Importing a Foreign Product in Bangladesh

INDEPENDENT UNIVERSITY BANGLADESH [pic] NAME OF THE COURSE: INTERNATIONAL MARKETING SUBJECT CODE: MKT 401 NAME OF THE INSTRUCTOR: ABUL KHAIR JYOTE SECTION: 01 NAME OF THE GROUP: MUSTANG DATE OF SUBMISSION: 01/11/2012 NAME OF THE GROUP MEMBER NAME: ID: E-MAIL: NUMBER: ANAN ASHEQ AREFEEN 1020644 [email protected] com 01719154064 MD. RIAZ SHOAIB 0910383 [email protected] om 01673390837 FAHIM MUNTAQIM 0921111 [email protected]@yahoo. com 01915483658 FAHAD HOSSAIN 0921338 [email protected] com 01677676794 TAWSIF BIN MAKSUD 0910374 [email protected] com 01671070843 White appliance is a foreign company and it’s trying to get in Bangladeshi market. In Bangladesh the average monthly income is about 500 dollar a month which is 35000 in Taka.
So the income scale is medium. According to our survey we figured out that microwave oven is used by the people whose income scale is about 70000-80000 or higher in the month. If we consider the social class, we found the people from the higher and higher middle class are using the microwave oven and the rest of the people are comfortable with the gas stove. In Bangladesh, the market of microwave oven is not that good enough. Our company cannot sustain in this limited amount of market. The company actually wants a huge market to do business.
In this case, we got only one option and that s to expand the usage of microwave oven in the country and to do so we need to target a new segment. We can’t just work on only two classes. Rather we need to concentrate on the middle class and upcoming middle class people. To expand our market, we targeted the middle class and upcoming middle class families and to do so, we need to promote our product as a permanent need. For example, if we think of a house appliance, we always think about a tv, refrigerator, furniture etc. So we need to work in such a way that we can point that microwave oven is a must in a home appliance.

We have gone thru most of the middle class families recently to get their opinion and found that they can actually afford to buy a micro wave oven. The cost of a microwave oven is about 7000-10000taka but the problem is the usage cost. They say microwave oven consumes lot of electricity and it creates a huge electricity bills which sometime get beyond affordability. Even most people believe the oven make food tastes bad. Many of them don’t know how to use the microwave oven; even many of them misinterpret the microwave oven that it is a source of cooking food.
Yes of course microwave oven is a cooking product but it is not suitable for our Bangladeshi food habit. We cannot cook our food in microwave as it is made on European context. It is very good for ready made food. Since, Bangladeshi people are not habituated in ready made foods; we can promote the oven as a source of freshen up the food by heating it. So the factor that mostly will create problem interfering in Bangladeshi market is: 01. Huge amount of electricity consumption 02. People misinterpret the product 03. People think oven make food taste bad
The most important and common problem is the electricity consumption. Microwave really takes a huge quantity of electricity to operate. To sort out this problem we are concentrating on manufacturing as special kind of oven named the electric convection oven. In this oven it has a special device or an adaptor which make the oven consume less energy and heat the food like the typical microwave ovens. A table is given below Appliance |Temperature |Time |Energy |Cost | |Electric Oven |350 |1 hour |2. 0 kWh |11. 2 | |Electric Convection Oven |325 |1 hour |1. 39 kWh |5. 00 | |
We’ve made a compare between the regular oven and our special oven and figured out in average people can actually save 6 taka in every one hour. People may be getting interested on our product because we have made it cost effective. We need to promote our product in a way so that people should realize that microwave oven is not a product to cook, rather it helps people to get the food fresh by heating it. People have misconception about the microwave oven that it makes food taste bad. We need to reduce such perception and imply that there is nothing to do with the tastes.
It just heat up the food to make it fresh. Such promotion may get a huge response because nowadays people are getting busy day by day. Even in many families, both husband wife is doing job and therefore they don’t have much time for cooking. Even if we look at the bachelors, they still don’t get any time to cook. Microwave oven is the best solution to cope up with their busy days. In the segment of busy people they would get a relief of cooking several times a day. All they need to do is to cook food once a day and get fresh food all day by heating with microwave oven.
We can also promote the product by giving a recipe based on microwave cooking as a bonus. In fact we will also provide them with special bowls suitable for microwaves. We can also provide a facility of membership card to a particular shopping mall where they can buy their necessary groceries in a minimum discount. In this way, people may get interest of buying our product. We can also make the microwave open which can be operated by the remote control. It will be easy for the users to operate it. The advantage of microwave oven is it makes the food fresh.
Maximum people faced such problems in cooking and that is when food is been cooked in the afternoon, we prefer to have that in dinner too. So the food that was cooked in the afternoon need to heat up on the gas stove which makes the food dry. So to regain the previous taste, more spices and water should be given and again re cook the food which is very bothering and also it kills time too. In this case, microwave oven just heat up the food to make it fresh and it do not dry up the food which is an advantage.
Tagline: Though we are manufacturing and marketing the product in Bangladesh for the genuine people, I’ve considered THREE taglines “WHITES; FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, WITH THE PEOPLE” “LEMONY FRESH 24HR” “HEAT IT, FRESH IT” Thing we need to think is that how will we actually enter the market after targeting our customer. We first thought about making a permanent factory to get the market permanently but we cannot do that for many circumstances. The Bangladeshi infrastructure is not suitable for our company. Moreover in Bangladesh, political turmoil, labor strike and most important problem load shedding is the daily situation.
Our company cannot sustain with these problem. In this situation we are planning to get involve to a domestic company in Bangladesh in joint venture. We are interested of making a joint venture with Walton. Walton doesn’t manufacture micro ovens. So it might be a good opportunity for them to make a new segment of product in their company and we have the advantage of using their infrastructure. More over we can make a deal with them such as we will make the factory jointly by spreading 50/50 and our company will provide all the necessary machineries. Walton will maintain and hire the labor to manufacture our product.
Walton and whites works in a joint venture and so we can use their distribution channel. In the contract of joint venture we will offer them 70/30 profit and bargain the profit margin up to 40%. Then we will also bargain about the selling of our manufacturing product. We will try to convince them allow us to sell our product on the other Asian countries by exporting. Such as if 100 micro ovens are manufactured in the industry of joint venture, 50 micro ovens will be sold in the Bangladeshi market and there would be a 50/50 profit share on the first fifty ovens.
Then they must allow us to sell the other 50 micro ovens to other Asian countries by exporting thru Walton and we would give them 20% profit or may bargain up to 30% for the last 50 products. According to the contract Walton will maintain the labor cost and we have the right to employ our own expert representatives to watch out the both the internal and external situation. Our company wills not toler any trade union inside the venture premises. Government officers are not allowed as deputation. Yearly audit should be done by the renowned auditors.
Finally Walton cannot terminate this joint venture within 10yrs. It would be good for both of us because Walton got a new segment of their product line, and they can make some extra profit from the product and our benefit is our market is been diversifying. In fact the best advantage we got in this joint venture is reducing the labor cost as the labor cost in Bangladesh is very cheap. The factory overhead cost is very cheap. People here actually want to do overtime job in a certain payment where in the western countries people don’t want to do job more than 8 hr.
In our point of view, they should take the offer because by working with us, they might get many resourceful information, technologies, can train skilled workforce to develop their industry. The government might verify this thing and to develop their domestic industries they might be very co operative with us. For example we don’t need to give duty fee in the port, more over we might get a facility to export our product from the Bangladeshi port on behalf the Walton in a half tax rate. The disadvantage of this joint venture is the leak of technology and information.
If the country’s national level business policy frequently changes, it may affect our company profit. The most important issue is the corruption. If the corruption can’t be controlled, law and order situation is not good in the country and lack of good governance may create a huge problem in this joint venture. Working in Bangladesh as a joint venture it saves a lot of money because it has less responsibility such as labor cost and maintains, political turmoil, load shedding etc. The home country would take care of these. The process we are saving a huge budget is called the economy of scale as it utilize the money very efficient way.
Establishing a factory in Bangladeshi premises would cost lot of money. We believe our company is working not only for the highest income category or group but for the every level of people. We are highly dedicated on fulfilling the customer need. We don’t work just for a profit. Considering the people’s need and the income status, we offer a facility of buying our product in an installment. People can buy our product in 3 month Period installment. It might be a chance of encouraging people to buy our product. To inform the people about our product, we choose to make commercial advertisement in various public channels.
Nowadays cooking program in TV channels has gained a good reputation. In this case, what we can do is to sponsor a cooking program or we can arrange such program in TV channels based on the recipe which is related on microwave cooking. For some reason, if the budget gets tight, we will request some of those cooking programs to use our microwave and influence indirectly the audience to buy our product. We can also promote our product by giving the opportunity of demo using in the retail stores in the country. We also can arrange a flash mob in the busiest locality to get the product in the peoples mind.
We can also sponsor many inter country sports to spread the name of our product. In the last step we will also try a pilot operation on marketing our product in the Bangladesh defenses especially in the Army. The name of this pilot operation is called “THE VETERAN”. In the hill tracks or in the borders our soldiers face a lot of problem on getting fresh food. They often complained about it. They can’t get fresh food just because in those areas they are in the call of duty for the nation. They are not authorized to leave their position or to return their barracks for the sake of the country’s safety.
Yes there are cooking facilities in the barrack but there is certain time of three days meal. If a person misses that time, he or she will not be allowed to get the meal. So in this case, they have to cook it for their own. Now the soldiers in the duty cannot often return in time. In this case, they don’t need to cook again rather all they need to do is to heat up the meal. So to sort out such problem, we might influence them to use our product in 20% discount rate. This discount is named as the veteran rate. We are not actually just doing business but we also took the oath of serving our nation.