The Effects of CSR on Marketing. A Study on Sports Sponsorship of Grameenphone Bangladesh

Table of Contents

Abstract

Chapter one
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Aims.
1.2 Research Significance.

Chapter Two
Literature Review
2.0 Introduction.
2.1 Marketing promotion
2.2 Sales promotion
2.3 Public relations
2.4 Sponsorship overview
2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility
2.6 Sport Sponsorship.
2.7 Measure of Effectiveness of Sponsorship Program
2.8 Influence of Brand Awareness in Consumer decision making
2.9 Grameen phone and Sponsorship.

Chapter Three.
Research Methodologies.
3.0 Introduction.
3.1 Research philosophy.
3.2 Research approach:
3.3 Research strategies:
3.4 Research design:
3.5 Data collecting strategies:
3.6. Sampling Technique:
3.7 Data Analysis methods and tools.
3.8 Research Limitation.
3.9 Ethical considerations.

Chapter Four.
4.0 Findings and discussion.
4.1 Demographic Analysis of the respondents
4.2 Recall test of Sports Sponsorship Program of GP
4.3 Recognition Test
4.4 Reason behind the result
4.4 Impact of Brand Awareness of Grameenphone on Consumer Decision making and sells.

Chapter Five.
5.0 Recommendation
6.0 Conclusion

References

Abstract

Introduction

Sponsorship has emerged noticeably over the few decades. The relationship between sponsor and sponsorship is very important for this new century. Both parties have been gaining advantages from sustainable sponsorship relation. Sponsorship program is treated as CSR activity of a corporation. Grameenphone is the largest telecom network service providers in Bangladesh. It has been engaging at different socio cultural activities through sponsoring as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. Sports sponsorship has been very import to it. It has been sponsoring in cricket, football, golf, local sporting events such as – Boat racing. Main objective of this research is to study the sport sponsorship program of Grameenphone, Bangladesh and find the relation between sponsorship program and its effect on sales by increasing brand awareness. To judge brand awareness of such sporting events recall and recognition test has been conducted.

Literature review

Strong brand awareness through Corporate Social Responsibility of a corporation helps it by influencing consumers decision making in a number of ways such as – learning advantage, consideration advantage and consideration choice. Al of these affect corporate sells performance. Brand Recall and recognition test are used to judge the level of awareness among customer minds. Recall test- Brand recall relates to consumers ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, needs fulfilled by the category, purchase or usage situation as cue. In other words brand recall requires customer can correctly generate the brand from memory when given a relevant cue. Recognition test- relates to customers ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when the given brand as a cue. In other words, brand recognition requires that consumers can correctly discriminate the brand as having been previously seen or heard.

Research methods

Survey research strategy has been used at this study because it has collected the research data from the selected company without any experiment from the existing elements and from the existing customer of the company. The main purpose of this study is to study the sponsorship program and also the brand awareness capability of this term. Both primary and secondary data has been considered. Most of the data are qualitative. Convenience sampling technique has been used. Interview with structured questionnaire has been applied.

Findings and Discussion

From Brand Recall and recognition test, it is found that out of different sports sponsoring program Grameenphone’s sponsoring at Golfer Siddiquer has the highest recall and recognition rate. Sponsoring cricket has the second highest recall and recognition rate. Boat racing and Football sponsoring has lower recall and recognition rate. It can be said that Brand awareness is higher at sponsoring at Golfer Siddiquer and Cricket. Brand awareness is lower at sponsoring boat racing and football sponsoring. So GP will not get benefited from sponsoring at Football and Boat Racing. GP will get benefited by learning advantage, consideration set benefit and consideration choice benefit from cricket, golf sponsoring. All of these will create new customer base, retain the existing customer and building customer equity which will convert a customer a to loyal customer.

Recommendation and Conclusion

It is better for GP to keep aside from sponsoring at Football and boat racing activities. GP can engage more in Cricket and golf in new ways.

Keywords - Corporate Social Responsibility, Sponsorship, Sports Sponsorship, Recall, Recognition, Brand Awareness, Customer Decision Making, Sells performance

Chapter one

1.0 Introduction

Sponsorship has emerged noticeably over the few decades. The relationship between sponsor and sponsorship is very important for this new century. Both parties have been gaining advantages from sustainable sponsorship relation. Nowadays corporate sponsorship is essential to the success of various world sports arrangement. At the same time Sports or any other global event, even local sports; local event needs sponsor to perform their event successfully. To betterment of both parties, they are enthusiastic to sign a contract between them & conduct their targeted operation fruitfully. A sponsor can get benefit through involving with targeted customer, building goodwill of its brand which ensures brand awareness, brand preference, brand recall etc, for an organization this study indicates that sponsorship put in positive impact to marketing performance and eventually augments the value of the organization (Alain, et al., 2007). Sponsorship is the act of providing support of an operation. Support may vary in two types’ financial support and in-kind support. Sponsorship is used to reach specified business goals. Sponsorship may provide in form of money, activity, sports event or others support in exchange for advertising (Clarke, 2007). Sponsorship is the best proven way to promote sales of a company. It is the form of marketing. A company can build a relation to its customer through this form. This form of marketing first used in the late 19th century. Most of the companies use this form of marketing as a marketing mix. Sponsorship provides its company satisfied sales, ROI eventually the value of the organization. The research will recognize how sponsorship affects the sales of an organization (Lagae, 2008). In other sense it can be treated as a part of corporate social responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility is the concern business has for the welfare of society. It goes well beyond merely being ethical. Just as you and I need to be good citizens, contributing what we can to society, corporation needs to be good citizen as well. The social performance has several dimensions such as – Corporate Philanthropy, corporate responsibility and corporate policy. Corporate Philanthropy includes charitable donations to nonprofit groups of all kinds. Strategic philanthropy involves long term commitment to donate for one cause. Corporate responsibility includes everything from hiring minority workers to making safe products, minimizing pollution, using energy wisely and provides a safe working environment- that is everything that has to do with acting responsibly within society. Corporate policy refers to the position a firm takes on social and political issue. Societal responsibility of a corporation develops a sense of “Societal Partnership of a corporation” into people minds. As a result customers believe that they are treated fairly and morally by this corporation. This positive sense of mind differentiates other corporation from the participating corporation. There is positive relation between Corporate Social Responsibility and valuing brand image. As a result of positive brand image customer gets satisfied. Throughout the world CSR activities are treated as strategic tool for building customer loyalty. It helps a corporation to gain a competitive advantage and to show a positive image regarding society. As a result corporation gets a profitable and sustainable customer relationship. Both service and Manufacturing Corporation can use and be benefited from this. Sports sponsorship can be part of CSR activity of a corporation (William and James, 2005). Sports are very much popular forms of entertainment. Every class of people do enjoy this event. Sport sponsorship is the effective way to reach their customer because sports sponsorship often uses all forms of medium of communication (Shank, 2009). Aims and Cornwell and Maignan (2005) asserted that it is possible to overcome the cultural and linguistic obstacles in a global society compared to conventional advertising. There is an implication that, sport is global and that’s why sponsorship in sport should be understood on a global view. Sport sponsorship is an agreement between sport organizer and sponsor where a commitment is made to serve aid to the sport organizer in financial or other format and it enables the sponsor company latter to utilize as a promotion strategy. Traditional sponsorship are categorized into team, event, individual, venue and technology whereas sponsorship expenditures are related with sports management, causes, festival, arts, music etc (Meenaghan, 2003). Sports are very much popular in Bangladesh. There are different types of sporting events such as – Cricket, football, boat racing, Cabady, golf. Among of them cricket is most popular form of sporting events. Grameen Phone is the largest telecom network service providers in Bangladesh. It has been engaging with different socio cultural activities as part of its corporate social responsibility. Sponsoring events help corporation building brand awareness. As a result of strong brand awareness, corporation is benefited by influencing customer decision making. In this paper effectiveness of different sports sponsoring events of Grameen Phone Ltd will be performed through recall and recognition test.

1.1 Aims

The aim of this research is to study the sport sponsorship program of Grameenphone, Bangladesh and find the relation between sponsorship program and its effect on sales by increasing brand awareness.

1.1.1 Objectives

- To evaluate sports sponsorship programs of Grameenphone by recall and recognition test.
- To gain knowledge about sport sponsorship in marketing and how the sponsorship program maximizes brand awareness to target audience.
- To study the overall sport sponsorship program of Grameenphone and gain knowledge of sponsorship programs.

1.1.2 Research Question

- What are the impacts of sponsorship on sales of a company?
- What does the company expect to gain advantages from sport sponsorship?
- How sponsorship program can be effective to maximize sales opportunity of a company?
- How sport sponsorship program may improve the overall performance of companies in Bangladesh?

1.2 Research Significance

Sponsorship market is increasing day by day. Newer version of Sports has been discovering. Differences of events are continuously making it difficult to take proper decision. In this situation evaluation of these sponsorship events will aid the decision maker of this industry. Evaluation from this report will open up a new window for the key player to act properly. As one of the largest corporation in Bangladesh, Grameenphone will be benefited by this report.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.0 Introduction

Literature review is the way of learning and acquiring knowledge by analyzing the literature efficiently from available sources. There are a lot of scholars and researchers who have shared their ideas in their scholarly papers and their theoretical and methodological publications, which is helpful for finding the requisite information. It is possible to create new ideas from different analysis and helpful to identify biased and unbiased information from various research (Dawidowicz, 2010).

Marketing –

4ps

2.1 Marketing promotion

Promotion in marketing is the process of informing potential customers from different sources about the products or services a business is planning to sell. Promotion basically depends overall circumstances of the business and target customer’s and their overall socio-economic condition. However, promotion can use any of the following approach or may use all of them or some those approaches were described as below (Westbrook, 2014):

2.1.1 Advertising:

It is one kind of communication with the potential customers, so that they chose the product or services company offering rather than buying from the competitors.

In the event of successful advertisement it is able to attract potential customers positively; good advertisement should be planned and consistent. The benefit of advertisement that it helps business to familiarise their product to the customers, develop goodwill, and positive company or brand image, educate about the products, develop curiosity about the products or services.

2.1.2 Selling

In simple words selling can be identified as the exchange of products or services for a certain amount of money as decided and during selling it can follow any of the following or some of the approaches:

2.1.3 Prospecting and qualifying:

able to realize qualified prospects like potential customers, and their buying ability.

2.1.4 Pre-approach:

carryout research about potential customers which enable business to sell their products in the future.

2.1.5 Approach:

real contact with potential buyers over phone or other methods depending on the products and overall market condition.

2.1.6 Presentation and demonstration:

It is actual presentation and presenting of the products to the potential customers so that they can see benefit and advantages of the offering.

2.1.7 Closing:

It is the successful conclusion of the sell through an order from their potential customers.

2.1.8 Follow-up:

It is the process of getting feedback from the customers about the product or offering which could be either positive or negative for the business.

2.2 Sales promotion

It is kind of short term incentives or activities which encourage potential customers to buy the products or services. Very often it is known as “below the line” activities. However, in the sales promotion there could be following types a business can use depending on the business size, offering and ability as well:

Consumer promotions
Business promotions
Trade promotions
Sales Force Promotions

2.3 Public relations

It can be defined as “The deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation (and individual) and its (or their) publics” (Westbrook, 2014, p.13).

However, these public relations basically indicates better relationships with the potential customers or public through positive publicity, good brand image and managing of unfavourable issues about the business like rumours, stories and events. There are different approaches to develop good will and improve public relationships for a particular business, for example press releases, special events, speeches and presentations, educational activities, different publication, community participation and sponsorships of social events. In this study, sports sponsorships was selected as part of the marketing promotion.

2.4 Sponsorship overview

According to Fill and Hughes (2008), Sponsorship is a relationship between two parties where one party provide sponsor and other party being sponsored. Sponsorship act on the premises that connect largely impacts image of Sponsor Company and it may be happened by providing in-kind support. Meenaghan (2007, p.9) proposed that, “Sponsorship can be regarded as the provision of assistance either financial or in-kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the purpose of achieving commercial objects.” The important implication is that sponsorship directed to achieving commercial goal, and the sponsor expected to achieve a certain return from the sponsor. Cornwell and Maignan (2005) states that corporate sponsorship involving lots of activities they are sports, arts, entertainments and other community charities which have been positioned as one of the key marketing strategies of the last 30 years. If we consider the literature review of sponsorship then there are three major factors can be identified. They are:

Review of the related factors of sponsorship

Review of the sponsorship industry

Review of theoretical approach sponsorship

Objectives of sponsorship

Review of sport sponsorship industry

Professional sports team and sponsorship

Decision making factors of sport sponsorship

Sports team factor

Country factors

Environmental factors

Review of the Analytical Hierarchical process(AHP) which is the selected data analysis method (Lee, 2008). In 2008, from the press release of IEG, the total amount of sponsorship in world’s layout is $37.7 billion (IEG, 2008) and the interesting thing is that almost two third of the overall amount was devoted to sports (Howared and Crompton, 2008). In UK 54 percent of the total sponsorship activities have been allocated their money to sports (Brian, 2011). From the above discussion it can be said that, sports sponsorship is the most attractive area for sponsorship which increase brand awareness and image awareness. This research also focuses on the area of sports sponsorship and the discussion indentifies how this sponsorship helps to maximize sales.

2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is the concern business has for the welfare of society. It goes well beyond merely being ethical. Just as you and I need to be good citizens, contributing what we can to society, corporation needs to be good citizen as well. The social performance has several dimensions such as – Corporate Philanthropy, corporate responsibility and corporate policy. Corporate Philanthropy includes charitable donations to nonprofit groups of all kinds. Strategic philanthropy involves long term commitment to donate for one cause. Corporate responsibility includes everything from hiring minority workers to making safe products, minimizing pollution, using energy wisely and provides a safe working environment- that is everything that has to do with acting responsibly within society. Corporate policy refers to the position a firm takes on social and political issue (William and James, 2005). Societal responsibility of a corporation develops a sense of “Societal Partnership of a corporation” into people minds. As a result customers believe that they are treated fairly and morally by this corporation. This positive sense of mind differentiates other corporation from the participating corporation. There is positive relation between Corporate Social Responsibility and valuing brand image. As a result of positive brand image customer gets satisfied. Throughout the world CSR activities are treated as strategic tool for building customer loyalty. It helps a corporation to gain a competitive advantage and to show a positive image regarding society. As result corporation gets a profitable and sustainable customer relationship. Both service and Manufacturing Corporation can use and be benefited from this (Hoque and Chowdhury, 2011)

2.6 Sport Sponsorship

Sport sponsorship is the effective way to reach their customer because sports sponsorship often uses all forms of medium of communication (Shank, 2009). Aims and Cornwell and Maignan (2005) asserted that it is possible to overcome the cultural and linguistic obstacles in a global society compared to conventional advertising. There is an implication that, sport is global and that’s why sponsorship in sport should be understood on a global view. Sport sponsorship is an agreement between sport organizer and sponsor where a commitment is made to serve aid to the sport organizer in financial or other format and it enables the sponsor company latter to utilize as a promotion strategy. Traditional sponsorship are categorized into team, event, individual, venue and technology whereas sponsorship expenditures are related with sports management, causes, festival, arts, music etc (Meenaghan, 2003).

From the above point of view it is clear that a company can get lot of privilege from sport sponsorship. It’s a huge opportunity for a company to increase its corporate image, brand awareness through sport sponsorship. Besides, sport sponsorship might also boost up sales. Corporate reputation and product / services goodwill have impalpable value that has great impact in the growing of a company. Sponsorship makes a bridge between company and customer. Continuing sponsorship makes sustainable relation between company and customer. Mullin (2007, P.22), describes that sport sponsor promotion coverage may be a “double edged sword”. This coverage focuses both on the athletes as well as the organization.

2.7 Measure of Effectiveness of Sponsorship Program

It is mentioned earlier that Sponsorship program helps building customer awareness regarding the brand. Through strong awareness company can boost up its sales and increase its reputation into its customer mind. To judge awareness of a sponsorship program two tests can be performed such as – recall and recognition test George, E and Michael, A(2007),.

Recall test- Brand recall relates to consumers ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, needs fulfilled by the category, purchase or usage situation as cue. In other words brand recall requires customer can correctly generate the brand from memory when given a relevant cue (Keller, 2009). For an example, recall of Grameen Phone Sponsorship requires that customer can recall when the sponsorship event is emerged in front of the customer.

Recognition test- relates to customers ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when the given brand as a cue. In other words, brand recognition requires that consumers can correctly discriminate the brand as having been previously seen or heard (Keller,2009). For an Example when consumer goes to store, is it the case that they will be able to recognize the brand as one to which they have already been exposed?

As is the case with most information in memory, it is generally easier to recognize a brand than it is to recall it from memory. The relative importance of brand recall and recognition will depend on the extent to which consumer makes product related decision with brand present or not. For example, if one customer wants to buy SIM of a telecom service provider from a store where different brands are kept, on that time brand recognition will be important. In this situation customer directly see, hear, touch etc. another situation where there is no any store, purchasing decision will be based on the prior experience of the customer. Here customer recall ability is important. For this reason brand recall is critical especially for service industry, as people decide based only on his prior experience.

2.8 Influence of Brand Awareness in Consumer decision making

In the following how brand awareness affects customer decision making is described in brief

Learning Advantage

The first way that brand awareness affects consumer decision making is by influencing the formation and strength of the brand associations that make up the brand image. A necessary condition for the creation of a brand image is that a brand node (information) has been established in memory. The nature of that brand node should affect how easily different kinds of information can become attached to the brand in memory as brand associations(Keller, 2009).

Consideration Advantage

Secondly, it is important that consumers think of the brand whenever they are making a purchase for which the brand could potentially be acceptable, or whenever they are consuming a product whose needs the brand could potentially satisfy. In particular, rising brand awareness increases likelihood that the brand will be a member of the consideration set, the handful of brands that receive serious consideration for purchase. Much research has shown that consumers are rarely loyal to only one brand but instead have a set of brands that they would consider buying and another – possibly smaller- set of brands that they actually buy on a regular basis. Because consumers typically only consider a few brands for purchasing, making sure that the brand is in the consideration set also means that other brands may be less likely to be considered or recalled. Research in psychology on “ Part list cuing effect” has shown that recall of some information can inhibit recall of other information. In a marketing context, that means if a consumer thinks of going to chose one product, he might not chose other product of brand(Keller, 2009).

Choice Advantage

The third advantage of creating a high level of brand awareness is that brand awareness can affect choice among brands in the consideration set, even if there are essentially no other associations to those brands. Here consumer will finally decide among different brands. Here consumer will search for Point of Similarities (POS) and Point of Differences (POD). POS are those associations that are not necessarily unique to the brand but may in fact be shared with other brands. These types of associations come in two basic forms such as category and competitive. POS help consumers to identify the product that can meet the needs. PODs are strong, favorable and unique brand associations for a brand. They may be based on virtually any type of attributes or benefit association. All that ultimately matters for an attribute or benefit association to become a point of difference is that it becomes a strong, favorable and unique association in the minds of consumer. That is PODs are attributes or benefits that consumers strongly associate with a brand, positively evaluate, and believe that they could not find to the same extent with a competitive brand (Keller, 2009).

2.9 Grameen phone and Sponsorship

Grameenphone is one of the leading telecommunication operators of Bangladesh which is also the leading sponsor for Bangladeshi sports. It is their strategy to engage with people by their sponsorship programs. The company management thinks that, direct engagement with the people always brings positive feedback for the company and increase brand awareness which leverage company success. They not only think about their benefits but also try to empower the societies (Grameenphone, 2013).

Sponsorship program of Grameen phone ranges from development initiative such as – Sponsoring at Library, Sponsoring School to sports and cultural activities. cultural sponsorship program Of GP includes- Bishakhi Festival, Lalon Folk Festival, Ilish Utshob, Boli Khela, Raj Punnah,Sultan Mela etc. In Bangladesh there are several popular games which were played from long a days. Popular games of Bangladesh are Cricket, Football, Cabady, Volleyball, Golf and many more. Grameenphone is one the leading telecom company in Bangladesh, provides sponsor for different sports activities to keep their marketing opportunities in favor (Grameenphone, 2013).

2.9.1 Grameen Phone Policy to Sponsor

GP think that Bangladesh will become developed nation in time. It is possible when its people go beyond of all its limitations. For this reason empowerment of its people is essential. Grameen Phone sponsors an event for the following reasons-

- Program Empowering People and linked with internet
- Program Supports Innovation and Competition
- Patriotic Program

2.9.2 Grameen Sports Sponsorship Programs

Grameen Phone has been engaging in different sporting events such as – Football, Cricket , Golf and other local sporting events such as – Boat Racing competition etc.

Cricket Sponsorship

Grameen Phone has been regular sponsor for Bangladesh Cricket Team since 2003. From that time it sponsored in a number of series where Bangladesh Team played with different international tournaments. Among of many some notable sponsorship programs of Grameen Phone, Sponsor of Bangladesh Vs Zimbabwe in 2009 and Bangladesh vs India were famous. In 2009 GP as the first registered Company from Bangladesh sponsored at foreign nation. In 2007, Bangladesh team defeated India. These were remarkable events where GP sponsored.

Football Sponsorship

Super League and Premier league are the major domestic Football Tournaments in Bangladesh. GP from 2011 till 2013 were the three consecutive sponsors of those events. Super League events were “Super Cup 2011, Super Cup2012 and Super Cup 2013. Premier league events were - “Premiuer League 2010, Premiur League 2011-12, and Premiur League 2012-13”

Boat Racing Competition

Grameen Phone supports preserving local culture and tradition. Among of the local cultural festivals Boat Racing Competition is very much attractive.

Sponsoring Golf

Grameen Phone has been sponsoring Golfer Siddikur Rahman since 2003. GP believes that history of Golfer Siddikur Rahman match with history of Slogan of Grameen Phone “go beyond”. Grameen Phone will continue supporting Golfer Siddikur Rahman. In this paper different sport sponsorship programs of Grameen Phone will be considered and evaluated in marketing perspective. Other sponsorship programs will not be considered and evaluated.

Chapter Three

Research Methodologies

3.0 Introduction

Research methodology ensures the trustworthiness of the research. It works through the total process of research. It helps to determine the proper way to get the outcome of research. Data for conducting research task are two types’ primary data and secondary data. In this qualitative research primary data and secondary data are considered (Saunders, et al., 2009).

3.1 Research philosophy

Research philosophy dictates the path on what basis the research will be accomplished. For this reason research philosophy develops some condition, assumption, principals etc. Ontology, Axiology and Epistemology are common types of research philosophies. Ontology deals with subject matter that can either subjective or objective. Epistemology teaches the scope or extent of information or data that can be used. Research philosophy can be positivism, realism and Interpretivism. Researcher acts as an objective analyst. No biasness is used in this type of philosophies. In interpretivism, researcher works as subjective analyst. It uses his pre set thought, motives, and theory to finish the research work. Researchers finds out relationship between or among different variables of the subject matter of the study. In this research researcher has worked as objective analyst. There has not been any input from researchers mind in the research findings(Saunders, et al., 2009).

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