Project Proposal Report (Or) Initial Report

Title Page Title Introduction About the Title Objectives ( Expected results from the Project) Limitations Hypothesis ( General) Research Methodology Statement of the Problem Definition of the Problem Data collection Population ( Target population) Sample unit Sample size Sampling technique Statistical tools used Analysis and Interpretation Conclusion References Schedule

Model Initial Report

Model I
SYNOPSIS:
Prior to liberalization, the consumer durables sector in India was restricted to a handful of domestic players. Together, they controlled nearly 90% of the market with liberalization came to a spate of foreign players, in 1990s, which invested in brand building and an enhancing distribution and service channels. Gone are the days when it was a sellers market, now consumer is the king. People no longer believe in just word of mouth publicity, they look for availability and a quality product. All companies are trying to capture the market share with their strategic product planning, pricing and marketing. It is not just the persuasive power of the salesman, but a proper channel of distribution and an effective promotional campaign are necessary to woo the customer. An effective promotional campaign and an appropriate channel of distribution will enable a company to leverage a sustainable competitive advantage. The effectiveness of these two components is reflected by their impact on sales and availability of the product at the convenience of the customer. Haier Appliances (India) Private Limited, worlds second largest home appliances manufacturing company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Haier Group. Haier India was launched in India in December 2003 and by August 2004 had an all-India promotion launched with over 55 products across six product categories -- refrigerators, color television/DVDs, washing machines, microwave ovens and dishwashers.

The India launch was started with innovative products, which were designed keeping the day-to-day customer needs in mind -- products that will transform the customer's every day living into inspired living. 'Products that will make your today better than yesterday.' The India operations already has an established dealer network of approximately 1600 dealers all over the country, which is backed by a strong service and after sales service network. Haier was incorporated in 1984 and initially produced refrigerators. Over the past 19 years, the company has grown and prospered and is now a transnational organization widely recognized by the world community. Haier now manufactures a wide range of household electrical appliances in 96 categories with 15,100 specifications and exports products to more than 160 countries. On January 31, 2004, Haier was named one of the worlds 100 most recognizable branch and a global name brand, listed by the World Brand Laboratory, one of the world brand evaluation organizations. The project entitled A study on Sales & Distribution and Promotion of HAIER products is an attempt to understand the channel of distribution adopted by the company and the impact of the promotional campaign on the sales. Besides this, the research also examines the effectiveness of the distribution channel.

OBJECTIVES:
To conduct a survey on the sample selected and examine the level of the brand awareness and product acceptance. To understand the dealers and customers perception about the companys product. To check the effectiveness of the distribution channel. To analyze the impact of promotional campaign on the sales of the companys product.

LIMITATIONS:
The study is limited to the city of Bangalore and locating dealers and sub- dealers of Haier was time consuming. Though a thorough attempt has been made to make the study precise and complete three is every possibility of a few aspects being omitted due to the policy of the management to keep them confidential. Conducting a survey on the selected sample is a tedious job. There may be chances of misinterpretation due to bias and prejudices of the respondents to the questionnaire. Another constraint for any study is paucity of time.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
1. Problem definition: The research has undertaken their study with an aim to understand the intensity of brand awareness, customer perception and dealers perception as well to analyze the impact of the promotional campaign on sales of the companys products.

1. Research design: The research plans to adopt research design as there is a need to gather large amount of information before arriving at a conclusion.

1. Method of data collection: After determining the research objectives and research design the nature of data to be collected is given due consideration as it will influence the interpretation of the entire project, after determining the nature of data the next step would be to adopt an appropriate data collection method. The method of data collection adopted by the research is inclusive of a structured well designed questionnaire.

1. Sampling Design:

Sampling units:
The respondents of the questionnaire are categorized into two namely,

Dealers and sub-dealers who form a part of distribution channel. Target segment of consumer durables. Sample size:
Door to door survey will be conducted for 50 respondents who are representatives of target segment of consumer durables also another survey will be conducted for 42 dealers and sub dealers who form a part of distribution channel.

Sampling technique:
The respondents were interview with the help of a well structured questionnaire and also the dealers, managers and ISDS were interviewed personally to gather the required information.

Sources of data:
Data collected for their project study is inclusive of both primary as well as secondary data.

Primary data:

The primary data for their study has been gathered with the help of a well structured questionnaire and also with the help of personal interview with ISDs, dealers and managers of various retail outlets.

Secondary data:
The secondary data used for their study are inclusive of the data collected from the internet, catalogues and brochures and magazines.

1. Tool used for analysis:

The analysis procedure goes beyond merely describing what the sample data looks like. The tools employed by the researcher for data analysis are pie-charts and bar-charts which constitute the graphical representation the researcher also has used the chi square test to..

Model II

A REPORT On

A CASE STUDY ON M ETROPLUS OF THE HINDU (A Survey of READERS AND ADVERTISERS)

By SHAKUNTHALA GADIRAJU (03NC590), M BA ICFAI NATIONAL COLLEGE VISAKHAPATNAM

ORGANISATION

A Project Proposal On

OPINIONS THREADBARE
A CASE STUDY ON METROPLUS OF THE HINDU (A Survey of READERS AND ADVERTISERS)

SYNOPSIS
Advertising is, Truth Well Told -Mc Cann Erickson

Advertising is a non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and persuasive in nature, about products (goods) and services or concepts by identified sponsors through various media. One of the first known methods of advertising was an outdoor display, usually an eye-catching sign painted on the wall of a building. Printed advertising played no big role until the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1445 A.D. There are five Ms of advertising, namely-Mission, Money, Message, Media and Measurement. A business that does not present itself to potential customers even with the most basic reach out to the community, is a business that has no goals of future earnings and will no doubt over time languish into nothing but a memory. Advertising is one of those many words that immediately conjure up visions of prosperity and progress for the modern day businessman. Media plays an important role in this field. Many think the media is more effective than the government. The media can be broadly categorized into three types--Print media, Broadcast media and Electronic media. Though broadcast and electronic media are gaining momentum by leaps and bounds, print media especially the newspaper has been able to maintain an edge over the other two as it enables the reader to go through the advertisement in detail. The Hindu, one of the oldest surviving newspapers, has always been committed to the goals of upholding and strengthening quality and objective journalism in respect of both news and advertising and continually achieving higher standards of journalistic performance in an increasingly competitive milieu. The Hindu, founded on September 20th, 1878 A.D. is one of the oldest surviving major newspapers of Indian nationalism. Six young men started it as a potent voice against the British colonial rule. The Hindus independent editorial stand and its reliable, authentic and credible reporting have won the serious attention and regard of the people in India and abroad. Starting with a readership of around 250 in 1878, The Hindu today enjoys the loyalty of over 27.12 lakh avid readers. Keeping people well informed, not misinformed and trying to figure out facts, not disfigure them, has always been the motto of The Hindu. In a world where such values seem to be vanishing, The Hindu always represented the highest standards of journalism. The design of the crest of The Hindu is intended to symbolize Indian nationalism, which it seeks to reflect in every aspect of its existence. The Hindu has tried to differentiate its product by coming out with informative supplements on all the days of the week. This has helped it to withstand the tough competition existing in the newspaper industry. The various supplements of The Hindu are:-

DAY Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

NAME OF THE SUPPLEMENT Sunday Magazine, Classifieds, Literary Review Metroplus Book Review (now included in the main edition) Opportunities Science/Technology (now included in the main edition) Friday Review Young World/Quest (Monthly)

The Hindu was criticized for a longtime for not covering local news and events in adequate detail. To overcome this criticism, The Hindu launched Metroplus in Visakhaptnam in 2002. The Metroplus, as the name suggests is a general interest, four pages weekly that comes on every Monday along with the main edition. It covers aspects of tourism, heritage, lifestyle, people, fashion, eating out, music and other happenings related to the city of Vishakhaptnam alone. It was launched with the aim of providing articles of lighter vein to its readers and increasing its readership among the youth and women in particular. The articles that are covered recognize the social problems of the city like the Beggar Mafia, AIDS Awareness, Problems in Juvenile Homes, etc. and convey the message in a subtle yet thought provoking manner with accompanying colour photographs. This supplement also covers articles in areas related to school and higher education, arts especially Indian classical music in great detail. Its not just the readers but also the advertisers who are benefited by Metroplus. Since advertisements are the major source of revenue for any newspaper, The Hindu has also allocated sufficient space for its advertising clientele in the Metroplus. These advertisements that are featured in this supplement are mostly related to cloths and jewellery outlets to catch the attention of the youth and women. Advertisers enjoy the advantage of placing their advertisements in colour on any page of the Metroplus at reasonable rates. The present study is an attempt to analyze the weekly supplement-METROPLUS of The Hindu from Visakhaptnam. It aims to develop the product-Metroplus using the results obtained from the survey to attract new readers and advertisers. OBJECTIVES The main aim of the present study is to accomplish the following objectives: Proper understanding and analysis of The Hindu as a product. Proper understanding and analysis of Metroplus of The Hindu from Visakhapatnam, as a product.

Conduct a survey on a sample selected from the entire population of the readers of Metroplus and to derive their opinion on the articles. Conduct a survey on a sample selected to represent the entire population of the advertisers of Metroplus and to derive their opinion on the value of advertising in Metroplus. Analyze the results of the survey conducted and propose recommendations to develop the supplement-Metroplus so that the existing readers and advertisers derive maximum satisfaction and new readers and advertisers are attracted. Based on the analysis of the results thus obtained, prepare a dummy of the Metroplus containing articles that will attract more readers and increase the advertising clientele for Metroplus. LIMITATIONS Though the present study aims to achieve the above-mentioned objectives in full earnest and accuracy, it may be hampered due to certain limitations. Some the limitations of this study may be summarized as follows:Locating the target readers of The Hindu is very time consuming. Sample size is limited due to the limited period of 50 days allocated for the survey. The selection of customers to cover the various strata of the society is tedious and time consuming. Getting accurate responses from the respondents due to their inherent problems. They may be partial or refuse to cooperate. Respondents may have to be contacted repeatedly, or alternate respondent may have to be identified. The survey is costly and tedious. METHODOLOGY The objective of the present study can be accomplished by conducting a systematic market research. Market research is the systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data and findings that are relevant to different marketing situations facing the company. The marketing research process that will be adopted in the present study consists of the following stages:a) Defining the problem and the research objective: The research objective states what information is needed to solve the problem. The objective of the research is to derive the opinion of the readers and the advertisers of the Metroplus and use that to develop the recently launched Metroplus. b) Developing the research plan: Once the problem is identified, the next step is to prepare a plan for getting the information needed for the research. The present study will adopt the exploratory approach wherein there is a need to gather large amount of information before making a conclusion. If required, the descriptive and casual approaches may also be used. c) Collection and Sources of data: Market research requires two kinds of data, i.e., primary data and secondary data. Being a firm in the newspaper industry, data gathering will involve usage of both primary and secondary data though there will be an extensive usage of primary data. Well-structured questionnaires will be prepared for both the readers

and the advertisers. There will be personal interview surveys mostly in-home (door-todoor) surveys. The questionnaires will contain both open-ended and close-ended questions. Here, open-ended questions will be more useful as it is an exploratory research being conducted wherein the main objective is to get an insight into how people think rather than measuring how many people think in a particular way. Secondary data will be collected from various journals, books and web sites. Sampling Plan:Sampling Units: The customers will be stratified or segmented according to their age, income, cultural background, gender etc. Sample Size: Door-to-door surveys will be conducted for 500 respondents. If the situation demands more accuracy, a telephonic survey will be conducted wherein the respondents will be asked questions about their opinion on the Metroplus over the telephone and their responses will be recorded. d) Analyze the collected information: This involves converting raw data into useful information. It involves tabulation of data and using statistical measures on them for developing frequency distributions and calculating the averages and dispersions. e) Report research findings: This phase will mark the culmination of the marketing research effort. The report with the research findings is a formal written document. The research findings and personal experience will be used to propose recommendations to develop the Metroplus and prepare its dummy. Articles of interest to the readers and advertisers as suggested by them will be incorporated in the dummy.

REFERENCES To obtain more information regarding the present study and to substantiate it with theoretical proof, the following references were made:Arens, W.F. and C.L Bovee , Contemporary Advertising, 1994 Textbook on Marketing Management, ICMR Publication, Hyderabad, Kotler, Philip and Gary Armstrong, Principles of Marketing, Pearson Education, 2 Ed., 2004 Shankar, R., Services Marketing-The Indian Experience, Excel Books, New Delhi, 2002 Web sites visited: www.thinkquest.com www.supercrawler.com www.texaspanhandleplains.com www.wissen erleben.com www.hindugrouponnet.com www.hinduonnet.com