The Factors Affecting Customers' Preference for Bata Shoe

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Bata is a world renowned brand of shoe. It has a substantial amount of market share in Bangladesh. For a long time Bata had a monopolistic business here. But recently there are some competitors for Bata in Bangladesh, both global and local. So, establishing brand image has become a very serious issue to acquire a good amount of brand equity. This research is aimed to determine the current brand image of Bata at Bangladesh.

For a shoe manufacturing company, brand image depends on various variables like variety of product, availability, price, convenience of location, durability etc. This research is aimed to reveal these variables and their level of influence on the brand image of Bata.

Bata and Global Marketing

Today Global Marketing is one of the most exciting fields of business.

Global Marketing refers to marketing activities coordinated and integrated across multiple country markets.

The integration can involve-

• standardized products,

• uniform packaging,

• identical brand names,

• synchronized product introductions,

• similar advertising messages, and

• Coordinated sales campaigns across markets in several countries.

Now a day, there are several global organizations operating in our country following global marketing strategy and tactics. One of such organization is BATA Shoes.

Bata Shoes is a large, family owned shoe company. Bata is one of the world's leading footwear retailers and manufacturers with operations across 5 continents managed by 3 regional meaningful business units (MBUs). The MBU approach provides quality resources and support in key areas to the companies operating in similar markets such as product development, sourcing or marketing support. Each MBU is entrepreneurial in nature, and can quickly adapt to changes in the market place and seize potential growth opportunities.

Approach to the Problem

Analytical Model

The independent variables determined influence the brand image of Bata. When a customer is asked to judge about the image of Bata, he/she tend to identify these factors. Then he/she compare these factors with other brands. If the comparison results positive, the image becomes stronger. If not, it results a poor image.

Graphical Model

Positive Negative

Hypothesis

The research hypotheses are-

H0: Brand image of all the groups are same (Brand image of Bata is not influenced by the factors indicated.)

H1: Brand image of all the groups are different (Brand image of Bata is influenced by the factors indicated)

A one-tailed test was used. That is, a rejection of null hypothesis would result in an automated acceptance of the alternative hypothesis.

Research Design

Type of Research

In this research, the problem is defined. But the extent of the problem is not found. So a descriptive type of research is selected.

Type of Data & Data collection method

Primary data is collected. As the data collection method, survey is used. A questionnaire was prepared on the basis of all the dependent and independent variables. The questionnaire design was such that each question determined a state of consumers' reaction on a particular variable.

Scaling Technique

A nine point Likert scale was used to prepare the questionnaire and analyze the result. The scale started with strongly disagree and ended with strongly agree. The weight of each answer varied from 1 to 9 where strongly disagree was weighted as 1 and strongly agree was weighted as 9.

Sampling Technique

A sample of 30 respondents was chosen for the research. Due to the shortage of time and budget, non-randomized sampling had to use. Judgmental sampling was used to select the