|Effectiveness analysis of an IMC plan – analysis on Djuice. |
|Research Report |
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Table of Contents

Contents
Executive Summary 3

Background 4

Statement of the Problem 11

Approach to the Problem 12

Research Design 14

Data Analysis 15

Results 16

Limitation and Caveats 21

Conclusion and Recommendations 22

Exhibit 23

Reference 27

Executive Summary

I am going to conduct a research project on “Effectiveness analysis of an IMC plan – analysis on DJUICE”.

Integrated marketing communication is integration of all marketing tools, approaches, and resources within a company which maximizes impact on consumer mind and which results into maximum profit at minimum cost. It aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media. To be an Effective brand IMC plan plays a major role. Effectiveness of a brand is measured by consumer preference.

Advertising and other promotional tools, Word of Mouth, Service quality, Tariff and Offer etc are the variables for preferring a mobile phone. The objective is to identify the effect of each factor on preference of Djuice. This research project could act as the guideline to estimate what the Djuice users expect from the company and what influence them to prefer one than other.

Information is needed about:

• What is their priority while users choose Djuice?

• What are the various factors that have the impact on their choice of Djuice?

The method of administering the questionnaire is the survey method that is interviewing. The average interview time was in between 15 – 25 minutes. As the target group of the research project is djuice users, so the sampling design is on non probability based that is Judgemental sampling.

The research is to recommend a better course of action for identifying the factors and to analysis the preferences more correctly.

Background

Grameenphone Ltd., the largest telecommunications service provider in Bangladesh, received its operating license in November 1996 and started its service from March 26, 1997. Now, after 11 years of successful operations, Grameenphone is the largest mobile phone service provider in Bangladesh.

Basically Grameenphone is a joint venture enterprise between Telenor (62%), the largest telecommunications service provider in Norway with mobile phone operations in 12 other countries, and Grameen Telecom Corporation (38%), a non-profit sister concern of the internationally acclaimed micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank.
Over the years, Grameenphone has always been a pioneer in introducing new products and services in the local market. GP was the first company to introduce GSM technology in Bangladesh when it launched its services in March 1997.

Grameenphone witnessed a jolt in subscription growth in the last quarter of 2009 with start-up campaigns pushing the total number of subscriptions over the 23Mn subscription base. The number of subscriptions increased by 1.3 million during the quarter compared to 0.2Mn in the same quarter of 2008. GP’s subscription base reached at 23.3Mn with 44.4% market share at the end of 2009.

The revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009 increased by 2.6% to BDT 1,675 crore compared to the underlying revenue of the same quarter of 2008 which excluded onetime recognition of arrear interconnection revenue. This growth was mainly led by higher subscription base and tariff revision. Total revenue for this quarter was also increased by 1.3% from the third quarter of 2009.

Djuice (short of digital juice) is a youth based mobile phone plan from Grameenphone. This is a prepaid package. Djuice was launched in Bangladesh on the 14th of April, 2005. The main objective of this brand is to serve the youth segment of the market. The product has been specially designed to cater the needs of youths of Bangladesh. Djuice has various features designed for youths, namely; special rate for Djuice community, Xtra Khatir, (discounts at different outlets).Djuice also arranges different special programs for youth, like, Drockstar (music competition), Know Bangladesh (awareness program).The djuice brand is positioned as the “Youth Brand”. The 3 main features of this brand is Music, Messaging and friend. Ever since the launch djuice has seen a big warm response from the crowd. Within two years djuice Bangladesh had enlisted around 2 million subscribers. On the 14th of April, 2007 djuice Bangladesh shed its old logo and put on a new logo which was a part of the worldwide re-branding process of djuice. In 2008 they adopted a new brand message that is “Break Free”.

In Bangladesh, all the six mobile operators targets either corporate people or general public. None of them except Grameenphone thought of the young generation who may have different need, want and demand. In this situation Grameenphone offered djuice, which is specially catered for the young people to fulfill their need and want by providing different youth oriented features.

Culture
Recently, due to globalization and influence of western culture, our young generation is becoming more funky and westernized in every aspect of their behavior. That’s why they are using mobile phones more and more. They prefer products that resemble uniqueness, so they are getting interested about SIM card services that are fully designed and created according to their need. Not only the youth but other age people are also getting used to mobile phones. This cultural change is playing a significant role in telecommunication business.

Demography
Demographic factors like age, sex, income etc. are very key issues in influencing consumer behavior regarding mobile phone service. Usually, the younger generation people are more prompt in using mobile phones than the elders, whereas male are more prone to have mobile phones than females. In addition, Income has a big impact on mobile phone use as people with higher income are more inclined to use phones rather than the lower income people.

Customers’ Characteristics
Djuice has been launched basically concentrating on the young generation of Bangladesh and the features of this brand are designed keeping the wants and desires of this particular customer group in mind. Both male and female youth from urban areas is targeted, who are from any institutional stage, from school level to undergraduate/graduate level.

Customers’ Buying pattern
Mobile phone connection is based on single time buying pattern. The availability and cheap cost of Djuice SIM card has made its customers to adopt multiple mobile identity holders whenever they want. In urban areas a recommendable number of Djuice subscribers have more than one Djuice SIM card. The buying decision is mainly a result of influence of friend circle and holding an identity of “Djuice Dunia”. There is a point to be noted that no other telecom company in Bangladesh offers such a brand which is concentrated only on the youngsters.

Factors influencing purchase
Friend Circle: Usually teenage group is highly influenced by friends. They try to have the same thing as friends do. And in maximum friend groups, most of the young individuals have Djuice connection which enforces another friend to go for a Djuice connection.

Image: The image of Djuice has been created in such a way that highly influences the young generation. Even the image is set up mentioning the generation “Djuice Generation”.

Promotion: The specially catered promotional policies and the “Djuice Language” such as “Jotil Prem”, “Djuice Dunia” etc has created an appeal amongst the youngsters.

Tariff and Offers: Reduced tariff for certain time of the day, low call rate to dear ones through FnF service, bonus talk time, free bundled SMS, voice SMS, mms are also responsible for Djuice craze amongst teenagers.

Uniqueness: Djuice “Extra Card” was an influencing factor for early Djuice users. This card was given as a discount card or extra facility card at some shopping malls, super shops, restaurants, different service providers etc.

Customer Service: Availability of Djuice (Grameenphone) customer service, recharge card and flexi load services are also another influencing factor.

Customers’ Lifestyle
Usually the lifestyle of young generation is uniquely different from the other age groups.

They usually have lots of friends so frequency of communication through mobile phone is very high. They want to lead a trendy lifestyle and want to try something new. Among the youth there is a considerable number who like to use mobile phone more at night, usually after midnight. They like to move around, enjoy life and chat with friends. Their lifestyles reflect the symbol of youth, who can enjoy life and have a tendency to break free from the traditional views and culture.

Market segments
Djuice segments the market in three main categories. They are

• Demographic segmentation: Demographically Virgin divided the market into three parts. They are ✓ AGE: Djuice’s target market is young generation people aged between 15 and 25. ✓ Sex-wise: Djuice does not differentiate sex wise. They are always aiming at both male and female. ✓ Income: As Djuice s aimed to young generation they assume that their target customers will have limited income and that income will not be high.

• Geographic segmentation: Now they are mainly targeting the urban areas. People who are trendy, young and unique are their target market. In Bangladesh, their majority sales come from the big metropolitan cities and urban areas.

• Psychographic segmentation: Djuice mainly segments the market based on psychographic lifestyle, which means they consider their consumers life style to determine the segment. Djuice is for those, who want to experience something unique and trendy. This sort of nature is mainly found within the young generation who wants to be different among all around them.

Positioning strategies
Positioning of Djuice is mainly focused on trendy-young generation. No other telecom company offers any service package which influences young stars to rock in life, to be a part of something unique, to make them feel having an image of a world of their own. The unique image of “Djuice Dunia” has been successful to get the attention of young users all over the country. It has become like today’s trend to be a member of this “dunia” and young users actually feel proud to be a part of it.

SWOT Analysis of Djuice

Strengths
Unique brand: GP’s Djuice is the only youth brand in Bangladesh. GP is the first to identify and serve this segment in Bangladesh. No other telecom company is till now competing in this market segment with djuice. So to some extent djuice has an absolute advantage in this market segment.

Large market Share: In an overpopulated country like Bangladesh young generation contributes as a large chunk of the overall population. In the Bangladeshi perspective it is huge market and GP is the only firm operating in this segment and djuice has a large market share in this segment. This is a really important achievement for Djuice brand.

Brand reputation: Djuice recently has come up with a new brand message that is “break free”. It is a new effort to refresh the brand. Prior to that Djuice is already popular in the young for the effort for creating a distinct life style. The brand is quite successful in creating a unique community named as Djuice community. It exemplifies the success of the brand.

Product features & promotional tactics: The distinct product feature is very much responsible in attracting the target customer to the brand. The features are craved in such a way that young generation can really make use of it. A large portion of the Djuice promotional effort goes for publicity such as Sponsoring concert, music talent hunt program etc. These tactics are really successful to draw young generation’s attention to the brand.

Weaknesses
Criticism: Some people think that Djuice is a brand directed to the unproductive segment of the population. It creates an extra burden on the parents. Some of the product features of Djuice such as a very low call rate from 12.00 am 7.00 am created question about the moral validity.

Ineffective pricing: it is huge setback for djuice as its call rate for djuice-GP (2tk/min) is higher than normal GP-GP call rate (1.5tk/min).

Opportunities
Lots of opportunities still exist for Djuice including span of the market, make better relationships with subscribers etc.

Span of the market: Djuice captured most of the young generation’s eyes. But all are concentrated on urban or metropolitan centric young people. There are a huge number of young people who does not live in the urban areas who are mostly untouched. Djuice can start their activities to capture this segment as well by specially tailored promotional campaigns.

Better relationships with subscribers: It is said that service companies live on their relationship with customers. Djuice can start activities like installing separate “Djuice service centre” to make better relationship with the users. This extra importance can help them to be closer with the users.

CSR: The mother company of Djuice brand is engaged in various CSR activities but the brand itself is engaged comparatively less except for helping in arranging concerts to raise charity, rock band search etc. The relationship with the society can get closer by broadening the horizon of Djuice’s CSR activities.

Threats
There are also threats along with opportunities in the market.

Potential competitors: Telecom industry is not much saturated yet but the competitors like Aktel, Banglalink, and Warid are always coming with their new attractive offers. As djuice is the only youth centric brand, other telecom companies might target them as well. This is really a big challenge for even a brand like Djuice to keep on a consistent track of success.

Image: Djuice’s all promotions are based on “rock” life style which is very much welcomed at the young generation but most of the times hated at the parents level. This can have significant negative consequences as most of the Bangladeshi youth’s buying choice is usually directed by the parents.

Ongoing political instability: There has been a political instability going on in Bangladesh for the past few years. As all service companies rely on their offers and treatment of the clients, the current political situation might hamper Grameenphone’s service activities in a way that the subscribers may not get well treated sometimes. For an example, a shortage of “Credit Recharge Card” may occur during long term strike.

So does their work with more dedication Djuice’s communication objectives are –

✓ Reaching the youth who are bold and like uniqueness, surprises, adventure. ✓ Gaining 4.5 million subscribers within December 2009. ✓ To promote the brand’s awareness by 100% within December 2010. ✓ Reach 60% of the target customers within December 2010 at a 10% lower cost

Djuice uses a wide variety of media to communicate their message with the customers. Different local newspaper, TV channel, radio, billboards, etc. fall under the media mix of Djuice. Djuice sometimes gives posters, flayers, paper caps, papers fans during festivals like; Pohela boishakh, Valentine’s Day, Pohela falgun etc. They have also branded some buses that roam around Dhaka city.

Statement of the Problem

Imc plan is an essential element for any organization’s marketing success. Djuice an initiative of GP has created an evolution in the telecom sector with its innovative promotions and effective IMC plan. To justify the effectiveness of the IMC plan of DJUICE is the main purpose of my report. The main problem is to identify the factors that prolong the IMC plan to achieve its success that is providing Djuice the desired image.

Specific Components: • To primarily determine the reasons that influences the choice of mobile phone. • To identify the basic factors that influences the choice of mobile phone. • To determine which factors mainly differentiate among the choices regarding mobile phone.

Approach to the Problem

Research questions:

• Is the IMC plan of DJUICE effective? • What are the components of any successful IMC plan?

Hypothesis:

Ho- (all means are equal) djuice imc plan is not effective H1- (all means are not equal)djuice imc plan is effective

Statistical Tools:

The data has been collected through primary and secondary sources and property classified, tabulated and presented in graphical form wherever necessary. The statistical tools such as factor analysis, discriminant analysis and regression are used for analysis.
Factor analysis:
Objective: To convert a large number of highly correlated variables into a small number of uncorrelated factors to be used in subsequent multivariate analysis.
Hypothesis: Ho: Variables are uncorrelated.
H1: The variables are highly correlated.

Discriminant analysis:
Objective: To identify the factors that will best discriminate among the groups of dependent variable.
Hypothesis: Ho: Means of all discriminant function in all groups are equal.
H1: Means of all discriminant function in all groups are not equal.

Regression analysis:
Objective: To develop a mathematical relationship between two or more independent variables and an interval-scaled dependent variable.
Hypothesis: Ho: ß1= ß2 = ß3 = ß4 = …… = 0

H1: ß1 ≠ ß2 ≠ ß3 = …….. ßk ≠ 0

Research Design

There are several factors which are influencing customers to purchase or choosing Djuice. These are Friend Circle, Image, Promotion, Tariff and Offers, Uniqueness and Customer Service.

So here the Dependent variable is preference of Djuice and Independent variables are the influencing factors.

The present study is a descriptive type which includes surveys.

The major components of the study are as follows:

Primary data is the foundation on which analysis of the present study is based. All the data have been collected from primary sources by the means of pilot survey. The method of conducting the survey was through personal interview. The data are quantitative in nature.

Secondary data is another important source of data on which the present dissertation is based. Secondary data has been collected from various published and unpublished sources. The following sources are being used for collection of secondary data:

I. Company’s IMC plan and Annual report.

II. Periodicals and Newspapers.

III. Internet Browsing.

The secondary data are also analyzed and used for drawing conclusion.

Scaling Technique

For scaling purpose, the 9 point Semantic Differential Scale has been used. The respondents have marked the point that best indicate how they would describe the object being rated. The negative adjectives sometimes have been placed at the left side of the scale and sometime in the right side of the scale to avoid position bias.

Questionnaire development and Pretesting:

The process of questionnaire design starts by identifying the information need for this research. The questionnaire contains two parts- basic information about the research and identification of information about the respondents. All the questions were designed as close ended, every question was reviewed in terms of wordings and contents to match the intellect level of the respondents.

Sampling Technique

Between probability and non probability sampling, I chose non probability sampling because it was less costly and less time consuming to prepare a sampling frame. Among the various technique of Non probability sampling my choice was judgmental sampling because it generates representative sample and provide both convenience and relative low cost. The total sample size is 30. It was determined on the basis of requirement of the selected analyses.

Data Analysis

Methodology

Factor Analysis

At the beginning of the analysis factor analysis is applied to come up with a set of small number of uncorrelated factors. The variables used were highly correlated which could have been a problem for the subsequent analysis. That is why I used factor analysis to convert them into a small number of uncorrelated factors.

As there is necessity to use the result of this factor analysis in subsequent multivariate analysis, I specifically used principle component analysis.

The model used for factor analysis is:

Fi = Wi1 X1 + Wi2 X2 + Wi3 X3 + Wij Xi +………. + Wik Xk

Discriminant analysis

After getting the desired small number of factors, discriminant analysis was conducted to determine which factor best discriminant among the categories of dependent variables.

The model we used for discriminant analysis is:

D0 = B0 + B1X1 + B2X2 + ……..+ BKXK

Multiple Regressions

By conducting multiple regressions, I have shown how dependent variable changes according to the changes in independent variable.

The model used for regression analysis is:

Dependent variable = Constant + Independent variable (Regression Coefficient)

Results

Factor Analysis

Here I use the Principle Component Analysis and total 6 variables were included in the factor analysis. At first I constructed a correlation matrix and test the appropriateness of factor model.

Bartlett’s test of sphericity was used to test the hypothesis that variables are uncorrelated in the population.

KMO and Bartlett's Test

|Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. |.537 |
|Bartlett's Test of Sphericity|Approx. Chi-Square |31.700 |
| |Df |15 |
| |Sig. |.007 |

From the table I found that the approximate chi-square statistics is 31.7 with 15 degrees of freedom which is significant at .007 levels. So the factor analysis may be considered an approximate technique for analyzing the data.

Using vermix rotation, 6 variables are reduced into 3 uncorrelated factors having eigenvalue greater than 1.

Rotated Component Matrix(a)

| |Component |
| |1 |2 |3 |
|company image |.886 |-.010 |.112 |
|Friend circle |.896 |.049 |.214 |
|Promotions |-.156 |.716 |-.318 |
|Tariffs |.109 |.790 |.253 |
|Uniqueness |.588 |-.132 |-.416 |
|Customer service |.118 |-.027 |.817 |

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. a Rotation converged in 4 iterations.

Discriminant Analysis

The three factors were found from the factor analysis is used as independent variables in the discriminant analysis. Here the dependent variable is Usage frequency which has 3 categories.

Tests of Equality of Group Means

| |Wilks' Lambda |F |df1 |df2 |Sig. |
|company image |.743 |4.666 |2 |27 |.018 |
|Friend circle |.636 |7.729 |2 |27 |.002 |
|Promotions |.664 |6.824 |2 |27 |.004 |

Here,

Company image Factor has a Wilks' Lambda of .743. The univariate f ratio = 4.666 with 2 and 27 degrees of freedom which is significant at .05 level.

Friend circle Factor has a Wilks' Lambda of .636. The univariate f ratio = 7.729 with 2 and 27 degrees of freedom which is significant at .05 level.

Promotion Factor has a Wilks' Lambda of .664. The univariate f ratio = 6.824 with 2 and 27 degrees of freedom which is significant at .05 level.

Regression Analysis

Model Summary

|Model |R |R Square |Adjusted R |Std. Error of the |
| | | |Square |Estimate |
|1 |.422(a) |.178 |.046 |1.17347 |

a Predictors: (Constant), Customer service, Promotions, company image, Friend circle

ANOVA(b)

|Model | |Sum of Squares |df |Mean Square |F |
| | |
|My friend circle use djuice that’s why I use |0 |1 |
|it. | | |
|8 |7 |6 |5 |
1. Company Image0123456782. Friend Circle0123456783. Promotions0123456784. Tariff and Offers0123456785. Uniqueness0123456786. Customer Service0123456787. Network012345678

Reference

Djuice’s IMC Plan and Grameen phone’s annual report.
Marketing Research (5th Edition) by Naresh K. Malhotra.
Websites.
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|Section: 3.1 |
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|User’s Preference (For |
|Regression analysis) |
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|Dependent Variables |
|(Discriminant Analysis) |
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|Usage Frequency (for |
|Discriminant analysis) |
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|Independent Variable |
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|Dependent Variable |
|(Discriminant Analysis) |
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|1. company image |
|2. Entertainment News |
|3. Promotions |
|4. Tariffs |
|5. Uniqueness |
|6. Customer service |

Variables