had a significant impact in models. Under these testing condition, electronic referrals from demographically dissimilar ties had more influence than referrals demographically similar ones at each stage of the decision-making process.
Factors Positive influence Negative influence No influence
Tie Strength 70% 30% 0%
Demographic Similiarity 30% 60% 10%
Figure : Comparison of responses between Tie Strength and Demographic Similarity.
Coefficients(a)
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig.
B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) 2.295 1.461 1.571 .128
Tie strength .382 .175 .381 2.185 .038
Demographic similarity .209 .147 .248 1.422 .166
a Dependent Variable: viral marketing communication
The strength of the relationship stipulated by the regression equation can be determined by using appropriate measure of association. The strength of the relationship is measured by square of multiple correlation coefficients, R Square that is also called the coefficient of multiple determinations. From R Square value it is clear that there is a strong relationship between dependent and independent variable.
There are two dependent variables –tie strength & demographic similarity. From t ratio it is obvious that tie strength makes more contribution in explaining the effectiveness of viral marketing than demographic similarity.
Effective strategies for viral marketing campaign in Bangladesh:
Many times a successful viral marketing campaign can be developed through pre-existing social networks or online communities like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, or digg. By using the information on these social networks marketers can determine what your market wants and needs. Implementing an effective viral marketing strategy is a good way to get people talking about your business. Viral marketing or "word of mouth" marketing is what we want, and it’s the best way to get our business to work for us. But how can we implement an effective viral marketing strategy? The viral marketing campaign tools and techniques described below can also be used to develop an effective strategy for the business of Bangladesh.
1. Give products or services away:
"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary (Wilson, 2000). People love FREE stuff. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. The idea is that we attract people’s attention with free services or products then begin to sell them the entire package. Even in a worst-case scenario when we can’t convert a consumer into a sale, you are still providing the consumer with a service for free which will in turn give us positive feedback.
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
FREE stuff shall be easy for people to receive. If they have to click 3 times and fill out a form most likely they will not go through all the trouble. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation.
3. Reward for referrals:
Another way that encourages viral marketing campaign is reward for referrals. Referrals can be rewarded for referring a new client so that referrals will continue to spread your message. Many companies offer a finder’s fee for new clients that come from referrers. This can generate incredible word of mouth. In this day and age every other person is interested in the Internet and wants to know how to gain exposure. If marketers can keep people happy they will definitely spread the word and help make your viral marketing campaign a success.
4. Takes advantage of others' resources:
The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors, who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.
5. Be Controversial:
Creating controversy is one of the most effective viral marketing tools. Controversy stems gossip. People love to gossip, so if you can find a way to harness some decent gossip, the marketing takes care of itself. One doesn’t need to be rude or try to personally hurt anyone but often when one presents his/her opinion in a strong voice there’s a good chance that someone will disagree. Hollywood spends a lot of marketing dollars on who’s doing what. In turn they create a great deal of buzz.
6. Utilizes existing communication networks:
Most people are social. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion. Utilizing these social networks of people is a simple viral marketing tool.
7. Create Own Buzz:
Create own blog where one can talk about all the new and exciting things that are happening in the company. Blogging is a great way to keep interested viewers involved and keep them returning to company’s site. When users begin to return to company’s blog, it builds a community. The company has to make sure that it keeps up with the community and comments. It is very important to make sure one’s has a voice when someone is responding to his/her blog. This is also a very good platform to exercise your controversial opinion.
8. RSS Feeds –
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is generally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories. RSS Feeds are now used to automatically
distribute content to blog and to distribute articles to web sites owners and ezine publishers throughout web.
Scope of Future research
This paper more importantly opens the way to further experiments and manipulations. For instance, one may use this methodology to investigate the best incentives to trigger “send to a friend” behaviors, and to study the stages most affected by such incentives. Researchers interested in brand equity may also find this methodology valuable for studying whether of not old and reputable companies are more likely to effectively leverage their consumers’ personal networks, or if new lesser known firms are equally capable of triggering such behavior; they also wish to examine which stages of decision making are most likely to be affected by superior brand equity. There is also a scope to examine cultural differences impact on trust, intimacy, or social power that have a influence on viral marketing
MODEL DEVELOPMENT
No
Yes
Figure : The Viral Marketing Model (Figure by John-Robert Skrob)
Mailing lists are the basis for contact among the national and international users. The purpose of the community is to provide a free service for everyone who uses software. Quick and practical help is given to everyone who needs it. Software is difficult to learn, therefore, a beginner’s guide, which can be found in the software archive, gives valuable information about the most frequently asked questions. More technically complicated problems and training material can be got from service providers found under the Consultancies. The listed companies are selected according to their competence in projects.
Customer recommendation is the key to Internet advertising. Implementing recommend-it- Buttons on the Website is one way to ease the transfer of information to others. In addition, a link in the e-mail signature should be integrated with which the origin of the marketing communication channel can be shown. To attract more user to the company homepage a linking strategy needs to be developed. Reciprocal links with carefully targeted complementary sites are free and draw potential customers. A list of prospective buyers enables the company to make contact with the individuals and explain the value of the product to them. Members of specific trade groups are interested in the latest innovations and can receive such information through newsletters. Setting up a moderated virtual community including chatrooms allows the user group to gather and exchange vital information pertaining to software in real time. Observing and participating in chatrooms dealing with company themes can be used to spread information about the product. A company member can give founded advice as to the application and purpose of the software and what advantages derived from implementing this software.
The tourism sector of Bangladesh can be developed by using this model. By creating a Chat room or vertual group the country can developed the tourism product. People from other country will join the chat room and grather information about different tourism site of Bangladesh. A Web link will support them to have vertual tour to different tourist site. The foreigner will verify the product and get enough viral information. They compare the viral information with vertual tour and videos, and finally start viral marketing to friends and coopartners.
RECOMMENDATION
Research implication in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is going to digitalization. Digital Bangladesh means it will be an e-state; all of its activities like governance, commerce, education, agriculture etc. will be powered by computer and Internet. Today the entire world is gradually becoming a digital planet. Almost every state is heading towards a knowledge based society and Bangladesh cannot stay away from the advantage out of it.
The development of ICT will help a massive expansion of viral marketing companies can reduce the promotional effort and expenditure. It will help the country to promote the product in inexpensive way. The emerging product of Bangladesh for viral marketing is the tourism sector . The primary promotion will be conducted by Non-Residence Bangladeshi(NRB). Then the Viral message will help as an assistance to their activity.
Managerial implication
In light of our theoretical model and empirical findings, it should not be surprising that online markerters seeking to implement “send to a friend” and viral marketing campaigns have faced substantial challenges. The study found that while close relationships can be effective in capturing recipients’ attention and creating awareness, they had no influence at later stages. It also suggested that not all social network is equally important for peer-to-peer referrals. Attempts to initiate viral marketing mechanisms in the absence of close relationships among the actors in a network may be ineffective.
LIMITATION
Viral marketing is a new phenomenon that keeps evolving in a dynamic marketplace, and both firms and consumers are adapting to it. The limitations are as follows:
1. To participate in the study is a choice process of consumers and it’s not indicate that they will purchase the product.
2. The study only contained data about perceived tie strength and geographic similarity, it does not considered financial incentives that influence viral marketing.
3. The highly connected net of consumers can have undesirable side effects if the product is not liked. A network of unhappy customers can have a negative effect on word of mouth.
4. The probability that satisfied customers pass on the message is equally as intense as the spreading of negative incidence for dissatisfied customers. Customers match their dissatisfaction over a product or service with the Internet, influencing their immediate social contacts as well as the loose associations.
5. The personal experience is authentic and there is no personal gain involved which makes the voiced discontent credible.
6. This negative word of mouse propaganda reaches thousands of potential customers in a very short time, endangering corporate image and the success of a marketing campaign.
7. The concept of viral marketing is to have customers transmit a message to others. Company influence is reduced to the formulation of the message and that is only in the very beginning of a viral campaign.
CONCLUSION
Viral marketing gathers precise information in real time. Influence of source expertise should also be stronger in viral communication. Traditional word of mouth communication is richer, more complex, and thereby giving more pervasive impact, but it is more expensive. Viral marketing help businesses to break through the clutter. In global market place viral marketing works better. Global mass media is much expensive and it required different message formate than the home country. Thus increase cost. Viral marketing create a competitive edge in a inexpensive way. Creating product awareness viral marketing create a competitive environment in global market place.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bruyn, Arnaud De & Gray L. Lilien(2008), Word-of-mouth influence through viral marketing. www.elsevier.com/locate/ijresmar
Chaffey, Dave et al. (2003), "Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice", 2nd Edition, England: Pearson Education Limited
Decker, Reinhold and Ralf Wagner (2002), “Marketingforschung”, München: Verlag
Domingos, Pedro (2005), “Mining Social Networks for Viral Marketing”, University of Washington, http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/pedrod/papers/iis04.pd
Helm, Sabrina (2000c), “Kundenempfehlung als Marketinginstrument“, Wiesbaden:
Gabler Verlag.http://www.competence-site.de/emarketing.nsf
Heyman, Darian SR (1999), "The Basics of Viral Marketing". http://www.clickz.com/experts/archives/mkt/onl_mkt_comm/article.php/818581.
Hoffmann, Donna L.and Thomas P. Novak (2000), “How to acquire Customers on the
Web”, Journal of Harvard Business Review, May 2000; Vol. 78, Issue 3.
Jurvetson, Steve and Tim Draper (2000), “What is Viral Marketing?”,
http://www.dfj.com/cgi-bin/artman/publish/steve_may00.shtml
Kotler, Philip (2003), “Marketing Management”, 11th Edition, Pearson Education.
Ransdell,Eric(1999), “Network Effects”, Fast Company.
Recklies, Dagmar (2001), “Viral-Marketing”,
http://www.themanagement.de/pdf/Viral%20Marketing.PDF
Richardson, Matthew and Pedro Domingos (2002), “Mining Knowledge-Sharing Sites for Viral Marketing”, University of Washington: ACM Press,
www.cs.washington.edu/homes/pedrod/papers/kdd02b.pdf,
Skrob, John-Robert(2005), Open source and viral marketing, University of Applied Science Kufstein, Austria. www.fh-kufstein.ac.at
Strauss, Judy et al. (2003), “E-Marketing”, 3rd Edition, New Jersey, Prentice Hall
Zien, Jason (1999a), “Internet Customer Acquisition Costs”,
http://web.archive.org/web/20000823222920/internet.about.com/industry/internet/librlib/ weekly/1999/aa123099a.htm
Zien, Jason (2000), “Viral Marketing for Internet Web Sites”,
http://www.edove.com.tw/vm/writing_015.html
Viral Marketing – Why Not Using It Could Kill Your Business. www.viralinternetmarketing.co.uk
Viral Marketing and its Enormous Potential. www.chillibreeze.com
Marketing-promotional-tools-for-the-digital-world(2009) http://ayushveda.com/blogs/business
Topic: Effective viral marketing campaign for Bangladesh
01. Viral Marketing is most important for global competition.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
02. Peer-to-peer communication reduce cost of traditional marketing.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
03. The stronger the tie, the more likely viral communications are to generate awareness.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
04. The more demographically dissimilar the tie the more likely viral marketing is to generate awareness.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
05. Tourism sector is best to promote through viral marketing.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
06. Viral marketing is not effective product promotion strategy.
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
If you have any suggestion regarding viral marketing, please mention it.
Thank you for your valuable input.
Signature
FLOWER MARKETING IN BANGLADESH
1. Introduction
In these days a number of commodities are getting faster market response with the help of marketing activities. One wonderful and beautiful category, which is full of fragrance, is also moving towards a strong branding and marketing initiative. This natural category is the category of flowers. Flower is the symbol of beauty and serenity. It is the only entity which enhances beauties of anyplace where used. Many songs, poetries and literatures have been written on the dedication of flower. The magnificent creation of god, flower can purify the heart of human being and encourage to be simple and calm like nature. Flowers have been regarded as an embodiment of human taste and aesthetics. This unique and unparalleled nature of flowers has given rise to its commercial transaction all over the world. Bangladesh is not far behind in promoting this agricultural product. Bangladesh is a country of cultural heritage. Flower is interrelated with this culture. People purchase flower in various occasion. With the rising demand of flower cultivation is increasing in this country. Thus, Bangladesh has ventured to enter this growing export market.
Today the trade of flowers is a promising trade and a number of florists have sprung up who sell flowers. No one could think of exporting Bangladeshi flowers even a few years ago. But this is a reality today and prosperous bonanza for tomorrow. In view of marketing prospect of flowers, a vast agricultural land has been turned into a flower growing area and the farmers are now in a position to make available any quantum of flowers for export according to the market requirements. In Bangladesh, the cultivation of flower for the purpose of commercial use was started in a large scale from the early 80’s. Till then the traditional flower marketing system is increasing, many shops have been established, but the scenery of flower business is very poor. The substantial amount of flower cultivation is now still limited to the area of panishara and its adjacent places in Jessore (Hossain and Rahman, 1994). Before 1983, the space in front of the High Court Mazar was the venue for the flower trade. Now it has spread too many other specific areas of the city .A little distance away from the Shahbagh road corner towards the west lays the Katabon area which has the biggest concentration of flowers shops in the city. Not only small-scale flower vendors are now widespread and visible at several shops with neatly displayed flowers in shelves are found throughout the country particularly in Dhaka and other division and few district cities.
The traders sell the flowers on the foot-path at Shahbag from 6:00am to 12.00 pm .The flowers are kept either at the trader’s homes or in the closets behind the foot-paths. Suppliers bring truckloads of flowers to Dhaka from Jessore, Savar and other places every morning. Some flowers are imported from India and Thailand.
The traders said some 20 types of flowers are available at Shahbagh .The local ones include rose ,Rajanigandha, Gada, Lotus, Gladiolus and Chandramallika, The imported ones are ones are Jarbera and Orchid.
In 1999 there were 530 flower shops in Dhaka city. At present the number of flower shops is more than a thousand throughout the country. Moreover, there are a good number of hawkers and none descript youngsters selling the flowers in different places of Dhaka and other big cities on temporary basis to maintain their livelihood.
A good number of flower shops are also established in district towns. At least 26 business enterprises and 6 associations are directly engaged in growing and export of flowers in Bangladesh . This number has increased now days.
Two decades have passed, but flower marketing cannot progress at expected rate. Many underdeveloped countries like Kenya earns more than 40 million US dollar from exporting flower The Daily Prothom Alo, 2010.On the other hand, Bangladesh has huge potentiality to export flower besides domestic production and sales.
Now the study will be developed for the purpose of drawing current condition, prospect and problem of flower marketing, On the other hand, Bangladesh has huge potentiality to export flower besides domestic production and sales. Based on prior research, it is found that there is huge potentiality in flower business in Bangladesh although several constraints are responsible to hinder the business. Now the study will be developed for the purpose of drawing current condition, prospect and problem of flower marketing in Bangladesh.
1.0 Literature review
Flower marketing is the marketing activities to create and increase the demand of flower in the market. As flower is the agricultural commodity and most of its production depends on nature, so the pre-determined marketing activities is not always prolific Developing marketing mix and enhancing promotional activities is the way to increase the profitability in flower business. Flower marketing is spreading its fragrance far and wide whether in the form of International Tulips or Orchids or national Roses or Lilies which are available in the market. Flower marketing and branded flowers and branded flower service providers are going because of people fascination to flower. The Internet is helping spread the net far and wide and is able to bring people closer and the gifting of flowers is helping people express their sentiment for one another, easily across countries.
Hossain & Rhaman 1994, stated that the intensity of cultivation and marketing of flower have been increasing. The most usual characteristics of flower marketing are the seasonal price variation of flower in Dhaka city. Finding of the study also suggested that, flower cultivation and marketing is more profitable and potential. But the flower trades have failed to bring about a change in taste and preferences of customer by introducing new types of flower.
The growing demand of flowers in the domestic as well as export market requires a concerted effort on the part of the government as well as in the private entrepreneurs to develop floriculture industry on scientific lines. Flower preservative, cool water, hydrates, ethylene, ventilation system, and transportation system are the critical factors help to store and market flower and these types of care of cut flower are essential for maintaining high quality. (Scoggins, 1998)
A study of Washington University (2000) stated that Growing Specialty cut flower for market can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Customer service consistency is a great factor in case of flower marketing. Besides product quality, presentation, place or distribution are also crucial for seller when market the flower.
Jagdeep Kapoor (2007) recommended that six elements are important in formulating an effective brand marketing strategy for flowers. These are sensitivity incorporated with packaging, increasing the tangible and intangible freshness of flower, proper arrangement of flower to increase perceived value, source from where the flower comes, maintenance of quality across the years and safe storage and transportation of flower because of the perishable nature of flowers. If all the elements, along with the normal marketing initiatives are taken care of, very strong brand can be built in the area of flower marketing.
Retail marketing is best for flower marketing. As flower producer is not able to sell the huge volume of flowers to consumers. Retailers take the initiative and organize a new business entity to carry on wholesaling. Members concentrate their purchases through the retailer co-operative. Profit is passed back to members in proportion to their purchases. Nonmember retailers can also buy through the co-operatives but do not share in the profit. A large number of producer co-operatives have been formed to conduct direct marketing of flower using overnight delivery service. (Reid ,2003
Murugesa 2008 found that flower industry is undergoing dramatic change. The domestic demand and export demand is increasing and production of cut flower is also increasing hand in hand. Chemical based floriculture is diminishing and organic cultivation process is encouraged. Colorful and verity flower has great demand if the shop environment is fair. some missing links are liable in producing and marketing of flower in domestic and international market. A value chain of flower has been developed as holistic, commercializes, standardized, scientific, packaging technology process under the study finding.
A case study on Cut Flower Export 2009 expressed that Colombia first introduced flower as a business item. Now Colombia is the 2nd largest producer of flower behind Holland. Colombia exported cut flower and earned 315 million dollar in 1992. Colombia sent 85% of the cut flower export in North America in 2004. Floriculture of Colombia account for 111,000 direct job and 94,000 jobs depend on industry and about 220 companies and 308 farms are included with the export function.
A desk report of The Daily Prothom Alo 2010, find out the hidden outcome due to revolution of flower production and exporting of cut flower in Kenya. Kenya is gradually becoming a top level exporter of flower around the world. In the last year, Kenya earned about 40 million US dollar from exporting cut flower.
A writings of Shykh Seraj (2007) stated that there is a huge potentiality of flower business in Bangladesh. It is potential market export market for China. Beijing is three hours away from Kunming, the international auction hall in China, and Bangladesh is only two hours. China would give more priority to the close-distanced areas, especially in cases like supplying a raw-product like flower. Furthermore, earning foreign currency is another major factor. China has learnt meanwhile that a prospective flower market has grown up in Bangladesh. They also received a positive response after sending different kinds of flowers over Bangladesh. If both country come forward in cultivation and marketing of flowers, a field of mutual benefit should be created. Focusing this, China is also interested in contract-based farming of some foreign flowers in our country, with which farmer and businessmen of Bangladesh would also be benefited.
Rahman et al 2004, conducted a study on “Some Aspect of Flower Marketing”, and found a great potentiality of flower business in Bangladesh, domestically and internationally. Although Bangladesh can not produce much flower like king exporter countries. It will clear from the evidence, Israel earned about 120 million US dollar from exporting of fresh cut flower in 1993 but on the other hand, Bangladesh earned only Tk. 1, 18,000 from exporting cut flower in 1992-93 fiscal year.
1.1 Objectives of the study
The objective of the study is to find out the present condition, prospects and problems of flower marketing in Bangladesh. The specific objectives are:
1. To evaluate the current flower marketing systems in Bangladesh.
2. To find potentiality of flower marketing in Bangladesh.
3. To explore the constraints of flower marketing.
4. To find out the most important factor of flower marketing.
5. To suggest marketing strategies and recommendation to promote the marketing of flower.
1.1.3 Significance of the study
The reasons for conducting this research is to find out the attitude and perception of the consumer towards flower marketing and what are the problems related to it and what the management of flower can do to improve it and gain or increase the market share.
1.2 Conceptual Framework
Conceptual framework basically describes the independent and dependent variable of the study that will influence the findings.
Dependent Variable
Potentiality and problems of flower marketing system in Dhaka city.
Independent Variable
Flower cultivation system
Farmer’s interest to grow flower
Opportunity for flower marketing
Cost of cultivation
Profit margin
Market demand
Supplier availability
Shop availability
Environment of flower shop
Promotion of flower business
Storage facility
Transportation facility
1.3 Model Development
For this particular purpose, the following model will work according to its own structure.
1.5 Methodology
Study approach: The study is explorative in the context of Bangladesh for the aspects focused mainly on flower. However, it can also be termed as descriptive and analytical.
Sample size: Sample sizes were approximately 200, which were selected for filling up the questionnaire.
Sample selection: As survey was to be conducted, an initial plan for stratified sampling was designed.
Data collection procedure: A detail questionnaire was formulated for collecting data. The questionnaire is distributed among randomly chosen respondent. Among the respondent the study is divided into two groups. One of them is consumers or user of flower and the other group is non-user of flower. The analysis is focused on four facts as the outcome. The outcomes are:
• Identify when people choose flower and what’s reason for choosing.
• Identify whether the current flower users are satisfied with the product.
• To see whether the flowers are effective.
• To find out what makes flower attractive to its user.
Sources of data: Majority of the study is based on primary data. However some secondary data source is used for background study.
Primary Data Primary data are collected by direct interview to the targeted respondents.
Secondary Data were collected from books, published documents, survey reports, online journals and article.
Analysis of Data: The analysis is done with both quantitative and qualitative procedure. MS-Excel is used as the software for quantitative analysis. And the qualitative analysis is done based on the quantitative findings.
Topic: Problems and prospect of flower marketing in Bangladesh
[All information provided would be kept confidential. Thus, we seek your honest opinion]
1. How long you involve in flower business?
a) 0-6 months b) 6-12 months c) 1-2 years d) 2-3 years e) 3 years or more
2. How much money is required for flower business?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-more
3. What type of flower customer purchase mainly?
a) Rojonigondha b) Beli c) Mary gold d) Rose e) Gladiolus
f) Others………………
4. In which event flowers sales are highest?
a) Valentine’s Day b) Pahela Baishak c) Ekushay February d) Pahela Falgun
e) Others……………………….
5. In which day flower sales is highest?
a) Saturday b) Sunday c) Monday d) Tuesday
e) Wednesday f) Thursday g) Friday
6. In which time of day flower sale is highest?
a) Morning b) Afternoon c) Evening d) Twilights e) Night
7. Do you think imported flowers have more market demand than local flowers?
a) Yes b) No
8. Who mainly purchase flower?
a) Male b) Female
9. Which group purchase flower most?
a) Children (0-12 years) b) Teenage (13-19 years)
c) Middle Age (20-35 years) d) senior people (40 years-more)
10. Why does a person purchase flowers?
a) For home decoration b) For giving gift c) For decoration of bride chamber
d) For car decoration e) others……………………………..
11. Is the demand for flowers increasing day by day?
a) Yes b) No
12. Who will be the major suppliers of flower?
a) Farmer b) Wholesaler c) Importer d) Distributor
13. The competition of flower market is intensive-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
14. Is there any seasonal variation in flower business?
a) Yes b) No
15. The overall revenue from flower business is-
Very Low Low Moderate High Very High
1 2 3 4 5
16. Do you have any advertising program for increasing sales?
a) Yes b) No
17. How will you attract your local market?
Ans.
18. Which sales strategy is effective in flower marketing?
a) Direct sales b) Indirect sales through agency
19. Do you get any financial support from banks?
a) Yes b) No
20. How you brand your flowers?
a) Attractive presentation b) Using various flower in a single bucket
c) Using quality wrapping paper d) Using artificial materials e) Using recyclable material
21. Does the branding of flowers increase its value?
a) Yes b) No
22. Which is the main problem of flower business?
a) Lack of storage facility b) Lack of transportation facility
c) Seasonal demand of flower d) Lack of promotional activity
23. Is there any forward linkage of raw flower?
a) Yes b) No
24. Do you have any co-operative for doing flower business?
a) Yes b) No
Thank you for your valuable input
References:
1. “Building a Marketing Strategy,” A Report for the Center for Native Floriculture, The University of Queensland, November 2004, Australia.
2. Camacho 2006, “Developing the Domestic Market for Australian Native Flowers,” A Repot for the Center for Native Floriculture, The University of Queensland, May, Australia.
3. Case Study on “Colombia Flower Exporting,” available at http://nation-branding.info/2009/05/27/colombia-land-of-flowers-new-imagery-blooming-for-colombias-brand.
4. Dadlani 2004, “Cut Flower Production in India,” Division of Floriculture, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India.
5. Dr. P. Murugesa 2008, “Value Chain on Flower for Domestic and Export Market,” Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, August 28, India.
6. “Flower Marketing in Bangladesh,” August 22, 2009, available at http//:www.reports4mba.blogspot.com/2009/08/flower-marketing-in-bangladesh.html
7. Gautam et al 2007, “Sector Study on floriculture,” Advisory Support on Export Development of Priority Sectors of Nepal, World Trade Centre, June – September, Nepal.
8. Hossain & Rahman 1994, “The Potential of Flower Marketing in Dhaka City,” Bureau of Business Research, Dhaka University, May 30, Dhaka.
9. “Marketing Specialty Cut Flower,” 2000 Agriculture and Natural Fact Sheet – 520, Washington State University, available at http//:www.metrokc.gov/wsu-ce
10. Michael S. Reid 2003, “Trends In Flower Marketing and Postharvest Handling in the United States,” Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, USA
11. Rahman et al 2004, “Some Aspect of Flower Marketing: Bangladesh Perspective,” Journal of Business Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, Dhaka University, December, Dhaka.
12. “Revolution of Flower Cultivation and Export,” The Daily Prothom Alo, March 05, 2010, Dhaka.
13. Sutton 2002, “Export Flower Industry: A Review of Recorded Statistics,” Flower export Council of Australia, December, Australia.
14. Scoggins 1998, “Field Production of Cut Flower,” Dept. of Horticulture Science, University of NC Sate, North Carolina Flower Growers’ Association, Vol. 43, No. 4, August, NCCFGA.
15. “The Cut Flower,” Quarterly Magazine, Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers’ Inc. Vol. 19, November 3, Summer 2007, USA.
Topic: Impact of Credit Card on personal financial security
[All information provided would be kept confidential. Thus, we seek your honest opinion.]
1. What is your profession?
a) Govt. job holder b) Private job holder c) Multinational company
d) Business e) others……………..
2. Your education level
a) Graduate b) Post Graduate c) Undergraduate d) Illiterate
3. Would you please mention your monthly expenditure level?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-50000 e) 50000-more
4. How much money you able to save per month?
Ans.
5. Do you have any credit card?
a) Yes b) No
6. Do you like to have a credit card of more than one bank?
a) Yes b) No
7. For making any payment of purchase which option you like most?
a) Cash b) Shopping card/Debit card c) Credit card
8. Do you think after getting credit card you get more freedom to spend?
a) Yes b) No
9. What was your expenditure level before you get a credit card?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-50000 e) 50000-more
10. Use of credit card enhance your standard of living-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
11. Credit card use encourage you to purchase product from luxurious shopping mall-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
12. Do you able to pay the credit card dues with your fixed income?
a) Yes b) No
13. Do you think credit card take share from your past savings?
a) Yes b) No
14. How frequently you go for shopping now?
a) 1-2 times per week b) 2-3 times per week c) 3-4 times per week d) As previous
15. How much money you able to save now?
a) 1000-2000 b) 2000-3000 c) 3000-4000 d) 4000-5000 e) 5000-more
16. Credit card creates an extra pressure on your income?
a) Yes b) No
In these days a number of commodities are getting faster market response with the help of marketing activities. One wonderful and beautiful category, which is full of fragrance, is also moving towards a strong branding and marketing initiative. This natural category is the category of flowers. Flower is the symbol of beauty and serenity. It is the only entity which enhances beauties of anyplace where used. Many songs, poetries and literatures have been written on the dedication of flower. The magnificent creation of god, flower can purify the heart of human being and encourage to be simple and calm like nature. Flowers have been regarded as an embodiment of human taste and aesthetics. This unique and unparalleled nature of flowers has given rise to its commercial transaction all over the world. Bangladesh is not far behind in promoting this agricultural product. Bangladesh is a country of cultural heritage. Flower is interrelated with this culture. People purchase flower in various occasion. With the rising demand of flower cultivation is increasing in this country. Thus, Bangladesh has ventured to enter this growing export market.
Today the trade of flowers is a promising trade and a number of florists have sprung up who sell flowers. No one could think of exporting Bangladeshi flowers even a few years ago. But this is a reality today and prosperous bonanza for tomorrow. In view of marketing prospect of flowers, a vast agricultural land has been turned into a flower growing area and the farmers are now in a position to make available any quantum of flowers for export according to the market requirements. In Bangladesh, the cultivation of flower for the purpose of commercial use was started in a large scale from the early 80’s. Till then the traditional flower marketing system is increasing, many shops have been established, but the scenery of flower business is very poor. The substantial amount of flower cultivation is now still limited to the area of panishara and its adjacent places in Jessore (Hossain and Rahman, 1994). Before 1983, the space in front of the High Court Mazar was the venue for the flower trade. Now it has spread too many other specific areas of the city .A little distance away from the Shahbagh road corner towards the west lays the Katabon area which has the biggest concentration of flowers shops in the city. Not only small-scale flower vendors are now widespread and visible at several shops with neatly displayed flowers in shelves are found throughout the country particularly in Dhaka and other division and few district cities.
The traders sell the flowers on the foot-path at Shahbag from 6:00am to 12.00 pm .The flowers are kept either at the trader’s homes or in the closets behind the foot-paths. Suppliers bring truckloads of flowers to Dhaka from Jessore, Savar and other places every morning. Some flowers are imported from India and Thailand.
The traders said some 20 types of flowers are available at Shahbagh .The local ones include rose ,Rajanigandha, Gada, Lotus, Gladiolus and Chandramallika, The imported ones are ones are Jarbera and Orchid.
In 1999 there were 530 flower shops in Dhaka city. At present the number of flower shops is more than a thousand throughout the country. Moreover, there are a good number of hawkers and none descript youngsters selling the flowers in different places of Dhaka and other big cities on temporary basis to maintain their livelihood.
A good number of flower shops are also established in district towns. At least 26 business enterprises and 6 associations are directly engaged in growing and export of flowers in Bangladesh . This number has increased now days.
Two decades have passed, but flower marketing cannot progress at expected rate. Many underdeveloped countries like Kenya earns more than 40 million US dollar from exporting flower The Daily Prothom Alo, 2010.On the other hand, Bangladesh has huge potentiality to export flower besides domestic production and sales.
Now the study will be developed for the purpose of drawing current condition, prospect and problem of flower marketing, On the other hand, Bangladesh has huge potentiality to export flower besides domestic production and sales. Based on prior research, it is found that there is huge potentiality in flower business in Bangladesh although several constraints are responsible to hinder the business. Now the study will be developed for the purpose of drawing current condition, prospect and problem of flower marketing in Bangladesh.
1.0 Literature review
Flower marketing is the marketing activities to create and increase the demand of flower in the market. As flower is the agricultural commodity and most of its production depends on nature, so the pre-determined marketing activities is not always prolific Developing marketing mix and enhancing promotional activities is the way to increase the profitability in flower business. Flower marketing is spreading its fragrance far and wide whether in the form of International Tulips or Orchids or national Roses or Lilies which are available in the market. Flower marketing and branded flowers and branded flower service providers are going because of people fascination to flower. The Internet is helping spread the net far and wide and is able to bring people closer and the gifting of flowers is helping people express their sentiment for one another, easily across countries.
Hossain & Rhaman 1994, stated that the intensity of cultivation and marketing of flower have been increasing. The most usual characteristics of flower marketing are the seasonal price variation of flower in Dhaka city. Finding of the study also suggested that, flower cultivation and marketing is more profitable and potential. But the flower trades have failed to bring about a change in taste and preferences of customer by introducing new types of flower.
The growing demand of flowers in the domestic as well as export market requires a concerted effort on the part of the government as well as in the private entrepreneurs to develop floriculture industry on scientific lines. Flower preservative, cool water, hydrates, ethylene, ventilation system, and transportation system are the critical factors help to store and market flower and these types of care of cut flower are essential for maintaining high quality. (Scoggins, 1998)
A study of Washington University (2000) stated that Growing Specialty cut flower for market can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Customer service consistency is a great factor in case of flower marketing. Besides product quality, presentation, place or distribution are also crucial for seller when market the flower.
Jagdeep Kapoor (2007) recommended that six elements are important in formulating an effective brand marketing strategy for flowers. These are sensitivity incorporated with packaging, increasing the tangible and intangible freshness of flower, proper arrangement of flower to increase perceived value, source from where the flower comes, maintenance of quality across the years and safe storage and transportation of flower because of the perishable nature of flowers. If all the elements, along with the normal marketing initiatives are taken care of, very strong brand can be built in the area of flower marketing.
Retail marketing is best for flower marketing. As flower producer is not able to sell the huge volume of flowers to consumers. Retailers take the initiative and organize a new business entity to carry on wholesaling. Members concentrate their purchases through the retailer co-operative. Profit is passed back to members in proportion to their purchases. Nonmember retailers can also buy through the co-operatives but do not share in the profit. A large number of producer co-operatives have been formed to conduct direct marketing of flower using overnight delivery service. (Reid ,2003
Murugesa 2008 found that flower industry is undergoing dramatic change. The domestic demand and export demand is increasing and production of cut flower is also increasing hand in hand. Chemical based floriculture is diminishing and organic cultivation process is encouraged. Colorful and verity flower has great demand if the shop environment is fair. some missing links are liable in producing and marketing of flower in domestic and international market. A value chain of flower has been developed as holistic, commercializes, standardized, scientific, packaging technology process under the study finding.
A case study on Cut Flower Export 2009 expressed that Colombia first introduced flower as a business item. Now Colombia is the 2nd largest producer of flower behind Holland. Colombia exported cut flower and earned 315 million dollar in 1992. Colombia sent 85% of the cut flower export in North America in 2004. Floriculture of Colombia account for 111,000 direct job and 94,000 jobs depend on industry and about 220 companies and 308 farms are included with the export function.
A desk report of The Daily Prothom Alo 2010, find out the hidden outcome due to revolution of flower production and exporting of cut flower in Kenya. Kenya is gradually becoming a top level exporter of flower around the world. In the last year, Kenya earned about 40 million US dollar from exporting cut flower.
A writings of Shykh Seraj (2007) stated that there is a huge potentiality of flower business in Bangladesh. It is potential market export market for China. Beijing is three hours away from Kunming, the international auction hall in China, and Bangladesh is only two hours. China would give more priority to the close-distanced areas, especially in cases like supplying a raw-product like flower. Furthermore, earning foreign currency is another major factor. China has learnt meanwhile that a prospective flower market has grown up in Bangladesh. They also received a positive response after sending different kinds of flowers over Bangladesh. If both country come forward in cultivation and marketing of flowers, a field of mutual benefit should be created. Focusing this, China is also interested in contract-based farming of some foreign flowers in our country, with which farmer and businessmen of Bangladesh would also be benefited.
Rahman et al 2004, conducted a study on “Some Aspect of Flower Marketing”, and found a great potentiality of flower business in Bangladesh, domestically and internationally. Although Bangladesh can not produce much flower like king exporter countries. It will clear from the evidence, Israel earned about 120 million US dollar from exporting of fresh cut flower in 1993 but on the other hand, Bangladesh earned only Tk. 1, 18,000 from exporting cut flower in 1992-93 fiscal year.
1.1 Objectives of the study
The objective of the study is to find out the present condition, prospects and problems of flower marketing in Bangladesh. The specific objectives are:
1. To evaluate the current flower marketing systems in Bangladesh.
2. To find potentiality of flower marketing in Bangladesh.
3. To explore the constraints of flower marketing.
4. To find out the most important factor of flower marketing.
5. To suggest marketing strategies and recommendation to promote the marketing of flower.
1.1.3 Significance of the study
The reasons for conducting this research is to find out the attitude and perception of the consumer towards flower marketing and what are the problems related to it and what the management of flower can do to improve it and gain or increase the market share.
1.2 Conceptual Framework
Conceptual framework basically describes the independent and dependent variable of the study that will influence the findings.
Dependent Variable
Potentiality and problems of flower marketing system in Dhaka city.
Independent Variable
Flower cultivation system
Farmer’s interest to grow flower
Opportunity for flower marketing
Cost of cultivation
Profit margin
Market demand
Supplier availability
Shop availability
Environment of flower shop
Promotion of flower business
Storage facility
Transportation facility
1.3 Model Development
For this particular purpose, the following model will work according to its own structure.
1.5 Methodology
Study approach: The study is explorative in the context of Bangladesh for the aspects focused mainly on flower. However, it can also be termed as descriptive and analytical.
Sample size: Sample sizes were approximately 200, which were selected for filling up the questionnaire.
Sample selection: As survey was to be conducted, an initial plan for stratified sampling was designed.
Data collection procedure: A detail questionnaire was formulated for collecting data. The questionnaire is distributed among randomly chosen respondent. Among the respondent the study is divided into two groups. One of them is consumers or user of flower and the other group is non-user of flower. The analysis is focused on four facts as the outcome. The outcomes are:
• Identify when people choose flower and what’s reason for choosing.
• Identify whether the current flower users are satisfied with the product.
• To see whether the flowers are effective.
• To find out what makes flower attractive to its user.
Sources of data: Majority of the study is based on primary data. However some secondary data source is used for background study.
Primary Data Primary data are collected by direct interview to the targeted respondents.
Secondary Data were collected from books, published documents, survey reports, online journals and article.
Analysis of Data: The analysis is done with both quantitative and qualitative procedure. MS-Excel is used as the software for quantitative analysis. And the qualitative analysis is done based on the quantitative findings.
Topic: Problems and prospect of flower marketing in Bangladesh
[All information provided would be kept confidential. Thus, we seek your honest opinion]
1. How long you involve in flower business?
a) 0-6 months b) 6-12 months c) 1-2 years d) 2-3 years e) 3 years or more
2. How much money is required for flower business?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-more
3. What type of flower customer purchase mainly?
a) Rojonigondha b) Beli c) Mary gold d) Rose e) Gladiolus
f) Others………………
4. In which event flowers sales are highest?
a) Valentine’s Day b) Pahela Baishak c) Ekushay February d) Pahela Falgun
e) Others……………………….
5. In which day flower sales is highest?
a) Saturday b) Sunday c) Monday d) Tuesday
e) Wednesday f) Thursday g) Friday
6. In which time of day flower sale is highest?
a) Morning b) Afternoon c) Evening d) Twilights e) Night
7. Do you think imported flowers have more market demand than local flowers?
a) Yes b) No
8. Who mainly purchase flower?
a) Male b) Female
9. Which group purchase flower most?
a) Children (0-12 years) b) Teenage (13-19 years)
c) Middle Age (20-35 years) d) senior people (40 years-more)
10. Why does a person purchase flowers?
a) For home decoration b) For giving gift c) For decoration of bride chamber
d) For car decoration e) others……………………………..
11. Is the demand for flowers increasing day by day?
a) Yes b) No
12. Who will be the major suppliers of flower?
a) Farmer b) Wholesaler c) Importer d) Distributor
13. The competition of flower market is intensive-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
14. Is there any seasonal variation in flower business?
a) Yes b) No
15. The overall revenue from flower business is-
Very Low Low Moderate High Very High
1 2 3 4 5
16. Do you have any advertising program for increasing sales?
a) Yes b) No
17. How will you attract your local market?
Ans.
18. Which sales strategy is effective in flower marketing?
a) Direct sales b) Indirect sales through agency
19. Do you get any financial support from banks?
a) Yes b) No
20. How you brand your flowers?
a) Attractive presentation b) Using various flower in a single bucket
c) Using quality wrapping paper d) Using artificial materials e) Using recyclable material
21. Does the branding of flowers increase its value?
a) Yes b) No
22. Which is the main problem of flower business?
a) Lack of storage facility b) Lack of transportation facility
c) Seasonal demand of flower d) Lack of promotional activity
23. Is there any forward linkage of raw flower?
a) Yes b) No
24. Do you have any co-operative for doing flower business?
a) Yes b) No
Thank you for your valuable input
References:
1. “Building a Marketing Strategy,” A Report for the Center for Native Floriculture, The University of Queensland, November 2004, Australia.
2. Camacho 2006, “Developing the Domestic Market for Australian Native Flowers,” A Repot for the Center for Native Floriculture, The University of Queensland, May, Australia.
3. Case Study on “Colombia Flower Exporting,” available at http://nation-branding.info/2009/05/27/colombia-land-of-flowers-new-imagery-blooming-for-colombias-brand.
4. Dadlani 2004, “Cut Flower Production in India,” Division of Floriculture, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India.
5. Dr. P. Murugesa 2008, “Value Chain on Flower for Domestic and Export Market,” Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, August 28, India.
6. “Flower Marketing in Bangladesh,” August 22, 2009, available at http//:www.reports4mba.blogspot.com/2009/08/flower-marketing-in-bangladesh.html
7. Gautam et al 2007, “Sector Study on floriculture,” Advisory Support on Export Development of Priority Sectors of Nepal, World Trade Centre, June – September, Nepal.
8. Hossain & Rahman 1994, “The Potential of Flower Marketing in Dhaka City,” Bureau of Business Research, Dhaka University, May 30, Dhaka.
9. “Marketing Specialty Cut Flower,” 2000 Agriculture and Natural Fact Sheet – 520, Washington State University, available at http//:www.metrokc.gov/wsu-ce
10. Michael S. Reid 2003, “Trends In Flower Marketing and Postharvest Handling in the United States,” Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, USA
11. Rahman et al 2004, “Some Aspect of Flower Marketing: Bangladesh Perspective,” Journal of Business Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, Dhaka University, December, Dhaka.
12. “Revolution of Flower Cultivation and Export,” The Daily Prothom Alo, March 05, 2010, Dhaka.
13. Sutton 2002, “Export Flower Industry: A Review of Recorded Statistics,” Flower export Council of Australia, December, Australia.
14. Scoggins 1998, “Field Production of Cut Flower,” Dept. of Horticulture Science, University of NC Sate, North Carolina Flower Growers’ Association, Vol. 43, No. 4, August, NCCFGA.
15. “The Cut Flower,” Quarterly Magazine, Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers’ Inc. Vol. 19, November 3, Summer 2007, USA.
Topic: Impact of Credit Card on personal financial security
[All information provided would be kept confidential. Thus, we seek your honest opinion.]
1. What is your profession?
a) Govt. job holder b) Private job holder c) Multinational company
d) Business e) others……………..
2. Your education level
a) Graduate b) Post Graduate c) Undergraduate d) Illiterate
3. Would you please mention your monthly expenditure level?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-50000 e) 50000-more
4. How much money you able to save per month?
Ans.
5. Do you have any credit card?
a) Yes b) No
6. Do you like to have a credit card of more than one bank?
a) Yes b) No
7. For making any payment of purchase which option you like most?
a) Cash b) Shopping card/Debit card c) Credit card
8. Do you think after getting credit card you get more freedom to spend?
a) Yes b) No
9. What was your expenditure level before you get a credit card?
a) 10000-20000 b) 20000-30000 c) 30000-40000 d) 40000-50000 e) 50000-more
10. Use of credit card enhance your standard of living-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
11. Credit card use encourage you to purchase product from luxurious shopping mall-
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
12. Do you able to pay the credit card dues with your fixed income?
a) Yes b) No
13. Do you think credit card take share from your past savings?
a) Yes b) No
14. How frequently you go for shopping now?
a) 1-2 times per week b) 2-3 times per week c) 3-4 times per week d) As previous
15. How much money you able to save now?
a) 1000-2000 b) 2000-3000 c) 3000-4000 d) 4000-5000 e) 5000-more
16. Credit card creates an extra pressure on your income?
a) Yes b) No
Friday, September 2, 2011
PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING
CHAPTER - 5
Important Questions
Describe the adoption process for new products. Page-160
Discuss in brief the individual differences in innovativeness for a new product. Page-160
Briefly describe the buyer decision process. Page- 155-158
Define consumer market and construct a simple model of consumer buyer behavior. Page- 137
Narrate the four major factors that influence consumer buyer behavior. Page- 137-153
Describe the adoption and diffusion process for new products. Page-160
Important Questions
Describe the adoption process for new products. Page-160
Discuss in brief the individual differences in innovativeness for a new product. Page-160
Briefly describe the buyer decision process. Page- 155-158
Define consumer market and construct a simple model of consumer buyer behavior. Page- 137
Narrate the four major factors that influence consumer buyer behavior. Page- 137-153
Describe the adoption and diffusion process for new products. Page-160
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Business Statistics - I (Suggestion for final exam)
BBA FIRST YEAR SECOND SEMESTER EXAMINATION, 2010
BUSINESS STATISTICS – I
Course Code : 1205
Suggestion for Final Exam
Faculty:
Ajoy Paul, BBA, MBA(Marketing),DU, Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, SBPGC
Chapter Included:
a) Introduction b) Collection, Processing and Presentation of Business Data c) Measure of Dispersion d) Moments, Skewness and Kurtosis.
1. Define Business Statistics? Discuss the limitation of Business Statistics.
2. Describe the characteristics of frequency distribution.
3. Why is statistics required in Business? / Importance of Statistics in Business.
4. Distinguish between the following:
(a) Primary and secondary Data
(b) Discrete and continuous frequency distribution
(c) Histogram and frequency polygon.
(d) Absolute and relative measure of dispersion.
(e) Inclusive and exclusive method.
(f) Histogram and bar diagram.
(g) Mean deviation and standard deviation.
(h) Standard deviation and co-efficient of variation.
(i) Central moments and Raw moments.
(j) Dispersion and skewness.
5. What are the properties of good measure of dispersion?
6. What do you understand by co-efficient of variation? Explain its usefulness in Business.
7. Define statistical method. Explain the uses of statistical methods in Business and Management.
8. Explain clearly how the measure of skewness and kurtosis can be used in describing a frequency distribution.
9. We are given the following frequency distribution regarding annual profits in thousand taka of 115 firms:-
Profits (000 Tk.) No. of firms
25-30 5
30-35 16
35-40 26
40-45 30
45-50 20
50-55 12
55-60 6
Construct less than and more than ogive curve and hence find the number of firms having profit between Tk. 32500 and Tk. 52500.
10. The following table gives the average monthly earnings of the mill workers in a certain city :
Monthly earnings(Tk.) No. of workers Monthly earnings(Tk.) No. of workers
800-850 21 1200-1250 36
850-900 29 1250-1300 45
900-950 19 1300-1350 27
950-1000 39 1350-1400 48
1000-1050 43 1400-1450 21
1050-1100 94 1450-1500 12
1100-1150 73 1500-1550 5
1150-1200 68
(a) Draw ogives by ‘less than’ and ‘more than’ method for the data given above.
(b) Find the number of workers whose wages lie between Tk.1180 and Tk.1480.
11. For two firm A and B belonging to the same industry, the following details are available:-
Firm A Firm B
No of Employees 100 200
Average wage monthly Tk.2400 Tk.1800
S.D. Tk.60 Tk.80
(a)Which firm pays out larger amount as wages?
(b)Which firm shows greater variability in the distribution of wages?
(c)Find average monthly wage and standard deviation of all the employees in both the firms.
12.Calculate co-efficient of skewness of the above date(given that standard deviation is 4.12). Based on the above result, what is your conclusion about the skewness?
13.You are given the frequency distribution of 292 workers of a factory according to their average weekly income. Calculate quartile deviation and its coefficient from the following data:
Weekly Income(Tk. No. of workers Weekly Income(Tk.) No. of workers
Below 350 8 450-470 22
350-370 16 470-490 15
370-390 39 490-510 15
390-410 58 510-530 9
410-430 60 530 & above 10
430-450 40
14.Particulars regarding the income of two villages are given below:
Village X Village Y
Number of persons 600 500
Average income(in taka) 175 186
Variance of income (in Tk.) 100 81
(a)In which village is the variation in income greater?
(b)What is the combined standard deviation of the village X and village Y put together?
15.A sample of daily production was organized into the following distribution:-
Daily Production Frequency
80-90 5
90-100 9
100-110 20
110-120 8
120-130 6
130-140 2
(a)Calculate the mean and median of the above distribution.
(b)Calculate the standard deviation and variance.
(c)Interpret the result.
16.What are the different measures of dispersion? Why standard deviation is considered to be the best measures?
17.State the various ways of presenting a frequency distribution graphically and discuss one of them.
18.Define measure of dispersion and state the merits of Standard deviation and mean deviation.
19.You are given the concept of skewness and kurtosis of a frequency distribution.
20.You are given the following data pertaining to kilowatt hours of electricity consumed by 100 persons in Dhaka :-
Consumption(in k-watt hours) 0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50
No. of users 6 25 36 20 13
Calculate ;-
Arithmatic mean, Standard deviation, Co-efficient of Skewness.
21.Mention the uses of standard deviation.
22.The demand of a commodity in two different towns are given below:-
Town A 36 42 18 35 48 62
Town B 38 28 25 42 37 40
In which town, the demand condition is more stable and why?
23.“Statistics is the science of average” – Explain
24.How does statistics help a manager? / Describe the managerial implication of statistics.
25.State the properties of a good measures of variation.
26.What is dispersion? State the significance of measuring dispersion.
27.Characteristics or properties of Statistics.
28.Describe the importance of Data collection.
29.The following table relates to the profits and losses of 100 firms. Calculate the average profits and the standard deviation of profits:
Profits & loss No. of firms Profits & Loss No. of firms
5,000-6,000 8 0-1,000 6
4,000-5,000 12 (-)1,000-0 5
3,000-4,000 30 (-)2,000-(-)1,000 8
2,000-3,000 10 (-)3,000-(-),2000 9
1,000-2,000 5 (-)4,000-(-)3,000 7
30.Compute the coefficient of variation from the following data:
Monthly Income 2501-5000 5001-7500 7501-10000 10001-12500 12501-15000
No. of families 65 130 215 100 70
31.Calculate the coefficient of quartile deviation from the following data:
Marks No. of students
Up to 20 12
Up to 40 20
Up to 60 60
Up to 80 140
Up to 100 160
Up to 120 185
32.A purchasing agent obtained sample of incandescent lams from two suppliers. He had the samples tested in his own laboratory for length of life with the following result:
Length of life (in hours) Sample from
Company – A Company – B
700-900 10 3
900-1000 16 42
1100-1300 26 12
1300-1500 8 3
Which company’s lamps are more uniform?
33.The demand of a commodity in two different towns are given below:
Town A : 40 44 18 36 46 60
Town B : 42 27 26 43 32 40
34.An organization has two units A and B. An analysis of daily wages paid to workers gave the following results.
Unit A Unit B
No. of workers 600 700
Average daily wage 120 170
Standard deviation 4 6
(a)Which unit pays larger amount as weekly wage?
(b)In which unit there is greater variability in wage distribution?
(c)Find the combined average wage and the combined standard deviation of wage for the whole organization.
35.Calculate Bowley’s coefficient of skewness from the data given as-
Marks No. of students
10-20 2
20-30 8
30-40 12
40-50 28
50-60 15
60-70 5
36.Calculate Karl pearson’s coefficient of skewness and state in which section skewness is higher –
Marks Students
Section A Section B
30-40 1 0
40-50 6 7
50-60 12 12
60-70 20 30
70-80 28 23
80-90 13 8
37.Karl pearson’s coefficient of a distribution is 0.65. Its standard deviation and mean is 8 and 40 respectively. Find mode and median of the distribution.
BUSINESS STATISTICS – I
Course Code : 1205
Suggestion for Final Exam
Faculty:
Ajoy Paul, BBA, MBA(Marketing),DU, Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, SBPGC
Chapter Included:
a) Introduction b) Collection, Processing and Presentation of Business Data c) Measure of Dispersion d) Moments, Skewness and Kurtosis.
1. Define Business Statistics? Discuss the limitation of Business Statistics.
2. Describe the characteristics of frequency distribution.
3. Why is statistics required in Business? / Importance of Statistics in Business.
4. Distinguish between the following:
(a) Primary and secondary Data
(b) Discrete and continuous frequency distribution
(c) Histogram and frequency polygon.
(d) Absolute and relative measure of dispersion.
(e) Inclusive and exclusive method.
(f) Histogram and bar diagram.
(g) Mean deviation and standard deviation.
(h) Standard deviation and co-efficient of variation.
(i) Central moments and Raw moments.
(j) Dispersion and skewness.
5. What are the properties of good measure of dispersion?
6. What do you understand by co-efficient of variation? Explain its usefulness in Business.
7. Define statistical method. Explain the uses of statistical methods in Business and Management.
8. Explain clearly how the measure of skewness and kurtosis can be used in describing a frequency distribution.
9. We are given the following frequency distribution regarding annual profits in thousand taka of 115 firms:-
Profits (000 Tk.) No. of firms
25-30 5
30-35 16
35-40 26
40-45 30
45-50 20
50-55 12
55-60 6
Construct less than and more than ogive curve and hence find the number of firms having profit between Tk. 32500 and Tk. 52500.
10. The following table gives the average monthly earnings of the mill workers in a certain city :
Monthly earnings(Tk.) No. of workers Monthly earnings(Tk.) No. of workers
800-850 21 1200-1250 36
850-900 29 1250-1300 45
900-950 19 1300-1350 27
950-1000 39 1350-1400 48
1000-1050 43 1400-1450 21
1050-1100 94 1450-1500 12
1100-1150 73 1500-1550 5
1150-1200 68
(a) Draw ogives by ‘less than’ and ‘more than’ method for the data given above.
(b) Find the number of workers whose wages lie between Tk.1180 and Tk.1480.
11. For two firm A and B belonging to the same industry, the following details are available:-
Firm A Firm B
No of Employees 100 200
Average wage monthly Tk.2400 Tk.1800
S.D. Tk.60 Tk.80
(a)Which firm pays out larger amount as wages?
(b)Which firm shows greater variability in the distribution of wages?
(c)Find average monthly wage and standard deviation of all the employees in both the firms.
12.Calculate co-efficient of skewness of the above date(given that standard deviation is 4.12). Based on the above result, what is your conclusion about the skewness?
13.You are given the frequency distribution of 292 workers of a factory according to their average weekly income. Calculate quartile deviation and its coefficient from the following data:
Weekly Income(Tk. No. of workers Weekly Income(Tk.) No. of workers
Below 350 8 450-470 22
350-370 16 470-490 15
370-390 39 490-510 15
390-410 58 510-530 9
410-430 60 530 & above 10
430-450 40
14.Particulars regarding the income of two villages are given below:
Village X Village Y
Number of persons 600 500
Average income(in taka) 175 186
Variance of income (in Tk.) 100 81
(a)In which village is the variation in income greater?
(b)What is the combined standard deviation of the village X and village Y put together?
15.A sample of daily production was organized into the following distribution:-
Daily Production Frequency
80-90 5
90-100 9
100-110 20
110-120 8
120-130 6
130-140 2
(a)Calculate the mean and median of the above distribution.
(b)Calculate the standard deviation and variance.
(c)Interpret the result.
16.What are the different measures of dispersion? Why standard deviation is considered to be the best measures?
17.State the various ways of presenting a frequency distribution graphically and discuss one of them.
18.Define measure of dispersion and state the merits of Standard deviation and mean deviation.
19.You are given the concept of skewness and kurtosis of a frequency distribution.
20.You are given the following data pertaining to kilowatt hours of electricity consumed by 100 persons in Dhaka :-
Consumption(in k-watt hours) 0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50
No. of users 6 25 36 20 13
Calculate ;-
Arithmatic mean, Standard deviation, Co-efficient of Skewness.
21.Mention the uses of standard deviation.
22.The demand of a commodity in two different towns are given below:-
Town A 36 42 18 35 48 62
Town B 38 28 25 42 37 40
In which town, the demand condition is more stable and why?
23.“Statistics is the science of average” – Explain
24.How does statistics help a manager? / Describe the managerial implication of statistics.
25.State the properties of a good measures of variation.
26.What is dispersion? State the significance of measuring dispersion.
27.Characteristics or properties of Statistics.
28.Describe the importance of Data collection.
29.The following table relates to the profits and losses of 100 firms. Calculate the average profits and the standard deviation of profits:
Profits & loss No. of firms Profits & Loss No. of firms
5,000-6,000 8 0-1,000 6
4,000-5,000 12 (-)1,000-0 5
3,000-4,000 30 (-)2,000-(-)1,000 8
2,000-3,000 10 (-)3,000-(-),2000 9
1,000-2,000 5 (-)4,000-(-)3,000 7
30.Compute the coefficient of variation from the following data:
Monthly Income 2501-5000 5001-7500 7501-10000 10001-12500 12501-15000
No. of families 65 130 215 100 70
31.Calculate the coefficient of quartile deviation from the following data:
Marks No. of students
Up to 20 12
Up to 40 20
Up to 60 60
Up to 80 140
Up to 100 160
Up to 120 185
32.A purchasing agent obtained sample of incandescent lams from two suppliers. He had the samples tested in his own laboratory for length of life with the following result:
Length of life (in hours) Sample from
Company – A Company – B
700-900 10 3
900-1000 16 42
1100-1300 26 12
1300-1500 8 3
Which company’s lamps are more uniform?
33.The demand of a commodity in two different towns are given below:
Town A : 40 44 18 36 46 60
Town B : 42 27 26 43 32 40
34.An organization has two units A and B. An analysis of daily wages paid to workers gave the following results.
Unit A Unit B
No. of workers 600 700
Average daily wage 120 170
Standard deviation 4 6
(a)Which unit pays larger amount as weekly wage?
(b)In which unit there is greater variability in wage distribution?
(c)Find the combined average wage and the combined standard deviation of wage for the whole organization.
35.Calculate Bowley’s coefficient of skewness from the data given as-
Marks No. of students
10-20 2
20-30 8
30-40 12
40-50 28
50-60 15
60-70 5
36.Calculate Karl pearson’s coefficient of skewness and state in which section skewness is higher –
Marks Students
Section A Section B
30-40 1 0
40-50 6 7
50-60 12 12
60-70 20 30
70-80 28 23
80-90 13 8
37.Karl pearson’s coefficient of a distribution is 0.65. Its standard deviation and mean is 8 and 40 respectively. Find mode and median of the distribution.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Picnic BBA 13th Batch
Picnic
2011
BBA 13th Batch
This is to informed that the 13th Batch students of BBA Program(Section-A,B,C,D) going to organized a picnic. The details of the picnic is given below:
Picnic Spot:
Padma Resort (Mauwa)
River side of Padma
Cottage of Sir Jogodish Chandra Basu
Dead Line :March 17,2011 (Thursday)
Subscription : Tk.500(Taka Five Hundred Only)
Last Date of Booking : March 15,2011
Contact Teacher:
1.Aysha Madam
2. Roushanara Madam
3. Ajoy Sir
Contact Class Representative:
1. Faizul Arfin Prince (Section-A)
2. Aiub (Section-B)
3. Azahar (Section-C)
4. Ashmoil (Section- D)
Co-ordinator
BBA & MBA Program
2011
BBA 13th Batch
This is to informed that the 13th Batch students of BBA Program(Section-A,B,C,D) going to organized a picnic. The details of the picnic is given below:
Picnic Spot:
Padma Resort (Mauwa)
River side of Padma
Cottage of Sir Jogodish Chandra Basu
Dead Line :March 17,2011 (Thursday)
Subscription : Tk.500(Taka Five Hundred Only)
Last Date of Booking : March 15,2011
Contact Teacher:
1.Aysha Madam
2. Roushanara Madam
3. Ajoy Sir
Contact Class Representative:
1. Faizul Arfin Prince (Section-A)
2. Aiub (Section-B)
3. Azahar (Section-C)
4. Ashmoil (Section- D)
Co-ordinator
BBA & MBA Program
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