Assignment of Marketing Research

Introduction

TM International Bangladesh Limited, a joint venture company of Telecom Malaysia and A.K. Khan & company Ltd of Bangladesh has started its commercial operation in Dhaka as a GSM 900 cellular phone operator on 15^th November, 1997.  Moreover TMIB has started its operation in Chittagong in March 26, 1998.  Aktel is the market follower in telecommunication service in Bangladesh and are controlling 14% of the total market share.

According to Rahman, Khan, and Islam (2003-2004) stated that the market share & sales growth rate of Aktel is now decreasing at a great extent as well as the customer satisfaction, and loyalty levels of Aktel are decreasing.  They also have noted that the network, product type, and price have relation with this situation.  Therefore in this study the researcher intends to investigate whether there are relationships among network, product type, price, & sales growth of Aktel in Bangladesh or not.

Problem statement

In an earlier study (Islam, 1998) identified that internal marketing has significant importance in service organization.  The author also stated that internal marketing is the antecedent of success of external marketing.  The firm can serve the outside customers effectively by practicing internal marketing among the employees.  This current study will extend the previous study and will investigate whether there is a relationship between internal and external marketing or not.

     On the other hand, Islam (1998) stated that the external marketing considers the aspects of needs, wants, demands, quality, creation, relationships with customers, and customer satisfaction in order to exchange goods and services between producers and customers.  According to Philips Kotler and Armstrong (1996) stated that the success of an organization mainly depends on two factors such as customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

     Therefore this study will use customer satisfaction and organization commitment as the factors of internal marketing, and sales growth and competitiveness of external marketing.  Then the researcher will investigate whether significant relationships exist among customer satisfaction, organization commitment, with sales growth and competitiveness of Aktel in Bangladesh.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to present and test a model, which identifies the relationship between the two, factors such as- customer satisfaction and organizational commitment with sales growth and competitiveness of Aktel in Bangladesh.

Customer satisfaction and organizational commitment, two factors of external marketing are the key components of a successful and prosperous organization.  More satisfied customers have been linked to higher profit margins, higher organizational commitment, greater customer retention and repeat purchases (Berry & Parasuraman, 1992; Corad, Brown, & Harmon, 1997; Jones & Sasser, 1995). Competitors within similar industries with the same types of technology, pricing strategies, etc. increasingly look to these two variables to create competitive advantage (Koch-Laabs, 2001). The competitors of Aktel are: Grameen phone, City cell, Sheba telecom, and some coming new companies.   It also becomes clear that successful marketing can only be implemented if the firm is involved not only in external but also in internal marketing with its factors (Kotler & Armstrong, 1996; Lovelock, 2001).

There is a great importance of internal marketing in the context of service organizations.  The successful service company must first satisfy the employees before it tries to sell its services to customers (Sasser, 1976; Zeithml & Bitner, 2003).  In Bangladesh similar type of study was conducted (Islam, 1998) where the researcher only identified that internal marketing has significant importance in service organization.  The researcher did not consider the factors of internal and external marketing and their relationship in that study.  The present study aims to identify whether the customer satisfaction, organizational commitment has any relationships with sales growth and competitiveness of Aktel in Bangladesh.

The Design – Methods and Procedures:

Research Design

To obtain the research question’s answer, Descriptive Research Design has been selected. Descriptive Research has an important objective: gives description of something marketing characteristics of function (Malhotra, 2001) and also the description of phenomenon or characteristic associated with an object population (who, what, when, where and how of a topic, Copper, 2001).

Sampling Method

To investigate the factors for distributor’s acceptability, Non-probability Sampling Procedure has been used.  The sampling unit was selected through Convenience Sampling: where the selection of the sampling unit is left primarily on the interviewer (Malhotra, 2001). The reason behind choosing convenience sampling is many but here most importantly, there is no appropriate structure or framework that can aid to select the sample.  Farther, these procedures are both time saving and inexpensive.

Research Instruments

To investigate the research questions, there is lack of secondary data.  So to collect the primary data the researcher has followed the questionnaire method, which is provided and developed by the organization. The researcher has also used some secondary data collected from different sources such as annual report, sales report, journal and textbook to explain the concept.

Sampling Design Process

To investigate the distributor, population of this study has been selected from different whole sale market of mobile sales of Dhaka City.  The sample area has been selected on the basis of organization’s interest.  The sample distribution is as follows:

Data Collection Procedure

The researcher distributed questionnaires among volunteer participants.  This approach has been selected because it is appropriate for this kind of survey in Bangladesh considering the poor mailing, Internet communication and fax systems.

Data Analysis Procedure

This study has used specific procedures for data analysis. Excel has been use to determine the percentage of sales growth, mean and standard deviation of the findings.

Limitations of the Study

This present study is limited by a number of factors.  The sample population is limited in terms of its size and composition. The sample will be drawn from Dhaka City only, and will not include retailers and dealers from other region. The convenience judgmental sampling method will be selected rather than other sampling procedures, so there is a possibility of sampling error. The sufficient literature of important concept of public recognition is not available. No study on the related topics has been conducted earlier in King Brand Cement. Time and money is also a limitation.