POTENTIAL OF USING DIGITAL MEDIA FOR MARKETING MOBILE HANDSETS TO BASE OF PYRAMID CONSUMERS IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

Digital media is a rapidly expanding marketing tool, both globally and in Bangladesh. There are nearly 183.89 million cellular mobile connections in Bangladesh, and 126.12 million people are using the internet. However, a huge gap exists between the time spent by consumers on digital media (close to 2-3 hours a day on the internet and nearly 16–18 hours on mobile phones) and the marketing spend or use of digital communication (less than 20%) as a marketing tool in the country. Interestingly, the fact that advertising through digital media is still 8–9 times cheaper than traditional media is also not able to fast-track the use of this modern medium.

Our country is making a leap from "digital Bangladesh" to "smart Bangladesh" with steady improvements in material access and skill access. However, most of the digital marketing activities in the country are still directed at top-of-the-pyramid customers. This only contributes to the notion of a digital divide inside the country by restricting mental access, motivational access, and usage access. The prevalent assumption is that the gap is occurring due to marketers’ own lack of understanding of BoP’s triggers and barriers to using digital media tools. This is leading to the belief that digital media tools are too complicated for BoP consumers. There is also a lack of research or a framework for understanding the potential of digital media as a marketing tool.

Thus, the aim of this research was to assemble a conceptual framework of interventions that enable marketers to use digital communication as a tool for BoP consumers by overcoming identified barriers and harnessing triggers among consumers in Bangladesh, focusing on the mobile handset industry.

Literature reviews, focus group discussions, experience surveys, and in-depth interviews were done to identify 28 trigger variables and 18 barrier variables under 9 complex variables and 5 parameters (mental, material, motivational, skill, and usage) that can influence intent to use digital media and smartphones. A Kobo Toolbox-based digital survey was done on 421 base of pyramid consumers from 8 divisions of Bangladesh using Android smartphones and an encoded Bangla questionnaire. The sample was evenly split between urban and rural areas and between genders and ages according to their population ratio. The selection process of the respondents was to filter-in consumers in the income range of taka 6500–13500 (lower poverty line equivalent of 6500 taka at the lower end to filter out the destitute and 13,500 taka at the higher end to filter out the middle-income group based on up to grade 10/11 (“third-class” equivalent) salary of the government pay scale) only. The interviews captured their mobile handset usage behaviour and digital platform usage behaviour and identified the major variables that influence their digital usage behaviour in terms of intent to use. Additional analyses using ANOVA, regression, and principal component analysis were done on the survey data.

The findings of the research contradict the general perception among marketers and hence provide original scientific evidence involving the maturity of the BOP market for the application of digital marketing tools to market mobile handsets. On the one hand, the study identified mobile handset usage behaviour among base of pyramid users through the features they look for in a mobile handset, sources of purchase influences, preferred price range, preferred purchase location for mobile handsets, source of money for the purchase, and after-sales requirements. On the other hand, the study revealed the usage behaviour of digital platforms in terms of the purpose of their use, the type of internet packages they avail, the platforms they use, and the contents they consume. An important outcome of this study has been to recognize the main factors that mobile handset marketers can trigger to encourage the intent to use digital platforms among base-of-the-pyramid consumers. The result of this analysis concluded that only two components with 4 trigger points, i.e., the complex variables, including only 17 trigger variables out of 28, need to be harnessed to attain desired results. Interestingly, none of the barriers out of 18 survived the rigorous step-by-step reliability, regression, and component analysis. This essentially shows how the base of the pyramid audience is ready for digital transformation if the right framework is applied.

The study also helped identify potential approaches to getting people to use more digital media: reducing the price of the internet, increasing coverage, and raising awareness, while the best possible way to advertise smartphones was identified as communicating price, advertising benefits, and demonstrating usage on Facebook along with television. In terms of how to increase use of the internet and smartphones, reducing the price of mobile handsets, increasing network coverage, improving speed, and raising awareness were identified as key approaches.

The three key information areas – factors of intent to use, digital media usage behaviour, and mobile handset usage behaviour – were then combined to create the overall conceptual framework to use digital media for marketing mobile handsets to base of pyramid consumers in Bangladesh. The research proposed a brand-new marketing framework called the 5R Funneloop model with reach, relate, recruit, retain, and reflect stages to be at the centre of the framework, taking inspiration from exiting consumer purchase decision models and marketing funnels. The strength of the model is that, keeping intent to use and digital media usage factors of the framework intact, marketers of any other industry can just identify and insert their industry product or service usage behaviour in the framework to use the model as a guiding tool for digital media as a marketing tool for base of pyramid consumers.