Research on Consumer behavior

Introduction:

Consumer behavior refers to all of the behaviors that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of product and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. To better meet the needs of specific groups of consumers, most marketers adopted a policy of market segmentation, which called for the division of their total potential markets into smaller, homogeneous segments for which they could design specific products and/or promotional campaigns.

There are thousand kinds of product or series of products in the market. Why the consumers will buy the product and in what basis they sort out the product, is the main study of consumer behavior. Every person of the society is moving and using with their useful items. To satisfy their actual need they buy different products and for buying they go through several thought process. In the last stage of the thought process they think about the disposal of that particular product. Some disposed products can be recycled by manufacturer or reused by the user again.

This recycled product can come again to the market for selling with the existing or the new brand name. This research will show how the consumer will react when buying the recycled product. Also the major characteristics that influence them to buy and use recycled products.

Research on Consumer behavior

Objectives of this Study:

The recycled product is still new concept for the Bangladeshi consumers. Some of them have no idea about the recycled product even they are using those products regularly. The ultimate objective of this report is to come across the actual scenario of the recycled product and the customer expectations with on it.

In this report we want to find out the reason and reaction of the consumers for selecting the recycled product in terms of the following criteria’s:

• Consumer awareness about the recycled product
• Disposing of any product
• Consumer beliefs about recycled
• Culture and attitude for buying the recycled product.

Scope of the Study:

The scope of the study was limited to uncover the full image of recycled product to the customers’ mind. To identifying different aspects that are considered as the elements of consumer buying behavior like brand loyalty, consumer beliefs and consumer willingness to search for the particular product; identifying some related issues like ethnocentrism, culture, reference groups, decision making and overall perception and attitudes toward the recycled one.

Limitations of the Study:

Limited time and the short nature of this paper prevent this report from being a comprehensive quantitative study. Moreover the purpose of this report requires it to be an elaborate one and also the fact that it is conducted on a small set of sample of 50 respondents only, the findings of the report cannot be generalized to numerous people of Bangladesh. Also the limited knowledge base cannot provide such a complex and huge topic.

Research Methodology:

The research is based on secondary and primary information. A questionnaire was designed with the help of the faculty to gather the primary information by interviewing a sample size of 50 people. Before undertaking a full-scale study, the authors conducted a small-scale exploratory survey to identify the critical issues to include in the questionnaire. To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, it was first pre-tested and debugged before conducting the survey.

Consumer Behavior

Segmentation provides the opportunity to expand a market by better satisfying the specific needs or wishes of a particular segment of the consumers. To that view the segmentation can be carried out in the following fashion:

MARKET SEGMENTATION

Market segmentation can be defined as the process of dividing a potential market into distinct subsets of consumers with common needs or characteristics and selecting one or more segments with a distinct marketing mix. For recycled, underlying needs of market segmentation to provide quality products to its potential consumers and satisfy them better than the competitors. Another reason of market segmentation can be increase the customer base among diversified target segments. Segmentation also identifies and differentiates the actual social class people from the society.

Geographic Segmentation

In geographic segmentation, the market is divided by locations with the belief that people living in the same area have similar needs and wants and that these needs and wants are different from those of people living in other areas. For tracking the potential consumers of recycled product, geographic segmentation should be the first step to identify the broad spectrum of the market.

Most of our respondents are from different places such as Dhanmondi, Gulshan, Banani, Old D.O.H.S., Uttara, Wari, Khilgaon, Baridhara and Rampura.

Different places people live with the different accommodation depending on the situation as well. Most of the upper class or high income group people live in their own house and or living in the apartments. Majority middle class people are living in the rented house or apartments. Each types of living house has their own style of disposing the necessary products.

Demographic Segmentation

=Gender

About 32 out of 50 respondents are male and the rest are female.

=Age

34% of the respondents fall in the group of 15 to 23 years, 54% fall in the age group of 23 to 30 years and the rest in 30 to 40 years of age.

=Occupation

78% of the respondents are students, 9% businessmen and the rest 13% are service holder.

=Income

Around 9% of the respondents said that their monthly family income is around TK.5,000 to 10,000, 28% said TK. 10,001 to TK. 25,000, 48% said TK. 25,001 to TK. 50,000, 15% said TK. 50,001 and  above.

Theoretical Discussions

The analysis of the findings will be based on several aspects that are linked with theories of the consumer behavior. These are:

• Consumer loyalty – A prime, enduring asset for any business is the loyalty of its customer base. The loyalty can be based on simple habit and preference. Some customers are completely loyal and they buy one brand all the time. Others are somewhat loyal and they are loyal to two three brands of a given product or prefer one brand while sometimes buying others. Still others show no loyalty to any brand. They want something different each time they buy or they buy whatever’s on sale.
• Consumer beliefs about positive value – This is actually the brand association attached to a firm and its brands which can be key enduring business assets. A brand association is anything that is directly or indirectly linked in the customer’s memory to a brand. Products attributes and customer benefits are the associations that have obvious relevance because they provide reason to buy and thus a basis for brand loyalty. Organizational association, brand personality, symbols, emotional benefits and self-expressive benefits are common examples of brand association.

• Willingness to search for the Brand – This is actually the initiatives taken by the customers to actively look for a particular brand or wait even for a longer time, if it is not at hand.
• Disposal of the product – Studying consumer uses and post purchase evaluations of the products they buy, consumer researchers also are interested in how individuals dispose of their once-new purchase. After consumers have used a product, they can store it, throw it, give it away, sell it, rent it or lend it out.
• Culture – We define culture as the sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serves to direct the consumer behavior of members of a particular society. Culture satisfies the Needs, culture is learned, symbol.
• Attitude – An attitude is a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way with respect to a given objective.
• Perceived Risk – Perceived Risk is defined as the uncertainty that consumers face when they cannot foresee the consequences of their purchase decisions.

• Functional Risk is the risk that the product will not perform as expected.
• Social Risk is the risk that a poor product choice may result in social embarrassment.
• Psychological Risk is the risk that a poor product choice will bruise the consumer’s ego.
• Time Risk is the risk that the time spent in product search may be wasted if the product does not perform as expected.

• Consumers are just as likely to purchase impulsively and to be influenced not only by family and friends, by advertisers and role models but also by mood, situation and emotions. All of these factors combine to form a comprehensive model of consumer behavior that reflects both the cognitive and the emotional aspects of consumer decision making.

This recycle method also will reduce the huge amount of waste and the process of collection will be more improved and less hazardous.

Conclusion :

In the concluding part we can see that the consumers of Bangladesh are still not habituated with the consumption and the use of the recyclable products. First reason behind is the culture of our society and the attitude behind this thought and the learning from the family or reference group. People will use the recyclable product if the waste collection method will be more improved and separate collection method will be maintained by the city corporation. It will take some time to prepare our attitude towards the recycled products. The proper promotional and social activities will change the society. To assure the quality recycled product the waste collection need to be assured.

People will never stop buying their necessary goods and they will also compare their buying from others. But we need to think which product will help me and will satisfy my need and by the side which one will help my society to improve the social welfare. That particular could be the recyclable product so, the consumers need to change their behavior towards the recycled product.

Recommendation:

• Advertising plays an important role in establishing a favorable brand image but recycled product has not yet taken any advertising program in Bangladesh to build a strong and positive image. The marketers should remember that products that are not new but are heavily advertised often are perceived as higher quality than the non-advertised brands. The retailer in the country should take necessary actions immediately.
• The consumers are aware of the functional befits of the recycled product and it also a brand but they are not that much emotionally attached with the brand. Recyclable product can take initiative to increase the awareness of the emotional benefits if using that. This will help the brand to last long in the consumers’ mind, which in turn will increase the brand image.
• Retail store image influences the perceived quality of a product that it carries and the decision of the consumers as to where to shop. So, the retailer should be careful to create its own image that it sells the original and high quality.
• The marketers can also think about sales promotion “deals” to increase the sales, which will ultimately result in increased market share of the brand because, consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with price promotion can influence image.
• Govt. can introduce law for the recycled product consumption. Specially for those products which are usually less important and daily life consumption.
• Increase the number of investors in the recycled production. Lowering the tax and other functional benefits will improve the performance and change the culture towards the recycled goods.
• Proper waste collection method will change the consumer behavior and will change the city’s view.

In public household waste management, individual household disposes the waste from their house to a nearby dustbin. On the other hand, in private waste collection method, households waste are collected from each house by the employee of the private waste collection organization and dispose these waste in a well located dustbin from where the DCC employees collect and dispose these waste in other place. Because of these structural differences in the two methods, private waste management supposes to get preferences over public waste management. In my research, I would try to prove this hypothesis but this hypothesis would be accepted only when sample data would support my assumption. Otherwise this hypothesis would be rejected and alternative hypothesis would be accepted that is public households waste management is more effective than private households waste management.

 Research methodology 

The research work was done based upon both primary and secondary data sources. The primary data collection was based around two groups of people, people under public waste collection method and people under private waste collection method. The locations for both the groups were different. The location chosen for interviewing the people under public household waste management are Agargaon staff quarter and Motijheel colony. On the other hand, location chosen for interviewing people from private waste collection method are Dhanmondi, Kalabagan and Hatirpool. In the areas of both public and private waste collection method, a single selected respondent from any flat of each floor of a randomly chosen building was interviewed in order to get the most appropriate answers. 15 persons from Agargaon Staff Quarter and 15 persons from Motijheel colony, total of 30 persons were selected randomly and asked about public household waste management system. 15 persons from Kalabagan and 15 persons from Hatirpool, total of 30 persons were randomly selected and asked about private household waste collection system.

All the data of both groups were recorded primarily in the form of questionnaire. I wrote on behalf of the respondents in order to reduce the response time related with understanding the questionnaire.  I visited DCC offices to know their policies regarding waste management. More over I took the help of different NGOs’ who have initiated different projects for managing wastes.

For my secondary sources, I took the help of Bureau of Statistics, and for any research-related article or journal I did library work or searched in the Internet for related information. For any reference I took the help of different reference book.

Public household waste management:

An elaborate system of solid waste management has evolved over time in Dhaka city. The DCC provide movable dustbins made of corrugated sheets and fixed concrete bins all over the city for home and business owners to dump the refuse. A total of 5,000 dustbins are provided by the DCC, of which 3,000 are movable dustbins made of corrugated sheets. The city also employs cleaners who collect the street sweeping and drain silts and deposits those in the nearest bins. Vehicles then take those solid wastes to designated landfills. In 1989, a system of nighttime, instead of daytime, collection of refuse was introduced.

The DCC has a large staff and developed an elaborate supportive infrastructure for managing solid waste. It now employs over 5,000 conservancy staff, most of whom are part-timers and another 135 as supervisory staff. With an estimated population of around eight million, the city employs little over half a person per 1,000 resident while 3-6 persons are considered to be necessary for a satisfactory manual system of solid waste management. (UNCH, 1988) The Chief Conservancy Officer heads the collection and disposal activities, which is assisted by a transport department. The supervisory staff uses 47 wireless sets, jeeps and motor cycles for overseeing the work of the cleaners. It uses 184 special trucks and 3,000 hand drawn carts for hauling wastes.

It must be noted that solid waste management in Dhaka city now encompasses only the collection of wastes from specific locations and the dumping these in designated landfills. Then again, more than half of all solid waste generated remain uncollected, and is strewn on the streets, drains and ditches much to the detriment of the health and well being of the City residents and a clean environment. Furthermore, the present solid waste management system used by the DCC involves no reclamation or resource recovery. There is no effort towards the systematic recycling of waste, except by the street children who extract the readily recyclable material, spreading the refuse around and increasing the health risks and environmental hazards in the process. The present approach considers waste as a nuisance to be handled rather than resource to be recovered and recycled. Thus, the DCC’s existing waste management system is most inadequate, highly unsatisfactory (Mobarak, 1993) and not conducive to environmental sustainability.

The DCC spends between 14-17% of its budget for solid waste management compared to 20-40% for municipalities in developing countries. (Yousuf, 1996) During 1994-85, it spent about Tk. 205 million or nearly $45 million for waste management while it collected about Tk. 97 million or approximately $22 million as conservancy tax. Given the estimated population of around eight million for the City, the DCC spends about Tk. 26 or little over US 50 cents per person for an entire year for collecting and disposing of solid waste. This is no doubt a very paltry sum.

Appendix

Private household waste management:

Under this waste collection method, the residents have to sign up with an agency. As mentioned earlier, it is not possible for DCC to work efficiently mainly because of the financial deficit, the agency will collect waste in a door to door basis for monthly fees ranged from Tk. 5 to Tk. 20 per month. The agency has specially made cycle vans for hauling wastes. Each afternoon the vans ply on the neighborhood streets to collect the refuse. As a van enters the street, the operator of the van blows the whistle to alert the residents. Then his assistants go from door to door with buckets to carry the refuse to the van. When the van gets full, it is driven to a disposal site generally a nearby community dump.

The project is implemented with a group of salaried employees. There is an operator and two assistants to collect wastes from door-to-door–work with each van.. The operator is paid a monthly salary of Tk. 1,200 and the assistant operators are paid Tk. 800 each. There are also one supervisor and two assistants–for monthly salaries of Tk. 1,800 each. They supervise the street crew and collect monthly fees from the residents.

Primary Data Survey:

1) Public Household waste management:

¨      Are you satisfied with public household waste collection method?

From the above data, it is seen that only a limited number of people are satisfied with the traditional public household waste collection method. Around 87% people of Agargaon Staff Quarter and 76% people of Motijheel Colony are dissatisfied with the existing system. This findings provide us with a signal of the validity of our underlying assumption that day by day punlic household waste collection method is loosing it’s efficiency according to the response of 80% people of these two locality .

From the survey, it is found that the community dump is not near the houses of most of the residents. For instance, the community dump is located in more than 75 meter of 53% residents of Agargaon Staff Quarter and 40% residents of Motijheel Colony. Over all 47% residents of these two areas suffer from the distant location of the community dump.

From the survey, it has been seen that over all 70% of the both localities think that the community dump is not in the suitable location. 73% people of Agargaon Staff Quarter and 67% residents of Motijheel colony feel that the location of the community dump under public household waste management is not satisfactory mainly due to the distance from their houses.

It is observed from the data collected that long distance between house and dustbin encourage people to dispose their waste in unauthorized places. Only a few portions of the people under public household waste management (13%) said that they disposed their waste in the dustbin.   A significant number of residents (37%) admitted that they disposed waste besides the dustbin or in the roadside (50%).

The survey revealed that there are three major problems are associated with public household waste collection method, which are almost equally important. As mentioned earlier, most of the people from both the two localities tend to dispose waste in the road side, 33% of the people complain that the waste collector do not come regularly to collect the waste. 37% people said that irregular waste collection creates waste blockage and 30% said that it creates bad smell. All these problems discourage the residents to have community dump near to their houses.

The public household waste collection has also some advantages. 43% people of Motijheel and Agargaon think that they do not have to bear any cost of this waste collection method. 43% people think under this waste management system, they can dispose waste anywhere any time, which in turn implies flexibility. But only a few portions of the people that is 17% think public household waste collection method is performing efficiently.

From the research, it is found that most of the people, who know about the private waste collection method, identified lack of cooperation as the main reason for not practicing the system. Because only a few houses can not practice the system, a significant number of houses have to follow the system. From the above data, it can be understood that extra cost is not the main reason of not practicing private household waste collection method.  So the main obstacle implementation of this method is lack of social awareness not any unfavorable feature of private household waste collection method.

People who are under private waste collection method were asked whether they were satisfied with this method or not. 73% residents of Kalabagan and 67% people of Hatirpool said that they are satisfied with this system. Only a few disagree with that and over all 70% agree with the satisfactory performance of private household waste collection method. This provides us a signal that this waste collection method is performing well.

From the above that, it can be seen that very few dustbins are located in the suitable places. For example in Kalabagan, the dustbin is located in more than 75 meter from the house of 80% residents and from 74% residents in Hatirpool. Over all the community dump is located within 1-50 meter from 10% houses, 1-75 meter from 13% houses and the dustbin is situated in more than 75 meter from 77% houses of both Kalabagan and Hatirpool.

The long distance between the community dump and the houses is not making any serious problem to the people under private household waste management. 87% people of Kalabagan and 80% people of Hatirpool said that they are satisfied with the location of the dustbin because it is in the suitable location. Only around 17% people of the both two localities said that the community dump is not in a suitable location

In both the areas, Hatirpool and Kalabagan, most of the people are satisfied as they get effective customers service from the private waste collection method. In Kalabagan, wastes of most of the households are collected from the door of each flat but for the apartment buildings waste are collected from the main gate. The sample data shows the findings that household wastes of 77% residents are collected from the door of the flats.

As the dustbins are far away from the houses of both the two localities, the general tendency would be to dispose the household waste mainly in the roadside. 53% people of both Kalabagan and Hatirpool admitted honestly that they would not take the trouble of disposing the waste in the dustbin which is situated more than 75 meter of their houses if they were not using the services of private household waste collection method.  So it is obvious that private household waste collection method reduces the chance to dispose waste in unauthorized places.

There are some problems associated with private household waste collection method. 74% residents of Kalabagan and 67% people of Hatirpool identified that there is no scope for disposing waste other than the collection period. 11% people of both the two localities complaint about the irregular collection of waste by the collectors. 14% people identify paying extra cost as a problem.

There are several advantages associated with private household waste management. 33% people think that using private household waste collection method helped them, as they don’t have to dispose their household waste by themselves. 33% residents think that this method is cost effective as they have to pay a very little for the services. The main advantage identified by another group of people that no waste is disposed in unauthorized places that prevent waste blockage and bad smell. So private household waste management ensures clean environment.

Research Findings:

From the analysis of the recorded data it has been found that most of the respondents are dissatisfied with DCC waste collection method because of lack of effectiveness and dirty environment. Most of the people identified some features as indicators of lack of effectiveness and dirty environment such as – far location of dustbins, unsuitable location of dustbin, less frequent waste collection, irregular waste collection, bad smell, and waste blockage. But some residents resisted the idea of a private initiative on the ground that they already pay taxes to the DCC for providing the solid waste management service.

On the other hand, from the analysis of recorded data it has been also found that most of the respondents are satisfied on private waste collection method because of the effectiveness with minimum cost and clean environment. Most of the respondent identified the following features as indicators of effectiveness and clean environment: place of collecting waste, far and suitable location of dustbins, less payment, frequent waste collection and less effort.

Generally it is observed that, people used to throw garbage everywhere on the street. Even the garbage taken to the DCC provided dustbins were scattered around by scavengers trying to salvage papers, plastic bags and other recyclable materials. With the introduction of private household waste collection method, the neighborhood is cleaner- heaps of garbage are no longer strewn around on the street. DCC provided permanent dustbins are no longer in use. As a result of the door-to-door collection, people no longer dump refuse into them, improving the aesthetic quality of the neighborhood.

Pvt. household waste collection method also generates significant economic activities. In a job-scarce country like Bangladesh, it created employment and new income sources for many people. This waste collection method is now considered to be a successful business venture in its short life span. It steadily increased the number of subscribers day by day. The street crews who collect waste also benefit handsomely from the project. In addition to a respectable salary, by Bangladeshi standards, for what amounts to part-time work, they earn a significant amount by recovering recyclable wastes. After collecting, the crews haul the waste to the dump site where they separate the recyclable materials. Each of them earn, on the average, Tk. 70-80 everyday from the sale of their recovered items. These economic benefits create a considerable incentive for sustaining this private household waste management.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, our hypothesis was – “ Private household waste management is more effective than public household waste management ”. From the research analysis it has been found that the present system, run by the Dhaka City Corporation, is inefficient and unsatisfactory. On the other hand, the study showed that private household waste management is effective not only from the environmental point of view, it is also an economically viable initiative. Thus we can conclude that our assumption was right that is –private household waste management is more effective than public household waste management. Of course, we are not completely ignoring the performance of DCC waste collection method, because it is not possible to convert the whole solid waste management system from public to private in a day. The presence of private household waste collection agencies is both threats as well as opportunities for the DCC. It is obvious that the municipal solid waste management system, to the extent that it lacks a proper structure, is inherently inefficient. Considering such built-in inefficiency, the DCC may either get out of the business of providing such service, which has been increasingly becoming an almost impossible task, or devise an effective incentive structure, which will not also be easy to do. These are threats. The DCC may decide to completely ignore them, which it is doing now, or they may start wallowing in those threats. Alternatively, they could actively encourage and facilitate the neighborhood initiatives like the private household waste collection agencies and integrate those initiatives into a master plan for offering a comprehensive waste management service. This is likely to lead to a more satisfactory service, cleaner neighborhoods and a more efficient city government. The city leaders will have to decide which way they want to proceed.

The paper examines how private household waste management is being introduced in some localities, to deal with the burgeoning problem of solid waste. The novelty of the approach lies in that those who are facing the problem devised the solution for it themselves.

The paper begins by describing the prevailing system, as employed by the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), to deal with this growing problem. Next, it presents the workings of a community-based private household waste collection method and examines the effectiveness of the system. The paper concludes by drawing some implications after comparative analysis of both the two systems. The whole research paper is divided into four sections. Sections one includes – purpose of the research, research questions, research hypothesis and research methodology. Section two deals with the secondary data research. Section three includes primary data survey and finally section four deals with the research findings.

Recom: Handle Risk

Consumers Seek Information

Consumers are Brand Loyal

Consumers Rely on Store Image

Consumers seek Reassurance

Sources and Bibliography

I) Schiffman, Leon G. & Kanuk, Leslie Lazar (2000). Consumer Behavior. 7^th edition. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

II) Kotlar, P. (1998). Marketing Management. 11^th edn. Prentice Hall: New Delhi.

III)  Kotlar. P, Armstrong. G, (2002). Principles of Marketing . 9^th edn. Prentice Hall: New Delhi.