Behavior of Customer in case of Purchasing Refrigerator

Executive Summary

Today with technological advancement human race has achieved what few years back were impossible. Refrigerator is the source of refreshment to human life. This paper’s first goal is to cover the appropriate topics in a manner relevant to the study of consumer behavior of purchasing a refrigerator. Its second goal is to always do so with sufficient depth so that the introductory person gains a solid foundation about the perception of a consumer toward TCL Refrigerator in view of Bangladesh market. The third goal is to do all of this in an interesting, engaging, and applied way—one that holds person’s attention and stimulates them to relate actively to the material at hand that abound in their experiences. In this report I have tried to find out and analysis the factors that customers considers in purchasing refrigerator. For this purpose I have done a survey based on some questionnaire, and also did the frequency analysis. From the analysis I found that most of the respondents prefer TCL refrigerator which is 29 % and 26 %t of them use Butterfly refrigerator. I found that the respondents those who use refrigerator, most of them gave importance after sales service as attribute of the product. From the analysis I found that TVC helps most to give information about refrigerator to customers. 66% respondents believe that TVC helps them to most to get information about refrigerator. I found that most of the respondents are satisfied about the delivery system of Refrigerator TCL has a good possibility to get a leading position in the refrigerator Market in Bangladesh. But there have a threat of start entering the new electronics company in the national market. To keep them leading in the electrical industry and to compete with others they have to make it well known and available toward all the people that whenever anybody would like to buy refrigerator they will only think about TCL brand. And if they can use the right promotional strategy they would be able to increase their market share.

Introduction

Today with technological advancement human race has achieved what few years back were impossible. Refrigerator is the source of refreshment to human life. When Refrigerator was first introduced in Bangladesh, it was an expensive and fashionable item. Its price has also gone down considerably and more people in the society can afford it. At present there are several marketers who are offering their product in the Refrigerator market. Among them Samsung, Butterfly, Singer, Konka, Butterfly are most widely known brand. And TCL is one of the leading electrical and Electronics Company in our national market. In Bangladesh it is targeting the niche market for their home appliance products commencing their marketing strategy as of their high quality and reasonable products. They do not do their marketing for a particular group of people; they do their marketing those who has the ability to buy their products. Since the standard of living of people in our country is going up, everybody is aware about a brand of a product and wants to buy a qualitative product for a longer period of time. TCL industry is trying to buildup a better basement with better technology. Since the real life business situation is always very complex and competitive, every business has to face the intense competition and those who can successfully operate within this critical situation can become the blue cheap. To stay and increase the pace in the business track, the perception and brand awareness is very important. Today the real life business situation is always very complex and competitive, every business has to face the intense competition and those who can successfully operate within this critical situation can become the blue cheap. To stay and increase the pace in the business track, the perception and brand awareness is very important.

Origin of the Report

After completion of all the courses of BBA every student has to go through a practical orientation in reputed business organization to gather the practical knowledge. I prepared a report based Behavior of Customer in case of Purchasing Refrigerator-A Case Study on TCL Refrigerator. My Internship supervisor is Mr. Mamunur Rashid (General Manager) TCL. I have completed my Internship report on TCL at, 54, Dilkusha, Dhaka. I have tried my best to show my personal observation and knowledge in this report.

Problem Statement

The behavior of customer in purchasing refrigerator is unknown.

 Justifications

The behavior of customer in purchasing refrigerator is unknown because there are many branded refrigerator in the market and different consumers prefer different refrigerator for their household.

Literature Review

I have already discussed about my report’s topic. As it is based on consumer behavior, we have to understand what is consumer behavior and things related to it. All these are described below:

Definition of consumer behavior

Consumer behavior has changed dramatically in the past decade. The term consumer behavior is defined as the behavior that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs.

Consumer behavior focuses on how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources on consumption related item.

Types of consumer

There are two types of consumer. They are:

• Personal Consumer: Who buy goods or services for his or hers own use, for the use of households, or as a gift for a friend.
• Organizational Consumer: It means profit and non-profit business, government agencies, and institutions, all of which must buy products, equipment, and services in order to run their organizations.

Objectives of the Report

There are two types of objective behind conducting this report. These are as follows:

Broad objective:

The broad objective of this report is to find out the behavior of customer in purchasing refrigerator.

Specific objectives:

The specific objectives for this report are as follows:

• To find the attributes of refrigerator they like most.
• To find the price of refrigerator that they demand.
• To find the brand that consumers prefer for their refrigerator.
• To find out the reason for purchasing the brand.
• To find out the reasons behind purchasing from the place.
• To find out the advertisement media that helps the customers most.
• To find out the sales service that they prefer most

Sources of data: Majority of the study is based on primary data. However some secondary data source is used for background study.

• Primary Data collection sources were done by direct interview to the targeted respondents and I provided questionnaire to those customers who were interested in participating in the survey.
• Secondary Data were collected from books, published documents, survey reports, internet and journals.

Methodology

To complete this report successfully I have to follow some methods. These are as follows:

•   Research Type: The study is Descriptive in the context of Bangladesh for the aspects focused mainly on TCL.
•   Sample Size: Sample sizes were approximately 50.
•   Sampling Element: The respondents were to be picked from the following –
  • The service holders or Businessmen including end users, decision makers and opinion leaders.
  • Housewives
  • Young generation or students from business school
  •   Sampling technique: Non-Probability, Convenience Sampling
  •   Data collection procedure: A detail questionnaire was formulated for collecting data.
  •   Statistical Tool

I took the use of descriptive statistics. I have inputted the data into SPSS and got the output of those data’s. I had use SPSS and word to get our desired outputs. I formulate a single data and further procured the next.

I followed the following steps to prepare the report:

• Defined the problem
• Planning the research design.
• Planned the sample.
• Gathered the data.
• Processed and analyzed the data.

Formulated, concluded and prepared the report.

Limitations of the Study

• Secrecy or confidentiality is a crucial matter in this organization. As an intern it was not possible to reach those secret topics
• Not able to collect information from all the clients.
• Limited service hour
• It was difficult to find out the gap between rules and regulations and real life practice.  So, I went under a huge stress to find out those matters

Company Overview of TCL

Founded in with head quarters in Bangladesh the Shahnoor Electronics has grown from a small local factory to a rapidly growing transnational organisation with sales in excess of 31 billion.

Since Shahnoor Electronics started engaging in OEM for some of the international brands in the mid 1990’s, its overseas businesses now cover 50 countries and territories including North America, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. Sales offices have also been set up in Vietnam, the Phillipines, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Russia, New Zealand and Australia. It is one of the fastest-growing major industrial manufactures, having achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 47 percent in the past decade.

TCL electronics Ltd. has its own Mold & Die making section, high precision molds & dies are made by the help of the state-of-the-art VMC, CNC Wire-Cut, EDM etc. machines. The company has three Poly Urethane Foaming Plants, three Thermoforming (Vacuum forming) Units; highly equipped Metal Forming Units with Powder Coating, Nickel-Chrome Plant & Die-Casting Section, and Robot operated Injection Plastic Molding Plant, Highly equipped Test Lab, Printing & Packaging Section etc. TCL HIL always emphasizes on supreme priority in achieving customer satisfaction. The company always ensures product quality and renders the innovative latest technologies in its products. It has a complete experienced professional engineering team combined with both home and abroad to serve the valued customers.

Mission, Vision & Objective of TCL Bangladesh Limited

Mission:

“To grow and increase value by implementing advanced technologies, new products and services to provide excellent solutions to satisfy customers’ requirements.”

Vision:

“To provide the best solution and equipment to customer.”

Goal:

“To achieve market leadership, profitability, good corporate citizenship and a sustainable growth.”

Objectives:

“The main objective of the company is to increase the market share in related diversified products and solutions in Bangladesh and to assure the potential customers of the quality and durability of the products. Although the products are a bit highly priced but it is the best bargain that money can buy.”   

Overview of TCL Bangladesh at a glance

TCL is one of the leading Electronics Company in our national market. TCL refrigerator is well known brand with a national image. In Bangladesh it is targeting the niche market for their home appliance products commencing their marketing strategy as of their high quality and reasonable price. They do not do their marketing for a particular group of people; they do their marketing those who has the ability to buy their product. Since the standard of living of people in our country is going up, everybody is aware about a brand of a product and wants to buy a qualitative product for a longer period of time. Thus, consumer perception and brand awareness for refrigerator is now become a vital aspect when purchasing a refrigerator.

Operational Hierarchy of corporate Showroom:

Industry Key Success Factors

• Quality of the product should be high with attractive features.
• Price should be affordable and competitive
• Distribution channels should be recognized
• Promotional activities should focus on brand equity and image and it should have association with lifestyles of local people.
• Highly skilled sales force with managerial experience is required to do quality control.
• After sale service and warranty should be provided.

Target Market of TCL Refrigerator in Bangladesh

• Upper class
• Upper middle class
• Middle Class
• Lower middle class
• Lower classes people

Competitors : competitors can be defined as two way-

• Direct competitors
• Indirect competitors

In Bangladesh TCL basically do not have any competitors who can compete directly with them according to their Brand and price. They are the only one Manufacturer in Bangladesh refrigerator market and so that they have lots of advantage.

But they have many indirect competitors who are exporting from International Market, competing with them indirectly by having not the similar quality product in the market but they are offering attractive price with new features. The names of the competitors are- Samsung, Singer, Toshiba, sharp, Konka, Butterfly etc. some of them are assembled in china at a cheaper cost.

Marketing Strategy:

 In Bangladesh it is targeting the mass market for their home appliance products commencing their marketing strategy as of their high quality and reasonable products. They do not do their marketing for a particular group of people; they do their marketing those who has the ability to buy their product. For that they are offering free installment and after sales service. For refrigerator 5 years sales service without payment.

Promotion:

 As for promotional campaign TCL

•  Distribute the brochures to the customer by going door to door.
•  Give their advertisements on the TV, Newspaper, and Billboard.
•  Participate in DITF every year.
•  Sometimes give mobile phones while purchasing their product.
• Arrange many fair in different time period.

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS:  Refrigerator

Macroeconomic scenarios

Social

The concept of nuclear family is spreading widely across the country. The number of workingwoman is increasing day by day. These are the rationale that intensified the need of home appliances grow more than ever.

Economic

The devaluation of BDT against Euro and USD has created great impact on imports of the home appliances, which is impeding the growth on sales.

Technological

The growth regarding technology is very rapid. As most of the appliances are imported from abroad and distributed locally, the quality and standard is very high.

Political

The political environment is not that stable in our country and affecting every business. The tax policies are changed frequently and also not stable.

SECONDARY DATA RETRIEVAL & ANALYSIS

The Marketing and Management Problem

The data and information gathered through primary and secondary sources indicates few problem of the product. These problems of the product are directly and indirectly linked to the company’s marketing and management

        The Marketing problem

The TCL Company has great deal of problem in their marketing part. The problems are more or less related to the strategies taken by the company regarding product advertisement and promotion, market segmentation. The marketing problems are concerned with the fact that the strategy taken by the company is not always well implemented. The problems from the point of view of marketing are:

• Image of the product
• Marketing strategies
• Market segmentation

        The management problem is focused on the facts of one issue. The problem is:

• Corporate Culture

Corporate Culture   

The Corporate Culture of TCL follows conservative style. The corporate culture of TCL states that they prefer experienced and aged personal rather then young people.  The overall corporate culture of the company is conservative and they follow it in their recruiting and promotion in the management sector. This conservative corporate culture has a great influence on the product image. The company doesn’t encourage a young, fresh new comers in the management and with that the so-called “Crazy ideas”. But because of this negative attitude toward the crazy idea the company is lacking in creating new dimension for the product and promotion.

Analysis & Findings

In below I analyze my findings in a descriptive way. I used SPSS software to complete my report so the data are given is reliable and perfectly analyzes. I went to different groups of customers to collect information for my research.

Descriptive Analysis and Frequency Distribution:

To analyze my respondents answer I did descriptive analysis and frequency distribution.

* Descriptive Analysis: It refers the transformation of raw data into a form that will make them easy to understand and interpret; rearranging, ordering, manipulating data to provide descriptive information.

* Frequency Distribution: It refers a set of data organized by summarizing the number of times a particular value of a variable occurs.

I targeted my sample size as 50. In my sample size my main target is to know about customer satisfaction of service quality of Sonali bank ltd. In By using descriptive analysis and frequency distribution, we can assume about the total population. Those are given descriptively and graphically as follows

1. Age:

Frequency table

Age

Analysis:

My sample size was 50. I had divided my respondents’ age group into four classes. From the frequency table we can see that most of the respondents those who use refrigerator are in 20 to 30 years old. Rests of them are up to 30 years old. They use refrigerator in different places for different purpose.

2. Gender:

Frequency table 

Gender

Analysis:

My sample size was 50. Among them I found that, Most of the respondents are male person. As this topic is based on refrigerator purchasing behavior of customers, normally all the respondent are chosen who wants to keep their foods and beverage fresh for long time.

3. Occupation:

Frequency tabl 

Occupation

Analysis:

From the frequency table, I can see that all the respondents use refrigerator. As this topic is based on refrigerator purchasing behavior of customer, most of them are private service holder.

Income:

Frequency table

Income

Analysis:

My sample size was 50. Among them I found that all the respondents those who use refrigerator; most of their income level is tk. 20,001 to tk. 40,000 which is 39 %. They use refrigerator for different purpose in different places.

Refrigerator: Do you have own refrigerator?

Frequency table

Refrigerator

Analysis:

My sample size was 50.From the frequency table, I can see that all the respondents those who filled up the questionnaires most of them have refrigerator their own. Among the 50 respondents only 5 respondents have no refrigerator of their own.

Company:  If yes, please mention the brand/ company name.

Frequency table

Company

Analysis:

From the above table and graph I can say most of the respondents prefer TCL refrigerator which is 29 % and 26 %t of them use Butterfly refrigerator. Some of them use others branded refrigerator like Hitachi, Samsung, Singer, Konka, Sharp etc.

Satisfaction: Are you satisfied with your present brand of refrigerator?

Frequency table

Satisfaction

Analysis:

 My sample size was 50. From the frequency table and from the graph I can see that most of the respondents are satisfied with their present brand of refrigerator. Only 2 respondents are dissatisfied with their present brand of refrigerator.

Summary of Findings

• I had divided my respondents’ age group into four classes. From the frequency table we can see that most of the respondents those who use refrigerator are in 20 to 30 years old. Rests of them are up to 30 years old.
• My sample size was 50. Among them I found that, Most of the respondents are male person.
• I found that all the respondents use refrigerator. As this topic is based on refrigerator purchasing behavior of customer, most of them are private service holder.
• I found that all the respondents those who use refrigerator; most of their income level is tk. 20,001 to tk. 40,000 which is 39 %.
• I found that all the respondents those who filled up the questionnaires most of them have refrigerator their own. Among the 50 respondents only 5 respondents have no refrigerator of their own.
• From the analysis I found that most of the respondents prefer TCL refrigerator which is 29 % and 26 %t of them use Butterfly refrigerator.
• I found that most of the respondents are satisfied with their present brand of refrigerator. Only 2 respondents are dissatisfied with their present brand of refrigerator.
• I found that the respondents those who use refrigerator, most of them gave importance after sales service as attribute of the product.
• I found that most of the respondents which are 34 % have refrigerator at price level Tk. 21,000 to Tk. 30,000.
• I found that among the total respondents most of the respondents said that price of their refrigerator are as equal as quality. Only 16 respondents are disagreeing about it.
• From the analysis I found that most of the respondents which are 44 % prefer non-frost freezer as quality. 22 % of them prefer clean back system. And rests of them prefer frost freezer, lock and compressor as quality.
• I found that in case of refrigerator purchasing respondents are mostly influenced by their family, friends and neighbor. Among 50 respondents 29 respondents are influenced by their family members and 16 respondents are influenced by their friends and neighbor.
• From the analysis I found that 54% respondents prefer to buy the refrigerator from the dealer and 28% prefer to buy from company outlet. Very few percentages prefer retailers in case of refrigerator purchasing.
• Also I found that the 48 % respondents prefer dealers because of credit facility and the 30 % respondents who prefer company outlet go there because of the product availability.
• I found that most of the respondents think first about TCL refrigerator which are 28 %. TCL refrigerator comes in their mind first. 20% for Butterfly and rest of them for others brand.
• From the analysis I found that TVC helps most to give information about refrigerator to customers. 66% respondents believe that TVC helps them to most to get information about refrigerator.
• I found that among the 50 respondents 31 respondents visit website before purchasing refrigerator.
• I found that 47 respondents are interested to buy refrigerator from DITF. Only 3 of them are disagreeing about it.
• From the analysis I found that 38% respondents want to buy their refrigerator from DITF for price discount, 26% for brand comparison and 24% for getting delivery service. And rests of them go for other reasons.
• I found that most of the respondents are satisfied about the delivery system of Refrigerator
• From the analysis I found that 46% respondents expect to get the offer of guaranty. 28% of the total respondent prefer warranty, 20% of them choice replacement of the product.

Recommendation 

As TCL is one of the reputed company in Bangladesh, there are very little to recommend about there product or services.

• Most of the people like to purchase Non-frostier refrigerator. So, TCL should make available Non-frostier refrigerator.

• TCL should provide quick delivery and sales service after selling the product.

• DITF is one of the important place where people come together to buy refrigerator at discount price. So, TCL can motivate their customer by giving discount price. Also they can give discount or others offer in different distribution channel.

• TCL has a good possibility to get a leading position in the refrigerator Market in Bangladesh. But there have a threat of start entering the new electronics company in the national market. To keep them leading in the electrical industry and to compete with others they have to make it well known and available toward all the people that whenever anybody would like to buy refrigerator they will only think about TCL brand. And if they can use the right promotional strategy they would be able to increase their market share.

Conclusion

The consumers’ behavior towards TCL is very positive and their satisfaction level is very high. The consumers of refrigerator are preferred TCL refrigerator most. The consumers believe that TCL provides high quality product with reasonable prices in case of TCL refrigerator. Consumers of refrigerator mainly get information from the TV commercial. Founded in with head quarters in Bangladesh the Shahnoor Electronics has grown from a small local factory to a rapidly growing transnational organization with sales in excess of 31 billion. Since Shahnoor Electronics started engaging in OEM for some of the international brands in the mid 1990’s, its overseas businesses now cover 50 countries and territories including North America, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. Sales offices have also been set up in Vietnam, the Phillipines, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Russia, New Zealand and Australia. It is one of the fastest-growing major industrial manufactures, having achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 47 percent in the past decade. To achieve the leading position and success, lot of improvement is required for every divisions of it. As refrigerator became essential for the consumer day by day, many marketers are coming with this product in this electronic industry. So that it has also become a competitive market for TCL refrigerator in spite of having a good brand image and local presence in Bangladesh. They should also take much more attention and careful action to establish its product line in the market. Also should be identify their customer’s behavior and keep the commitment with them strongly. To build a positive perception and awareness among the consumers about their product they have to be stronger in their promotional activities and should maintain a good relationship both internally and externally in their corporate life.

Finally I can conclude that TCL provide quality product with reasonable price. They provide their service to customer with carefully.