Non Alcoholic Drinks Businesses In India

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

MG5570

Module Title

Understanding Business and Management Research Methods

Module leader

Dr Walfi Al-Karaghouli

Student ID number

Student name

1226866

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Part 1: Evaluating Published Research

Event sponsorship by alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks businesses in India

Author: Arjun Bahl, Miguel Moital, Julie Whifield, and Caroline Jackson

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Vol.24, No 2, 2012, pp. 289-311

Beside the immense amount of population, 1.22 billion in figure (MOSPI, 2013), India is also ranked the tenth biggest economic size considered by GDP (World Bank, 2012) in which they have a strong culture belief and background (Benegal, 2005) that is different from other oriental or western countries. This article examines about factors influence decision-making in doing event sponsorship by the Indian drinks industry, which compare between non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks sectors. In the same paper, authors try to point out how sponsorship can be improved so their work better for the sponsor, since event sponsorship can convey company massages (Armstrong, et al., 2010) and influence audiences emotion (Bal, et al., 2010). According to Pettigrew and Charters, emotion is a significant factor that motivates alcohol consumption which means that sponsorship by these different businesses can influence consumer to purchase and acknowledge their products.

This article is firstly reviewing a general idea, defined and the reasons of why company needs event sponsorship become popular. The good point of this introduction is to increase reader’s knowledge about sponsorship activity, since this marketing activity is not very popular amongst various types of marketing tools such as commercial advertisement. In addition, the authors also described the a sophisticated of Indian socio-economic culture along with demographic information which was impacted by westernization on the locals drinking habits and the concept of drinking alcohol has become more acceptable. In addition, all kinds of alcohol advertisement are practically forbidden by law in India. Consequently, the writers showed conceptual framework and questionnaire design which establishes event sponsorship decision-making process as the followings:

Motive to sponsor events

Reasons for not sponsoring events

Perceptions of event sponsorship

Event sponsorship preference

These conceptual framework and decision-making processes clearly show exactly what the authors want to find. From previous study, there are several study about event sponsorship but not specifically into alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks businesses in India. This paper extends the finding and study based on event sponsorship decision-making process.

Research data were individually collected and asked to fill in the questionnaires by the expertise in the mention industry with snowball sampling method. Two statistical tests were used to explore differences between these two sectors. Firstly, Mann-Whitney’s test was used to identify mean of each motives among alcoholic companies and non-alcoholic companies. Secondly, Logistic regression was used to identify each motives whether it influence sales of alcohol drinks or not.

Perception of event sponsorship – the result shows both the managerial level of both the two types of the business who sells alcoholic and non-alcoholic agreed that managerial expertise and a lot of peripheral cost are highly required but alcoholic drink’s manager seem to agree at a higher level of agreement. In addition, it had been observed by non-alcoholic manager that doing an event sponsorship is not related to the company’s objectives.

Motive for sponsoring events – in alcoholic drinks business, it is undeniable that the motives play a very important role because it can indicate many things about consumer such personal identification and moods (Pettigrew & Carters, 2010). From this article, authors found that significant motive of alcoholic drinks business for sponsoring events is to reach niche audiences, increase brand awareness and associate with particular lifestyles. In the same way, alcoholic sector considered increasing media coverage, gaining advantage over competition and creating goodwill among the community as more important than the non-alcoholic sector. As a consequence from logistic regression analysis two motives that is considered as the most two important for both alcoholic and a non-alcoholic drinks company is to increase media coverage and reaching niche audiences.

Reasons for not sponsoring events – the reason for not sponsoring event for drinks business in India is because the target audience of the event is not match with the company. The reason that discourage sponsoring event for non-alcoholic sector is the effectiveness/greater value of traditional forms of promotion. For alcoholic business, the reason that discourage sponsoring event is the target audience that not match with company target market.

Sponsorship activity, structure of sponsorship and form of investment – eighty percent of event sponsorship of the non-alcoholic business was five times much higher than alcoholic business considered by the money spent and more than eighty percent of sponsorship sponsor by large company. There is no significant differences in relation of the number of events sponsored which sponsor by both of this industry. In addition, non-alcoholic sector tend to sponsor events by cash more than alcoholic drinks companies which likely to sponsor in other form of assets.

Challenging Research Questions

Although in managers who come from another industry may face a different in some decision factors, but overall concept of marketing communication (event sponsorship) is the same (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012), should marketing manager in other industry consider the same criteria for event sponsorship decision-making? And should authors included other industry manager opinions in the findings? Because marketing purpose is to communicate and send company message to the target audiences. Furthermore, securing sponsorship becomes more difficult and complex then other marketing managers also have to consider other proposal under the same circumstance.

Strengths

The purpose of this paper is useful and will benefit research groups who are interested in event sponsorship which are not only in the drinks industry but also in the other industry because this research was already set some milestone for research extension by give some briefly information about event sponsorship.

Secondly, this work was setting up structure, conceptual framework and questionnaire design very well so the authors can setup and redevelop an accurate and relevant questionnaire that give sufficient reasons and explanations to support why the questions in questionnaire is significant and worth to know in part 5.

In this work, authors used a plentiful of references which come from different type of reference, book, journal, website, and report. As a consequence, it makes this report very solid and reliable enough for the readers or subscribers to believe what the authors want to say.

Weaknesses

Firstly, there are some sampling errors from the beginning. Part of sample, accounted as one third of the total respondents, is sales managers who are not directly response to company marketing activities so their answers about event sponsorship might not be accurate and possibly cause an error in the result and finding of this work.

Although there are adequate evidences used to cover up ideas in this work, but a lot of references hold a concept of westerner which do not share demographic which country such as India where the audience’s profile is completely different from westerner culture in term of believe, culture context, economic and regulations.

Recommendation

Since, the authors have a connection with manager in this industry and also use a snowball-sampling method to pool their needed information. To cover up the weakness of this report, which is westerner prospects and error in sampling, authors should continuously use their relationship and conduct an interview for the questions (Robinson, 2008) that be able to replace and clarify westerner prospects with marketing manager who is an expert in this marketing field not sales manager in order to avoid information mislead and raise an accuracy of primary data (Robinson, 2008). Furthermore, by doing this author will be able to receive more point of views from professional that have same economic, and culture background.

Part2: Mini Report

Report Title: The factors influence patient recommend to their family and friends to use Gold Healthcare Card (Universal Healthcare) in Thailand.

Executive Summary

Although, figure of health index in Thailand is increased (WHO, 2011) shows the successful in Universal Healthcare system in Thailand, which is called "Gold Healthcare Card". With the operating cost of four percent of Thailand’s GDP or 9.06 billion pound has been allocated into this campaign (WHO, 2010b). This research is based on quantitative strategy and deductive reasoning which in the questionnaire and information had been collected in Bangkok, Thailand. The expectation of the target group is the patient who recently used universal healthcare benefit. This research determines not only the benefit of relationship marketing regarding with healthcare sector but also conducts some hypothesis test in order to prove and find the factors influence patients satisfaction toward universal healthcare service. The result indicated various factors that influencing consumer satisfaction toward the scheme and one major influence is from patients’ perception toward universal healthcare scheme.

Introduction

Universal health care system has been implementing to increase standard of living in many countries around the world (WHO, 2010a), one of those countries is Thailand where there is a long and successful of health development (APHEN, 2001). Nowadays, there are several insurance schemes in Thailand which including Social security scheme, Civil Servants’ Medical Benefit Scheme, and Gold Healthcare Card Scheme (TANGCHAROENSATHIEN, et al., 1999). The last policy is the Gold Healthcare card policy implemented which have improved number of citizen health protection up to 99.5% of the total population and increase affordability of low income people to access sufficient healthcare (World Bank, 2012). However, if the service practice, working equipment, has been overlook for a long time it can possibly lead to a possible foul action in business practice and service (Chen, et al., 2008). So, it is necessary to do a consistent survey in order to freshen up the standard practice of patients who is a direct customer of this universal healthcare. This report will explore recent patients’ satisfaction toward Universal healthcare. In addition, this Universal Healthcare Scheme took lump sum of the government fiscal budget for many fiscal years (WHO, 2010b) and no one had properly assessed the patient satisfaction of this campaign.

Literature review

There are some believers who think that marketing purpose should been prohibited in healthcare industry (Lega, 2006), however, as Napoleon Bonaparte said "An army march on its stomach", in the same way, hospital run on its own fund. According to World Bank report in 2011, Thailand had to face with poverty problem once again after the economic downturn in America-region and EU-region, which directly affect patients’ purchasing power (Breitung & Candelon, 2005; Allsopp, Rammal and Zurbruegg, 2005). It means that patients will not immediately seek for healthcare advice but they tend to have prescription before coming to see a doctor (Calfee, 2002). In Universal Healthcare system the hospital gains nothing from patients, but they will receive additional fund from the government in form of cash for each patient head (Manager, 2012). Universal Healthcare policy will influence the customer (patients) and receive the additional demand of healthcare service, prepare themselves for fierce competition in healthcare industry (Gaynor, et al., 2011).

Ndubisi (2006) Claimed that the company should make a relationship between firm and customer in order to obtain privileged information about consumers’ need and be able to serve them better than the firm’s competitors. In addition, relationship marketing increases a change for each company to understand their customers and enhance company’s market share and profitability (Ndubisi, et al., 2009). However, the customer relationship life cycle model (Gronroos, 1990; Schlesinger and Hallowell, 1994) claims that good quality of service of staff, building, equipment, medicine, and consumer leads to increasing in customer satisfaction, which will influence customer commitment to recommend of using product or service. In the same way Taylor and Cronin finding in 1994 also indicated that better service quality will lead to better consumers’ purchase intention. In addition, the real sustainable business growth strategy such as customer relationship oriented will be the key to understand customer’s need and enable the business to pass superior value (Ndubisi, 2006) not profit maximization oriented as Webster said (Webster, 1992). Other valuable factors such as consumer perception toward campaign also drive consumer satisfaction especially in healthcare industry (Chahal & Kumari, 2011). These factors will be received, assessed, and learn by customer who previously being a patient of that hospital. The reason behind this is because consumer will not risk their health or life with unreliable healthcare service. So, they will use a reliable service that they have a good perception (Gunlicks, et al., 2010). Customer satisfaction has been investigated at globally level (Bolton, 1998). It has been explored by Anderson & Sullivan, (1993); Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, (1990) that customer satisfaction has been central in marketing field, and their research shown that service provider that improve their product and service to meet customer expectation will acquired higher level of satisfaction among their customer. The framework were introduced customers’ evaluation of the value they receive possibly lead to the satisfaction feeling (Churchill & Surprenant, 1982; Woodruff & Gardial, 1996; Woodruff, 1997)

Therefore, three null hypotheses were formulated and the relationship between these three hypotheses will be test by questionnaire.

H1: Staff service influence patient’s satisfaction

H2: Building, Equipment, and Medicine patient’s satisfaction

H3: Patient’s perception toward Gold Healthcare Scheme influence patient’s satisfaction

Previous study (Tangcharoensathien, Bennett, Khongswatt, Supacutikul and Mills, 1999; Seeluangsawat, Hasin, and Shareef 2001; and Gowen, Mcfadden, Hoobler and Tallon 2006; Chahal and Kumari, 2011) had applied the concept of business research which influences consumer satisfaction toward various factors and they believe that with relationship marketing to indicate patients’ satisfaction via statistic method which suitable to access large amount of participants (Andrew, et al., 2011). Satisfaction research in both quantitative can vastly help hospital improve their service performance and improve rate of return of patient to hospital (Vila, et al., 2012). So, it means that the more patients return to the hospital, the more wealth is return to the hospital (Cutler and Berndt, 2001; Sant, 2004). As a consequence, many hospitals in Thailand rapidly improve their service performance in order to make a value-added into their service (Tyagi & Gupta, 2008). The purpose of this research is to explore the influence factors that affect patient satisfaction toward Gold Healthcare Card (Universal Healthcare) service in Thailand.

The research conceptual framework

Staff service

Patient’s satisfaction

Building, Equipment, Medicine

Patient’s perception toward Gold Healthcare scheme

Methodology

This research is designed to find consumer satisfaction towards Gold Healthcare Card service in using Gold Healthcare Card in Thailand.

Data Collection process

The questionnaire will be posted on the survey website called kwiksurveys.com and will be send to target audiences who are patients and used Gold Healthcare Card in the recent year. The mode of participant selection is Judgment sampling because author needs a participant to be more accurate and know about Gold Healthcare Card service and scheme. The participants will be instructed by author or medical staff nearby to fill the questionnaire into questionnaire website and send raw data back to the author. This research has 75 participants who willing to complete the questionnaire. Any incomplete or do not pass filter question will be removed from the database.

Questionnaire Structure

The questionnaire used in this survey was divided into four parts and each part has six questions except. In this paper all questions are measure in nominal scale and likert scale depended on the purpose of each part. This paper develops each question based on previous work that aims to find a patients’ satisfaction in healthcare sector. (Tangcharoensathien, Bennett, Khongswatt, Supacutikul AND Mills 1999; Meehan, Bergen, Terry Stedman 2002; Ekkanaluxsamee, 2005)

The First part asked participant about demographic which including Gender, age, income, and status of Insurance and Health Social Schemes. The reasons for replacing last question instead of other basic question such income or education is to be a filter question to check validity of the received information (Knäuper, 1998). Once, ninety-nine percent of Thai Citizen are protected by some type of universal type of social schemes (Tonguthai and Khan, 1986; Hughes and Leethongdee, 2007). The second part use to measure customers’ satisfaction toward Medical Staffs and Hospital Staffs that provide Gold Healthcare Card Service. The third part of questionnaire is used to measure building and equipment readiness which is non-living factors in likert scale. Although main objective of hospital customer is to cure their sickness, other element such as readiness, cleanness and signal in the hospital also indirectly effect consumer satisfaction (Rosenthal & Shannon, 1997). The last part asked participants about the attitude toward Gold Healthcare Card campaign.

All collected information will be analyzed by SPSS in order to clarify the influence factors that made patient satisfy with Gold Healthcare card service.

Findings and Results and Discussion

Although perspective of relationship marketing and customer is different from traditional marketing, it becomes highly difficult to differentiate in various aspects (Baker, 2009). There are 7 errors questionnaires from both completion of the questionnaire and do not pass filter question, only 67 questionnaire has been selected and analysis and there is 34 male and 33 female included in this report.

According to reliability analysis, the Cronbach's Alpha is between 0.6 and 0.9; the data in every part is reliable (Bryman & Bell, 2011).

Each part of reliability test included:

Patients’ satisfaction toward Medical Staffs and Hospital Staffs

Patients’ satisfaction toward hospital's building, equipment, and medicine

Consumer perception toward Gold Healthcare Card (Thailand's Universal Health Care) Scheme

Each part had Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.825, 0.759 and 0.806 respectively (Saunders, et al., 2009). Therefore, all and useful for further statistic research, after that, mean of each question in each part has been calculated in order to increase its reliability of the result and use to find further correlation. After we know all mean group, the Pearson correlation has been conduct to find a relationship between dependent and independent variable which the result as followings:

The first hypothesis has been accepted because from the finding there is a moderate positive relationship between Patients’ satisfaction toward staff and patients’ Patients’ satisfaction toward Gold Healthcare service (H1). (Pearson correlation =.362)

The second hypothesis has been accepted because from the finding there is a moderate positive relationship between patients’ satisfaction toward building, equipment, and medicine and Patients’ satisfaction toward Gold Healthcare service (H2). (Pearson correlation =.386)

The third hypothesis has been accepted because from the finding there is a strong positive relationship between patients’ perception toward Gold Healthcare Card Scheme and patients’ satisfaction toward gold healthcare service (H3). (Pearson correlation =.769)

Discussion - From the study result, there are more than only three mentions variables that also affect consumer satisfaction and the strongest influence is ranked as following

the patients’ perception toward the universal health scheme,

The building, equipment, and medicine,

And following with staff services.

However, this variable can change and add-up through the time (Bhattacherjee & Premkumar, 2004; Cummings, et al., 2009). However, the major influence factor in this finding is from the patient themselves about how they look at the scheme. This universal healthcare scheme will tackle finance problem for patient who is Thai people and they will receive a treatment till they had been cured (Jaggib, 2003).

Conclusion and Recommendation

The finding in this paper will provide necessary information for company to understand more about underlying factors that influence consumer satisfaction (Cronin, et al., 2000). With the concept of relationship marketing can create sustainable growth not only in production sector but also included service sector such as hospital as well (Ndubisi, 2006 and Ndubisi, Malhotra, Wah, 2009). The other factors such as consumer perception toward project service will be a great reinforcement for any company who want to vastly improve the overall service satisfaction (Churchill & Surprenant, 1982; Woodruff & Gardial, 1996). The recommendation for further study is to increase the number of participant and demographic of the participant because this research participant’s demographic is all from hospital in Bangkok and suburb. So, researcher should distribute the questionnaire to other hospital in the other regions in order to collect the most complete perspective. Since this universal health scheme covers ninty-nine percent of population in Thailand.

Limitation and Implication

In this test, author had done homogeneity of the measure for the findings to make sure that all of the results are reliable and can be used for further study. However, next researchers who want to use this paper as a guide model has to concern that there might be change in attitude change in this subject along the changed time (Bhattacherjee & Premkumar, 2004). So, to have reliability of the finding researchers has to re-measure participants thinking and attitude toward this program once again. Furthermore, researchers are required to set a filter questions to reduce sampling error, increase reliability and validity (ALWIN & KROSNICK, 1991). In addition, there might be a bias due to the misunderstanding between author and medical staff, which beliefs may make sample unrepresentative; projecting data beyond sample inappropriate. The last but not lease, the participants demographic of is from Bangkok and suburb area. So, the universal healthcare scheme’s perspective is from a small part of Thailand.

We could use relationship marketing to enhance patients’ satisfaction and develop a strong perception that will develop better customer perception that will yield more satisfaction as the result of the research mention. We believe that this finding could help manager to see the importance of service quality and earn more satisfaction from customer.