To analyze the effectiveness of various promotional activities practiced by Broadband operators. Anirudh Bhandegaonkar Mar (GSBA)

1. TATA COMMUNICATION INTERNET SERVICES LIMITED Summer Internship Project A study to analyze the effectiveness of various promotional activities practiced by Broadband operators Submitted by : AnirudhBhandegaonkar PGDBA 2nd Semester Roll No. C – 08 - 09 Submitted to: Mr. T. N. Srivastava Head, Placement Cell GSBA, Greater Noida GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS & ADMINISTRATION

2. Acknowledgement This Project would not have come to fruition without the help, wittingly or unwittingly, of a great many people too numerous to mention. This section provides a platform to recognize and acknowledge those fortunate enough to spring to mind. Our Industry Mentor, Mr. MayurAgarkar should be commended for the guidance, support, and wealth of ideas he provided in order to see this work completed. Our Industry Mentors should be commended for the guidance, support, and wealth of ideas they provided in order to see this work completed. This project was a team effort and we are proud to be a part of such a great team. The credit of the successful completion of the project goes to the diligent teamwork. Thanks a lot to all the unnamed people who kindly responded to the Questionnaire, especially our friends in the college.

3. Problem Definition Promotional activities are broadly classified under ATL and BTL. Due to the inherent difference in their nature, they work differently and outshine one another depending on the industry and the target audience they are directed towards. Tata Communications is broadband service provider. To gain a higher market share, they want to promote their products / Services. Here lies the problem, what type of promotional activity one should use. Whether one should go with ATL or BTL? Which one has greater effectiveness, ATL or BTL?

4. Approach to the Problem We basically had to answer the question that, “if a person had subscribed to a particular service provider which promotional activity influenced him to do that.” to achieve this objective a questionnaire was devised, which explicitly asked these two very important questions from existing internet users. The collected data was later analyzed to get effectiveness of various media, which was tested for its significance via Z test. Also, to give more meaning to the analysis, the significance of association between customer base and ATL/ BTL activities was calculated through regression analysis.

5. Research Objective To analyze the effectiveness of various promotional activities, which are broadly classified as ATL and BTL, carried out by the broadband operators.

6. Research Hypothesis Null Hypothesis, H0: “There is no significant difference between ATL and BTL activities”. So, an alternative hypothesis would be, H1: “There is significant difference between ATL and BTL activities”.

7. Research design The target population was broadband users in Delhi/ NCR. A target sample size of 250 was decided with 50 sample elements per member. Quota sampling technique was used: population was divided into regions, the sample elements were selected based on convenience or judgment. Snowball sampling and ‘Online sampling’ was also used but to a lesser extent.

9. We took help of our friends in getting the questionnaires filled. They also referred us to their contacts, creating a snowball effect.

10. Mailing an online questionnaire to every known e-mail also helped in data collection.After 30 days of fieldwork, we had a sample size of 248 respondents

11. Data Analysis Once we got the data, the next step was to analyze it. SPSS tools such as frequency, crosstabs and MS XL tools such as bar, pie & scatter charts were used to analyze the data. Effectiveness of ATL and BTL was calculated by grouping the no. of response for ‘deciding factor’ and ‘source of info’ for both ATL & BTL and then dividing to get the efficiency.

12. Results and Findings A) Demographics of the sample

14. Respondents’ Gender this result is also very significant as the gender balance of a population immensely affects the practices of marketers. 77% of the sample is constituted by male and it’s sure to bias our findings and conclusion. This biasness may be accounted to the fact that our research team was primarily comprised of males and there is high probability that a man will have more male friends. Since we used convenience sampling, the gender balance got inclined toward males. Also girls may not prefer to disclose some personal information and therefore they declined to be a part of research.

15. Regions to which respondents belong Observations The research field (Delhi/ NCR) was subdivided into seven regions according to the anticipated density of respondents in those regions. More that 50% of the respondents were from East Delhi and Noida Primarily due to convenience sampling.

16. Average monthly family income maximum no. of users fall in the income category 30- 45 K, a typical middle class income group. This result will significantly impact our findings as with the change in income group of a person, his preference for a particular promotion tool/ activity changes.

17. General findings from the Research Questionnaire

18. Average monthly bill of the respondents Almost 60% of the users say that their ranges from Rs. 500- 1000 Suggestion: focus on this price range (500- 1000). Tata should come up with great and value for money offers. Decent downloading speed and good connectivity can go a long way to attract huge no. of customers. Tata can go for pitching the higher plans i.e. 1000- 1500, to the income category 45- 60 K as they buy this plan in significant no. relative to their sample size.

19. Internet service provider of the users The results show that Airtel rules the Broadband market with almost 40% share. Tata is a distant third with 11% share. Suggestion: If tata has to increase its customer base it has to study the market leader’s behavior, adopt the good things and learn from their mistakes.

20. Purpose of the getting an internet connection (multiple selections allowed) Surprisingly, 2nd reason is not entertainment or surfing but ‘educational’. Who says that internet diverts the focus from studies! Suggestions Focus on the educational aspect of internet and how an internet connection can make your work so easier and your life stress-free. Target Schools & Colleges. Here they can smoothly sell the educational aspect of internet. target professional institutes and offices to exploit the ‘makes your work easy’ aspect of internet.

21. Source of information about the broadband connection (multiple selections allowed) friends /family suggestion is the largest source of information about any brand. Interestingly, its free of cost! The next best source is TV ads ( 44 %) and if one trusts this result one may be prompt to conclude that one should go with TV ads. The graph certainly doesn’t give a good picture of effectiveness per se.

22. The most crucial factor that influenced the decision of the respondent to go with the respective broadband operator Friends’ suggestion still maintained its lead with 29.6% but TV ads lost. So TV may be a source of info but not influential enough when it comes to decision. Campaigns/ canopies were the crucial factor in 18% of the cases, incidentally, grater than all of the 1st four activities (ATL) combined.

23. Features of promotion, which are liked by people the most. (Multiple selections allowed) Suggestions Clarity is on factor which is bigger than all the other three combined. Therefore while making a promotional campaign, it should be ensured that it conveys the message clearly more than any thing else. Those media should be chosen which best do this job. e.g. tele-calling etc. Feature no. of respondents %age

24. Brand recall/ awareness of different brands Airtel is indisputable leader when it comes to brand awareness. First recall frequency of 176 tells a lot about the level of promotion Airtel must have done. Tata and reliance have low 1st recall which goes up significantly in 2nd and 3rd recall. A good sign, that if they do just a little bit more effort they can reverse the trend, which Airtel is doing currently.

26. Analysis of effectiveness andhypothesis testing

28. The two most effective forms of promotions are interestingly those which are human interfaced.

30. Analyzing the effectiveness of ATL and BTL activities for different service providers Observation: With respected no. of respondents, only Airtel and MTNL’s efficiencies are worth drawing any analysis. MTNL scores a whopping 91% efficiency (or ROI) in BTL but only 19% for ATL. Airtel has a good BTL’s ROI and average ATL’s ROI. Statistically Tata and reliance have better ATL as well as BTL’s efficiency. Only statistically!

32. Inherent to its nature, reach of BTL is lesser than ATL as well as word of mouth, because BTL is very personalized which restricts large scale spawning of the information but its impact on the consumers’ mind is huge which is evident in the effectiveness peak.

33. Word of mouth is a boon to those who can use it to their stride. It has big source of information i.e. broad reach and has high effectiveness (47%). And it’s absolutely free. But it’s still early to give a final verdict on the effectiveness of any form or category of promotion until and unless you test the significance of that statistical result because results which hold good for a sample may not hold good for the population.

34. Hypothesis testing H0: there is no significant difference between the effectiveness of ATL and BTL activities. Since effectiveness is a ratio, we will apply the Z test ( for proportions) On Applying the Z test ( annexture 2) We get , Zcalculated > Ztabulated H0 is rejected.

35. Research Conclusion: Null hypothesis should be rejected and substituted with an alternative hypothesis which says, “ BTL promotional activities are more effective than ATL promotional activities.”

36. Recommendations or Suggestions: In this time of recession the finding of the report are a ray of hope for the companies.BTL can help you cut down your cost and boost your sales as well. Since BTL is effective than ATL so TATA should reconsider its marketing strategy with higher advertising dollars going for BTL (preferably in the proportion of their respective effectiveness). Tata should take campaigns/ canopies in a big way. Tata is not a rookie in this field. The success of “Jaago Re” campaign for tata tea is a proof of their expertise. They have to emulate that success in the broadband arena. Setting up of canopies at commercial places, residential colonies, apartments will certainly show great results.

37. Cont… Tata communications should use the available database of other business units of Tata Group (tata tele-services in particular) to exploit the brand loyalty of Tata which they might have and communicate with them through phone or/and mail (e-mail), both highly effective media, and give information about our products. Tele-callers are an asset to tata, they should invest more here to equip them with required soft-skills and product knowledge so that they have higher convincing abilities. This increases their effectiveness and Tata customer base. To harness the immense power of ‘recommendation’, Tata communications has to become a customer centric company (CCC). The present customer base is an asset which will rope in more customers if they are cared through prompt after sale services.

38. Cont.. The price range of 500-1000 Rs is the key to bigger market share. Bringing in new ‘value for money’ packages in this range and marketing them well can do the trick. We can’t afford to neglect the importance of ATL activities, they may not be as effective but give information to a larger population creating a brand awareness. As we have already seen, brand awareness has a significant association with customer base. Print media presented a very poor show and Tata communications should reconsider its plans of pouring in any significant amount of money in this media. Rather, that money should wisely be used to set-up more number of Hoardings and banners.

39. Limitations: A very huge no. of people made their final decision based on “friends/family suggestion”. This tells a major limitations of the research that we cannot access from where the ‘recommenders’ got the information. we can say ‘what’ is effective but cannot say ‘why’ it’s effective. That probably needs another research. In calculating the ROI, basic assumption that the cost of promotion per person for all media is same may not be true, due to which the results generated will be gross. Sample size is also a major limitation since research of this sort require a large sample size. This limitation became evident when, effectiveness of ATL/BTL activities of tata and reliance came out to be higher than Airtel due very small no. of respondents.

40. Appendices Questionnaire

41. Thank You!