Brand Positioning Of OTOBI

OTOBI is one of the leading world class furniture manufacturers of its kind in the country. It has become the most prominent Bangladeshi furniture brand, emphasizing the nation’s pride in its culture. In 1975, following a brief stint at Bitopi advertising agency, Nitun Kundu established his company, a future store featuring his own designs, OTOBI. He set up a small workshop in a tin shed at Topkhana road in Feb’ 1977 and named it “Art in Craft”.  Nitun’s dreams have been translated into OTOBI’s three modern plants in Ashulia, Shyampur and mirpur in Dhaka. With more than 15,000 employees, OTOBI is headquartered at Gulshan, Dhaka and has a retail network all across the country. Always an artist at heart, Nitun’s sculptures adorns Bangladesh including the SAARC Fountain and Sabash Bangladesh.

Over the two and half decades of tireless endeavor, OTOBI earned the fame and image of the unique manufacturer of world class products. OTOBI received National Business Award as “Enterprise of the Year” for year 2001. It makes all kinds of metal, laminated board and plastic furniture. The functional utility and durability with the elegance of OTOBI products earned the reliability and confidentiality of the customers. Currently OTOBI’s product range cover the office furniture, household furniture, plastic furniture, hospital furniture, computer furniture, kitchen cabinet, work station, storage rack, decorative items and interior decoration. Besides these crets, trophy, medal, gift box etc are also the products of OTOBI.

The company has 415 outlets spread across Bangladesh and 28 in India. It mainly exports home furnishing but recently got orders to ship hospitals furniture. The company logged BDT 2.18 billion (USD 27.25 million) of turnover in fiscal year 2007-2008. However, following an encouraging growth rate, the industry brought in close to BDT 6.0 billion (USD 75 million) in fiscal year 2011-2012.

OTOBI Furniture a part of OTOBI Group is one of the market leaders of furniture market of Bangladesh. They started their business in Bangladesh with a slogan “Trusted across the World”.  OTOBI Furniture a part of OTOBI limited which is a combination of four different types of business. They are as follows:

Otobi Furniture: Combination of office and furniture

Home Appliances: Washing Machine, air conditioner

Carpet: under Apollo Limited

Decorative Light: Also under Apollo Limited

OTOBI Furniture:

Otobi has about 26 different types of furniture. Not only is that Otobi furniture the symbol of status now a day. They provide both customized and standardized product. Otobi holds about 80% furniture market share. Among the 26 different brands the main brands of Otobi are:

• World Class Chair
• Computer Table
• Home Furnitur
• Table & File Cabinet

Most of these products has different slogan to establish themselves in the mind of the people. They are:

World Class Chair	Chair that satisfies your need
Table	Create your ideal office environment
Swivel chair	Beauty you can See
Home Furniture & File Cabinet	World Class Furniture

Other Product Lines:

•  Office furniture
•  Household Furniture
• Computer Furniture
• Hospital Furniture
•  Decorative Items
•   Kitchen Cabinet
•  Special Built in Cabinet
•  Work Station   Various Engineering Products
• Interior Project
• Accent and Decors
• Official Stationeries
• Customized Product

Product Features:

• Multiple colors
• Knock Down System
• Elegant Design
•  Competitive Price
•  After Sales Service

  

Brand Elements:

Brand Name: OTOBI Furniture Limited.

Tagline: 

“Keep reinventing” is OTOBI’s new tagline. The idea is to challenge its own limits in order to surprise customers consistently in terms of product design and variety, as well as to ensure motivation for employees and workers.

Brand Logo:

Target Market Profile:

Geographic Segmentation	Region: Bangladesh, India, South Asia City: Dhaka, Chittagong, Major cities Area: Urban, Sub-Urban
Demographic Segmentation	Age: Over 35 Religion: All Education: Educated Gender: All Income: Over 30,000 BDT Occupation: Private and Government employees, businessmen, politician etc.
Psychographic/Behavioral Segmentation	Social Class: Upper middle class to Upper class, upper working class. Usage Rate: Daily usage

Competitors and Nature of Competition:

Over the years, local furniture companies as well as smaller individual furniture outlets have taken the initiative to import and locally manufacture ranges of office and household furniture. The main competitors of Otobi are:

Direct Competitors:

·         Navana Furniture

·         Partex Furniture

·         Studio 45

·         Hatil

·         Tanin

·         Legacy

·         Akhter Furniture

·         About 41,560 SME furniture manufacturing enterprises etc.

Indirect Competitors:

·         Iron Furniture Manufacturers

·         Plastic Furniture Manufacturers

·         Bamboo Furniture Manufacturers

·         Cane Furniture Manufacturers

·         Steel Furniture Manufacturers etc.

POPs/ PODs:

POPs	PODs
Necessary office  Home furniture Wooden furnitur Flat-pack products Laminated board	Only local brand that has also gone international Export quality products Stylish yet simple design furniture Innovative design Light weight furniture High brand value Strong R&D Multi-tasking furniture  One of the 3 top brands in South Asian region. Complete lifestyle brand Trendsetter Leader in terms of quality

Pricing Strategy: Premium Pricing

Unique Selling Proposition: 

The USP of Otobi is its high quality. Advertising should give a consumer a compelling reason to buy a product that competitors could not match. So designing ads was placed on communicating a distinctive, unique product benefit. Otobi offers readymade furniture as well as they take order.

Recommendation:

• In the era of internet, OTOBI can open its own website to assist its customers to know about the company, its products and services. A website can also promote online selling. This would make it easier for the company to place their orders. In addition, OTOBI can send emails about their new products and offers to customers as a means of promotional activity.
• For promotion of products, OTOBI can sponsor different events. This would help the company to expand its image to the outsiders.
• To gain high recognition among the mass, OTOBI can increase the number of commercials on television. The advertisements in billboards, different newspapers and magazines can also be increased.
• Since price is one of the company’s main weaknesses, OTOBI can counter this by opening a new brand like “OTOBI ECONOMY”. This may be a trivial sacrifice to compete more effectively with its competitors and capture a large share in the market. On the other hand, the image of OTOBI may not be affected by it because it is a new brand with different brand name.

Conclusion:

Today after about thirty years of its establishment Otobi leads the modern furniture market unmatched by any other company. Otobi has been pioneer of light-weight furniture and proudly owns about 80% of the entire market share. Not only is this company operating in Bangladesh but it also has its dealers in India. The future prospect of Otobi is very promising due to its extensive expansion plan.

References:

Ahmed, J. U., Baqee, A. H., & Khan, Z. (2013). OTOBI: Beyond the Horizon. South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 2(2), 139-149.

Otobi Limited. ExporterIndia.com. Retrieved from http://www.exportersindia.com/otobiltd/

Otobi (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.superbrands.com/bd/images/PDF/21.pdf

APPLE: Brand Equity in Action

When a company positions itself on the foundation of innovation by humanizing technology, it equally focuses on user’s experience as well as emotion.  Technology should serve people and people should always be the starting point of any technology and that’s how the core idea of ‘humanizing technology’ comes from. Apple as a brand believes in humanizing technology by innovating new products and services to enhance user’s experiences and to create emotional brand attachment.  Apple’s brand personality is well engraved into its brand recognition among customers; youthful, dependable, friendly, and simple. Apple’s success in portraying this personality through every component, has led users to align themselves with the Apple identity.  Apple’s brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspiration; and power-to-the people through technology.  Not only the products, Apple’s tremendously successful retail stores give customers a keen taste of Apple’s brand values.  The airy design of Apple’s retail space, the no-pressure environment, the friendly help, the hands-on experience, the counter-free checkout are the breathing example of Apple’s brand equity in action. 

Figure: the Duffy Agency customer-based brand equity model

The brand equity can be defined as the degree to which a brand has achieved consumer awareness, understanding, interest, trust, trial, belief, affinity, loyalty and advocacy among a defined target group. The term ‘brand equity’ was produced as an attempt to define the relationship between customers and brands and it highlighted the importance of having a long-term focus within brand management.  The concept of brand equity has been debated both in accounting and marketing literatures and proliferated into multiple meaning. However, Feldwick (1996) simplifies brand equity as:

•  the total value of a brand as a separable asset;
•  a measure of the strength of consumers’ attachment to a brand;
•  a description of the associations and beliefs the consumer has about the brand.

Keller (1993) also takes the consumer-based brand strength approach to brand equity, suggesting that brand equity represents a condition in which the consumer is familiar with the brand and recalls some favorable, strong and unique brand associations.

Over the years, Apple has innovated markets and created new categories. Each new generation of their prior product lines adds new features that are innovative and of interest to customers. Apple’s products and services always provide a “wow” in the marketplace. There is always room for “wow”. When a product wows the market, those features/benefits eventually becomes a “must have” for the industry and thus Apple creates a living standard and breaks the status quo of the customers. Apple’s core competence remains delivering exceptional experience through superb user interface. The Apple brand personality lies in simplicity, and the removal of complexity from people’s lives through people-driven product design; and being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers. The Apple brand is not just intimate with its customers, it’s loved, and there is a real sense of community among users of its main product lines who advocates the brand.

Figure: Brand Equity Model by Kevin Lane Keller

                                          

Reference

Apple Inc. Wikipedia. Retrieved from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

Apple’s Branding Strategy. (n.d.). Marketing Minds. Retrieved from http://www.marketingminds.com.au/apple_branding_strategy.html#brand-personality

Brand Equity Tracking: Gauging the Success of a Brand. (n.d.). LAB BRAND, Brand Innovations. Retrieved from http://www.labbrand.com/brand-source/brand-equity-tracking-gauging-success-brand

Duffy, S. (2012, June 14). CUSTOMER-BASED BRAND EQUITY. BRAND RANTS. Retrieved from http://www.brandrants.com/brandrants/2012/6/14/customer-based-brand-equity.html

Goodstein, R. (2013, October). With Apple’s ‘Me-Too’ Product, Brand Equity Takes A Hit. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2013/10/09/with-apples-me-too-product-brand-equity-takes-a-hit/

Keller, K. L. (2001). Building Customer-Based Brand Equity: A Blueprint for Creating Strong Brands. Marketing Science Institute. Retrieved from http://mktg.uni-svishtov.bg/ivm/resources/CustomerBasedbrandEquityModel.pdf