BPL CASE STUDY

By AMAR BHOSALE
History
 British Physical laboratories is the flagship
company of BPL Group.
 Incorporated as a private limited company in
1963.
 Starting from hermetically sealed panels business
areas now include consumer electronics,
telecommunications, consumer durables, soft
energy, professional and medical products, power
and components covering over 230 products and
services.
The highlights of the financial year
1999-2000 were as follows:
 The market capitalisation of BPL was Rs. 5955 million as on
31st March 2000
 The turnover for the group stood at Rs. 20146.68 million and
profit after tax was Rs. 1071.28 million-4.5 percent
improvement over the previous year (1998-1999).
 BPL’s return on capital employed was 15.72 per cent
 Investment of Rs. 24 crore in the area of Oracle Financing.
Data Warehousing and Net enabling
 The company’s contribution to the exchequer amounted to
Rs. 410.93 crores in the form of duties and taxes.
Research Objectives
 To study how the customer perceives the
BPL range of CTV
 To identify the factors that influence the
buyers to buy and non-buyers not to buy
BPL CTV
 To examine the effectiveness of various
promotional activities
 Methodology
Source of data
 The data is basically primary in nature
 It was obtained from the employees of Harihar Polyfibres company,
and households and dealers in Harihar and Davanagere

Methods
 Our communication approach was basically structured questioning,
that is, personal interview with the aid of printed questionnaires

Sample size
 Convenience sampling: No Sampling technique was employed in
arriving at a sample size. It is a convenience sampling suiting our
use.
 Consumer sample size – 30
 Dealer sample size – 6
Limitations
 this being a convenience sample, the analysis may not be
a true picture of the target population.
 language problem, especially with the household
respondents of Harihar
 prejudice of some of the respondents.
 For instance, one of the respondents had a bitter
experience with respect to BPL VCR. For this reason, he is
totally against the brand name BPL and could not consider
even a single factor in favour of the BPL CTV.
 low sample size of the dealers-that is, we could not find
more than 6 who were able to answer our questions in the
areas surveyed.
Analysis of sample tabulations

Customers’ Questionnaire
Are you a user of BPL CTV?
yes no
Numbers 20 10
% 66.7 33.3

yes
no
What Influences your decision to
purchase colour TV?

Performanc After
  Aesthetics Price Brand Reliability e Advt Sales
RANK I 5 5 5 2 12 0 1
RANK II 1 8 8 3 6 2 2
RANK III 3 6 5 7 5 1 3

The respondents ranked performance as the most important attribute

influencing their purchasing decision. The next important attributes are price,
brand and aethetics.
 100%

0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Aesthetics 90%

Price

Brand

Reliability

Performance

Advertisement

After Sales
RANK I
RANK II
RANK III
 What influenced your decision to
purchase/ not to purchase BPL CTV?
14
It is found that the non- 12
users have not
10
purchased BPL CTV.
because of 8 USERS
dissatisfaction with its 6 NON-USERS
price and performance. 4
Surprisingly, price and 2
performance are also 0
found to be the factors
Reliability

Advertisement

After Sales
Performance
Brand
Price
Aesthetics

that have influenced the

purchase of BPL CTV.
Which brand you think is the toughest
competitor to BPL CTV?
CAN,T SAY
SAMSUNG 9% ONIDA
9% 34% ONIDA
SONY VIDEOCON
9% LG
PHILIPS
AKAI
AIWA AIWA
12% SONY
VIDEOCON SAMSUNG
AKAI LG 3% CAN,T SAY
3% PHILIPS 15%
6%
Do you think BPL CTV is a
successful/ unsuccessful brand?

Frequency %
Successful 26 86.7
Unsuccessful 4 13.3
Why do you think BPL has been
successful/ unsuccessful brand?

Successful % Unsuccessful %
Range of Products 38.5 Range of Products 25
Range of Prices 23.1 Range of Prices 50
Promotional Activity 38.4 Promotional Activity 25
Based on the price range what
impression do you carry of BPL CTV?

Costly
27%

Economical
73%
Give the size of the BPL CTV you
own?
29" 14"
25"
5% 15%
15%
20"
10%

21"
55%
Which of the following additional attribute do
you perceive as most important in your CTV?

picture in
pcture
18%

locking system
25% net savvy
technology
57%
What do you think of advertisement of
BPL CTV?
unsatisfactory
4% Impressive
31%

Satisfactory
65%
You like/ dislike advt. because of

Like Dislike

Model/ Celebrity 35.7 0

Presentation 21.4 100
Slogan 39.3 0
Do the various schemes/ promotional
activities affect your purchase plans?

no
37%

yes
63%
If you go for repurchase of TV, will
you refer BPL CTV?

yes
37%

no
63%
Do you agree/ disagree with the punch
line of BPL ‘Believe in the Best’
Disagree
16%

Agree
84%
Dealers’ Questionnaire
What Influences your customer’s
decision to purchase colour TV?

Performanc After
  Aesthetics Price Brand Reliability e Sales
RANK I -- 2 2 -- 2 --
RANK II -- 4 2 -- -- --
RANK III 1 -- 1 -- 3 1

According to dealers the top three attributes that influence their customer’s
purchase decision are: performance, brand name and price.
Give the size of the BPL CTV
customer purchase most?
14"
17%

20"
21" 17%
66%
Which do you think is the toughest
competitor to BPL?
Samsung
17%

LG
17%
Onida
66%
Where do you rank the following
CTVs in terms of
BPL Onida LG Samsung Sansui Philips
Brand Name 2 1 1 2
Aesthetics 3 2 1
Range of Products 4 1 1
Range of Prices 2 1 1 2
Performance 2 2 1 1
DPA 4 1 1
CPA 1 2 1 2
After sales service 1 3 2
Do you think BPL CTV is a
successful/ unsuccessful Brand?
unsuccessful
17%

successful
83%
Reason for success?
Range of
prices
20%

Range of
products
80%
a) Are the consumer promotional activities of BPL effective?
b) Are you satisfied with current media used by BPL for advertisement?
c) Do you think BPL should go for financing the purchase of the Colour
TV?
d) Are you satisfied with dealer incentive schemes provided to you by
BPL vis-à-vis competitors?
e) Do you think the latest technological changes introduced in the BPL
CTV will result in the boost of its sales?

a) b) c) d) e)
yes 4 5 4 4 4
no 2 1 2 2 2
Cross Tabulation Findings
1) Out of the ten non-users questioned, nine of
them perceive the brand to be successful but still
they have not gone for it. Though majority of the
people find the brand to be successful they have
actually not bought it, because of the following
reasons:
 At the time of their purchase either the other brands had
come out with better promotional schemes, or
 While in the showroom they made on the spot changes
because they found the range of products offered by its
competitors more appealing
2)Based on demographics, lower income groups gave more
preference to performance whereas higher income group preferred
brand name.

3)Out of 20 , 6 users don’t want to repurchase BPL CTV because:

 The lower income group finds the range of prices and promotional
schemes offered by other brands more attractive vis-avis BPL.
 The HIG feels that the quality of BPL is not up to the expected level of
standards. The trust associated with the brand name is falling.
 Surprisingly, half of the non-users are willing to go for BPL as their
repurchase choice. This shows privilege enjoyed by BPL as the market
leader in the CTV segment and also the minds of the people.

4) 60% users are affected by the schemes and 40% are not.
Recommendations
Brand Image should be maintained

BPL enjoys a good brand image, especially due to its reputation of

conforming to quality in the consumer electronic goods market.
This story dates back to the time when there were not many brands
in the market and BPL was the only brand, which got hugely
popular especially due to its quality levels. But lately it has been
noticed that

 Their quality is going down

 No prompt after sales service
 Less incentive schemes to dealers compared to competitors

So out recommendation to BPL is that if they want to retain their

market share it becomes vital for them to maintain the brand image
and the trust which they have built over the years.
Better Advertisements
 Another finding of our survey was that people
were in a very ambiguous state when asked as to
what they thought of the advertisements. Even
on being told what they were, the respondents
were not able to recall them exactly. The only ad
which could create a considerable impression was
the one featuring Amitabh Bachchan. Thus it is
necessary to come out with more attractive ads.
Also, the number and the frequency of the ads
has to be increased on the television channels.
Quality Checks
 In the past, BPL could boast of its best
quality. But today we find that both the
customers and dealers have too many
complaints with the quality of the product.
Thus we think BPL should go for more
stringent quality checks.
Attractive Schemes for Customers
and Dealers in this Region
 Particularly in the areas of Harihar and
Davangere, we found that the customer
promotional and the dealer incentive
schemes offered by the BPL CTV are
almost nil, compared to its competitors.
Thus, the company should give due
weightage to this aspect to survive as the
undisputed leader in the market.
Thank you!