A Project Report

On

A study on Understanding and Integration of media as a part of ATL marketing

For

Max Fashion

By

Praveen S

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Marketing is an integral part of management in every company. To reach the consumer more
effectively companies use various marketing tools, one such tools is Above the Line and Below the
Line marketing. ATL marketing uses various media as tools to reach the consumers. Most of the
media in ATL are mass medias and the target is usually to reach a large number of consumers with
a short period of time. TV, radio and newspapers are some of the media used in ATL marketing.

In BTL marketing more importance is given to personalising the message to individual customers.
Importance is given to quality rather than quantity. Commonly used media in BTL are usually
social media platforms. During my SIP for the first month I was given assignment based projects
and in the later part of the SIP I was given a research based project.

Assignment Project:

In this we mainly did the work of building a database for Max fashion. The database included
collecting of contact details of marketing teams of TV channels, Radio channels, Newspapers and
popular and relevant social media pages. Through this I would arrange meeting for the company so
that Max could promote their events through these medias. I was assigned the job to make
registrations for one of the events of Max. I even followed up some of the events regarding
registration.

Research Project:

In the research I did the objective was to find out the media preferences of Max customers. The
reason was that if we know the media preference it would be easy and effective for the company to
advertise through those media. For this I prepared a questionnaire and made a survey and analysed
the results.

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Contents
........................................................................................................................................................................1
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................5
Industry Overview: .........................................................................................................................................6
Global Retail Industry: ...............................................................................................................................6
Indian Retail Industry: ................................................................................................................................6
Indian fashion Retail Industry: ...................................................................................................................7
Company Profile- Max Fashion (Landmark Group): .....................................................................................8
Landmark Group: .......................................................................................................................................8
Max Fashion: ..............................................................................................................................................9
Splash .......................................................................................................................................................10
Home Centre: ...........................................................................................................................................10
Lifestyle Store: .........................................................................................................................................10
Spar...........................................................................................................................................................11
City Max:..................................................................................................................................................12
Chapter 2: Situation Analysis ...........................................................................................................................14
Situation Analysis: .......................................................................................................................................15
Market Factor: ..............................................................................................................................................15
Competitive Factor: ......................................................................................................................................15
Other environmental factors: SWOT Analysis: ...........................................................................................16

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 Max Fashion store analysis: .....................................................................................................................17
Competitor analysis: .................................................................................................................................19
Research Methodology: ....................................................................................................................................24
Objective: .....................................................................................................................................................25
Approach: .....................................................................................................................................................25
Above The Line marketing.......................................................................................................................25
Below The Line Marketing ......................................................................................................................25
Rationale and Motivation: ............................................................................................................................26
Above The Line marketing: .....................................................................................................................26
Below The Line Marketing: .....................................................................................................................26
Description of Approach: .............................................................................................................................26
Challenges Faced: ........................................................................................................................................26
Questionnaire: ..............................................................................................................................................27
Sample ......................................................................................................................................................30
Survey.......................................................................................................................................................30
Learnings from the survey:...........................................................................................................................38
References ........................................................................................................................................................39

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Introduction

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Industry Overview:

Global Retail Industry:

Global Retail industry is one fastest growing industry worldwide. In growing economy like India
and Chine it has a lot of potential for growth. Apart from this South Asian countries are countries
are preferred for investment over other parts of the world. This is mainly because of the low risk
factors in these markets compared to other European and other western countries.

Even though the global economy struggled to gain momentum, the Global Powers of Retailing Top
250 achieved profitable growth in FY2015, generating aggregate retail revenues of US$4.31 trillion
and resulting in an average size of US$17.2 billion per company. Rising GDP growth, increasing
population, greater disposable income, and increasing consumer spending are combining to drive
the Global retail market and opportunities for retail segment players. The market is forecast to reach
an estimated $20,002 billion in 2017 with a CAGR of 3.9% over the next six years

Indian Retail Industry:

India is one of the hotspot for retail investments. Many of the companies are investing heavily in
the retail market of India. The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and
fast-growing industries due to the entry of several new players. It accounts for over 10 per cent of
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the countrys GDP and around 8% of the employment. India is the worlds fifth-largest global
destination in the retail space.

Coming to the market size of Indian retail sector the growth is expected to double to US$ 1 trillion
by 2020 from US$ 600 billion in 2015, driven by income growth, urbanisation and attitudinal shifts.
While the overall retail market is expected to grow at 12% per annum, modern trade would expand
twice as fast at 20% per annum and traditional trade at 10%.

Indias Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce market is expected to reach US$ 700 billion by
2020. Online retail is expected to be at par with the physical stores in the next five years.

India is expected to become the worlds fastest growing e-commerce market, driven by robust
investment in the sector and rapid increase in the number of internet users. Various agencies have
high expectations about growth of Indian e-commerce markets. Indian e-commerce sales are
expected to reach US$ 120 billion by 2020 from US$ 30 billion in FY2016. Further, India's e-
commerce market is expected to reach US$ 220 billion in terms of gross merchandise value (GMV)
and 530 million shoppers by 2025, led by faster speeds on reliable telecom networks, faster
adoption of online services and better variety as well as convenience.

The Indian retail trading has received Foreign Direct Investment equity inflows totalling US$
935.74 million during April 2000December 2016, according to the Department of Industrial
Policies and Promotion (DIPP).
With the rising need for consumer goods in different sectors including consumer electronics and
home appliances, many companies have invested in the Indian retail space in the past few months.
US apparel retail major Gap Inc, has tied up with Arvind Groups fashion portal NNNow.com to
sell its products online, which will help the retailer expand its presence beyond metros and tier-I
cities.

Indian fashion Retail Industry:

The Indian retail market is expected to demonstrate a promising year-on-year growth of 6% to reach
USD 865 billion, by 2023, from the current USD 490 billion. The share of apparel in Indias retail
market is 8%, corresponding to a value of USD 40 billion. In addition to fashion apparel, the
growing demand for fashion accessories makes the Indian fashion market both interesting and
lucrative.

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As we can see in the image apparel has second highest share in the retail market with share of 8%.
Food and grocery has the highest share with 69% and apparel market wont be able to over throw
food and grocery any time soon.

The distinct trends in the macroeconomic scenario, the favourable demographic dividend, retail
specific policies, and consumer buying behaviour, have triggered a transformation in the fashion
retail market which is also reflected in the changes undergone by the Indian retail industry. These
take the form of modernization and corporatization of retail businesses, the evolution of alternative
retail landscapes, the customization of product portfolios to address the specific needs of various
consumer segments, the increasing success of private labels, and the growing focus on business
efficiency.

Talking about the corporatized retail industry, footwear industry is highly corporatized. This
followed by IT and apparel industry. One thing we can observe here is that apparel and footwear
both come under fashion and lifestyle industry, so considering this we can say that fashion industry
is highly organised and corporatized.

Company Profile- Max Fashion (Landmark Group):

Landmark Group:
Landmark Group is a multinational conglomerate based in Dubai, UAE headed by Micky Jagtiani
who is the Founder & Chairman of the company. The group is involved in retailing of apparel,
footwear, consumer electronics, cosmetics & beauty products, home improvement and baby

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 products. The group also has interests in hospitality & leisure, healthcare and mall management.
The group has several in-house brands and also works with other brands, acting as a retailer.

The company has a revenue of US$ 6 billion and currently employs 55000 people. Apparel retailing
is the main business of the company and it owns popular brands like Max, Lifestyle, Babyshop and
Splash.
The company has CSR initiative against diabetes. The Beat Diabetes Initiative is an awareness
campaign that had over 60,000 participants across 7 countries including UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain,
Qatar, Oman, KSA and India in its 7th Beat Diabetes Walk. Major subsidiaries of Landmark group
are as follows:
Max Fashion
Splash
Home Centre
Lifestyle
Spar
Citymax
Fun city
Max Fashion:
Max is a fashion brand offering customers a one stop shop for clothing, accessories and footwear
needs for the entire family. Max, a part of $5 billion Dubai based Landmark Group, has pioneered
the concept of value fashion in India. In 2014 it is India's fastest growing fashion brand and in
terms of size, it contributed one fourth of the Landmark Group's revenue as of 2014.
Max Fashion currently operates around 145 stores in the country and it plans to open 50 more stores
in 2016-17. Max fashion is considered to be one of the best places to work for in retail industry,
mainly because of its work culture.

Tag Line: Look good Feel good.

Statement of Purpose: Creating exceptional value for all lives we touch.

Core values:
Passion for excellence
Integrity in everything we do
Empowering people to strive and deliver
Adapting to changing market and consumer needs

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Splash:
Headquartered in Dubai, Splash is Middle East's largest fast fashion retailer and part of the
Landmark Group, one of the biggest retail conglomerates in the Middle East, India and Africa.
Founded in 1993 as a single brand store in Sharjah, Splash currently operates over 220 stores and
55 brand stores (Lee Cooper, Bossini, Kappa etc) across 14 countries.
Showcasing popular collections for men, women and teens, Splash's existing product portfolio
includes a uni-brand concept across its stores providing a comfortable and easy shopping
environment. Alongside, the brand also houses a gamut of international brands under its portfolio
like Lee Cooper, Bossini, ELLE and Being Human among others.
Over the years, Splash has received several significant industry accolades that include being
awarded 'Powerbrand' status for 2013. Splash has also won the Dubai Lynx Awards in the Design
category for the Splash 2014 calendar. A winner of several marketing awards of great significance,
Splash has also won the Most Admired Marketing Campaign at the Retail ME Awards 2011 along
with the Most Admired Retailer award.

Home Centre:
With more than 80 stores across the Middle East, North Africa and India, Home Centre offers an
impressive variety of fine furniture and furnishings, home accessories, kitchenware, outdoor
furniture and gift ideas distinguished by affordable prices, excellent value and comprehensive
service. From the first store in Sharjah, UAE in 1995, Home Centre today occupies half a million
sq. ft. of retail space within its stores in the UAE and over 3 million sq. ft. of retail space across all
its markets.

Lifestyle Store:
Tagline: Your Style, Your Store.
Lifestyle entered in India in 1999 and in a little over a decade has come to be recognized as one of
the leading retail companies in the country. Positioned as a trendy, colourful and vibrant store,
Lifestyle offers consumers ease of shopping and an enjoyable shopping experience.
Each Lifestyle store from Lifestyle International (P) Ltd. brings together five concepts under one
roof - Apparel, Footwear, Children's Wear & Toys, Household & Furniture and Health & Beauty,
offering convenient one-stop shopping and a choice of over 250 national & international brands.

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The Group has also introduced Home Centre, a one stop destination for affordable furniture, home
dcor and soft furnishing that represents style, comfort and individuality.
In keeping with the Group's tradition of making every shopping experience more rewarding and
memorable, The Inner Circle, Landmark Group's loyalty programme allows members to enjoy
exclusive benefits and privileges such as reward points and exciting offers.

Spar:
Tagline: Live Better, Spend Less
SPAR is the world's largest food store chain with over 12000 stores in 38 countries across 4
continents and meets the needs of over 10 million consumers every day. SPAR Hypermarkets and
supermarkets in India is the result of a license agreement between the Dubai based Landmark
Group's Max Hypermarkets India Pvt. Ltd. and SPAR International. SPAR is the world's largest
independent food retail chain which operates on the principle of a 'Co - operative of Independent
Retailers and Wholesalers.'
Customers have the option to choose from a wide variety of quality products in every category
ranging from grocery, fruits and vegetables, bakery, dairy, meat, poultry and fish, wine, beer and
spirits, home textiles, personal care, crockery utensils, plastics and kitchen appliances, electronics
and IT accessories and much more. SPAR promises to elevate shopping from a daily chore to a
world class shopping experience that also offers value for money. SPAR's retail philosophy is to
provide freshness, choice, value and service to its customers
SPAR assures excellent value for money throughout the year. The stores have a "Everything Below
MRP" concept. This simply means that SPAR offers the customer prices which are a minimum of
4% and more below the actual MRP.of the products. The customer therefore is able to save a
substantial amount on his groceries and regular monthly shopping. SPAR also has Best Deals that
run every fortnight and offer the customer the best bargains. In conjunction with the Landmark
Group's corporate loyalty programme, SPAR launched The Inner Circle, a loyalty program for its
customers in March 2009 which offers shopping and saving benefits in all stores across the group.
Max Hypermarket India Pvt. Ltd. currently operates 16 stores in 9 locations. These cities are
Bangalore, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Chennai and Pune.
The average hypermarket size is 50,000 sft. The company will be opening on an average 5 stores a
year over the next few years.

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 City Max:
Citymax India is the Hospitality division of the Dubai based retail giant Landmark Group, one of
the largest & most respected retailers in India and the Middle East. The group is well known for its
Lifestyle chain of retail stores in India. Bringing customers a gamut of choices, Citymax operates in
business verticals of Casual Dine in restaurants (Polynation), International Coffee house (Gloria
Jean's Coffees) and Family Fun & Entertainment Centres (Fun City) across India.
Citymax has recently signed a franchisee agreement with Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation for
the South and West regions of India. Krispy Kreme (NYSE: KKD) is a leading branded specialty
retailer and wholesaler of premium quality sweet treats and complementary products, including its
signature Original Glazed doughnut. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, the Company has
offered the highest quality doughnuts and great tasting coffee since it was founded in 1937.

Gloria Jean's Coffees: was originally established 30 years ago, Gloria Jean's Coffees has today
become a global coffee brand, committed to delivering the ultimate specialty coffee experience.
With over 1000 outlets across 39 countries worldwide, Gloria Jean's Coffees is a leading specialty
coffee retailer and one of the fastest growing franchise organizations in the world.
Gloria Jean's Coffees entered the Indian market in 2008 and is expanding across key cities.
Currently the brand has 27 outlets across Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, Gurgaon, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune.
Polynation offers today's discerning guests, a variety of cuisine, be it North Indian, South Indian,
Italian, Chinese and continental. The brand brings together a midscale smart casual dining
experience. Epitomizing the brand's philosophy 'Great Food, Great Value', Polynation strives to
provide their consumers value for money accompanied by great service and ambience.. Spread
across 12000 sq. ft. with a seating capacity of 250 people, it is operational throughout the day. All
in all a great place for the family to relish a bite!
Fun City, an international chain of 'Family Entertainment Centers (FEC), is the first leisure concept
of the retail giant, the Landmark Group. It aims to bring the best of entertainment, amusement, fun
options under one roof for the entire family. Fun City offers truly world class facilities with a value
for money experience.
Fun City is presently having 16 operational outlets across India (Gurgaon, Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur,
Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ghaziabad, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Mangalore,

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 Ahmedabad, and Coimbatore)
Fun City also has an exclusive area demarcated for activities such as celebrating birthday parties,
small family gathering and special fun occasions.
Krispy Kreme is a leading branded specialty retailer and wholesaler of premium quality sweet
treats and complementary products, including its signature Original Glazed doughnut.
Headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, the Company has offered the highest quality doughnuts and
great tasting coffee since it was founded in 1937. Today, Krispy Kreme can be found in
approximately 694 locations around the world and approximately 10,000 grocery, convenience and
mass merchant stores in the U.S. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is listed on the New
York Stock Exchange.

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Chapter 2: Situation Analysis

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Situation Analysis:
Max fashion is one of the largest fashion retailer in India but it has great market presence all over
the country. But the problem is the brand has very less recognition and very less recall. To improve
this company is trying to use Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) marketing
extensively. This helps the brand gain more recognition in a very short period of time. In my
internship for the first month I was given an assignment based project. In that I had to carry out the
ATL and BTL activities given by the company. After that in the second month I was given the job
to make a research on knowing the media preferences of Max Fashion customers.

Market Factor:
Youth are the main target consumers for the company. The market is booming in the current
situation. Consumers are ready to experiment with new designs and trends. This has made
the company to increase its presence in the country.

Competitive Factor:
Competition is a major factor for the company to take up new marketing initiatives.
Competitors like Pantaloons, Reliance trends, H&M and Globus are giving tough
competitions to the company. Lifestyle being a sister company of Max has also become a
threat.
Companies like Reliance and Pantaloons have popular brands with them to attract young
consumers, but Max has very few well known brands. So Max is trying to encash its low
cost with quality image to attract the consumers, which other brands do not have.

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 Competitors have very good presence and recall from the consumers. When it comes to
recall, it is very bad for Max as most of the consumers do not choose Max at the first go.

Other environmental factors: SWOT Analysis:

Strength:

Huge network of outlets all over the country.

Good quality for low price image.

Weakness:

Less attractive stores.

Lack of popular brands.
Low promotions compared to competitors.
Low recall form consumers.

Opportunity:

Great opportunity in India as apparel industry is growing at a very fast rate.

Even though there is a tough competition the number of competitors are less.

Threat:

Home grown brands like Pantaloons and Reliance Trends are giving a tough competition.
As there is a lot of opportunity in the market foreign players like H&M have entered the
market.

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Max Fashion store analysis:
As a part of my assignment based project I was given the work to analyse the Max fashion stores.
The analysis included checking of feedback book of the store, in store communication and an
analysis of communication inside the mall where the store was located.

Feedback book analysis:

When I analysed the feedback book of Max fashion store I noticed some of the commonly repeated
feedbacks from the customers, some of them are as follows:

Trial rooms were not up very spacious and cleanliness was a main issue. So some customers
expected more improvement in the trial room of the store.
Women and kids wear were the most shopped items in store. This could be because of the
good offers provided in both the product range.
There was a lot of feedback about the lack of options provided in womens wear. This was
in particular to lack of options in size and colour provided in womens wear.
Another negative feedback I observed was that, many of the customers were unhappy about
the products offered for the discount vouchers. Products offered for discount vouchers were
very unattractive and many of the customers did not like them.
Coming to the influence on buying many customers said that friends and hoardings were the
main influence for them to shop in Max fashion.
Apart from these festivals and daily wear are the common reasons for shopping in Max
fashion. This says that consumers prefer Max fashion for both low cost and high cost
apparel.
Coming to in store experience, most of the customers were very happy with the assistance
provided by the sales executives.

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Communication inside store:

All the signboards like direction boards were placed perfectly inside the store. All the
boards were visible from every part of the store.
Max fashion is a discount format store, so there were discount boards on almost all the
product range of the store. But the problem was that these boards were not appealing
enough. Discount boards could be updated in terms of size and colour.

All the staff in the store were well trained and well behaved. They greeted every customer
as soon as they entered the store. They also communicated very well with customers.

One thing I observed was that offers provided to mens wear was very less or at least it was
communicated in a very poor way. So this issue has to be taken care of.

Brand names were not displayed inside the store. As young consumers tend to prefer
branded products over non branded products this could be a problem to the store.

Some sections like footwear and handbag section looked too blank due to lack of
signboard, brand name and less products.

Communication outside store:

No proper direction boards to the Max store were displayed.

Size of the signboards can be increased significantly.
Lot space outside the mall is wasted. These space can be used to promote the Max store
more effectively.
Max fashion had installed hoardings near parking entrance of mall, this was very effective
and no other store in the mall had followed this idea.

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Competitor analysis:
Max fashion comes under discount format in retailing. There are a lot of competition in this format.
Some of the major competitors are:

Reliance Trends
Lifestyle
Pantaloons
Globus

Reliance Trends:

Reliance Trends is Indias one of largest retailers and Trends comes under Reliance Retail division
of Reliance Industries. The Retail division has 3383 stores across India and a fair amount of this
number is taken by Reliance Trends stores.

When I went for the store analysis the first thing I observed was the layout of the store. The
store was huge in size compared to Max fashion store.
Ambience was better than Max stores, because of the lighting inside the store.
One thing that differentiate Trends from other stores is that, the whole store is filled with lot
of different apparel and one cannot see any blank shelves in the store. Customers will be
having a lot of choices in colour, sizes and even brands.

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 When it comes to the brands even there Trends win because the number of brands they have
is lot compared to what Max has.
The choice offered to mans wear is also more in Trends.

Globus:

This one brand store that I did not have heard until I started interning at Max. Globus is a Mumbai
based company started in the year 1998. Vinay Nandakarni is the CEO and MD of the company.
Globus has many businesses like departmental store, discount store and fashion and accessory
stores, but among these their apparel business is the most profitable.

First thing that I observed the when I entered the store wads that the area was very small. It
was no match to its competitors in the matter store size.
Store had a good number choices for womens wear. It covered everything from accessories
to footwear.
The problem started when mens wear department started. There was nothing much to see
there and many of the spots looked empty.
There were no brand that were popular enough to recognise.
The final observation was that there was no kids wear at all. This was a huge setback to
Globus in front of its competitors.

Pantaloons:

Pantaloons Fashion and Retail limited is subsidiary of Aditya Birla Group. It was founded in the
year 1997 and is present is the country in 86 locations. Currently it is headed by Pranab Barua as
the MD of the company.

In the matter of Pantaloons, I felt that Max does not play in the same league as Pantaloons.
There are many reasons for that, Pantaloons store are huge compared to Max, usually having
2 to 3 floors with an escalator inside the store. This alone says that business size itself is
huge compared to max.

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 Another thing was that most of the apparel in Pantaloons were in house brands i.e. all the
brands that they sell were manufactured by them. Even many of the popular brands were
under Pantaloons.
There was huge priority given to womens wear and kids wear. There was a huge choice for
these two departments.

Lifestyle:

Lifestyle is a sister firm for Max fashion. Both the companies come under Landmark Group. But in
the business world Lifestyle store is a competitor for Max fashion store. Lifestyle was founded in
the year 1999 and it is headquartered in Bangalore. The first store was launched in Chennai and
currently operated in 26 cities with 43 stores across India.

Again here also I felt that Lifestyle is a threat to Pantaloons more that Max. The store is very
similar to Pantaloons in terms of layout and products offered.
The store felt premium with very good ambience inside the store.
There was huge range offered in every department.
Again womens wear had huge rand, still mens department had lot of choices compared to
other store.
It had very popular brands like Gini and Jony. Nike, Reebok, Lego and Biba. These many
popular brands were not offered in any other store that I visited.

Max Fashion:

From the above analysis I compared the learnings it to Max fashion store.
Max fashion had an upper hand over every other player when it comes to price. Max is a
leader in discount and price offered. No other company could offer the prices that Max
offered.
Even though there were no popular brands to attract customers, the quality for the price they
are paying attracted the customers.

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 One more thing is the visibility of the store. Max has more than 20 store in Bangalore, this is
more than any off the competitors. Due to their presence is every key location Max has an
upper hand over other businesses.

Assignment based project:

At the time when I joined for the internship, Max fashion had a lot of events coming for next two
months. Some of the events were like flagship events for the company. Main events were Max Kids
festival and Max Little Icon, both of which targeted Kids and their family.

Max kids festival is a talent hunt event for kids between the ages of 2-10 years. The event included
activities like singing, dancing, drawing and fancy dress competition. These events were conducted
mainly to attract kids and family members. This was the main reason for the event being conducted
in the month of April and May. During these two months, kids will be on summer holidays and the
response would be higher compared to other months.

During these months we had a lot of work in developing a database for the company. The database
was mainly collection of key contacts in the company.

Above sheet is a screen shot of the Facebook pages that I contacted to promote one Max fashion
events through their page. The event was a new collection launch by the company and a film team
was present to launce the new line of apparel. For the event we needed a lot of people in the
location, so FB was the best way to reach more people in a short period of time. One more thing
was that there was no money given for these type of promotions, so I had to persuade the FB page
admins to post company promotions for free on their page. The success rate was less, but still I
managed to get 2 FB pages to post the content in their page.

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As mentioned earlier, Max fashion was looking into promotion is all the media channels. To do this
effectively there Media buying companies, like the ones in the above sheet. These companies, once
made a deal with them will handle all the media related activities for the company. All the
promotions and ads through social media and other media channels will be handled by a single
company. So I had fixed a meeting with some of the media buying companies in Bangalore. We
also had some meetings with some these companies.

Landmark had a loyalty programme. The customers were registered to this programme when they
were checking out from the store. Job given to me was to put all the data into the excel sheet and
select some random numbers and verify whether these numbers were genuine or not.

As a part of Max kids festival company had selected some locations, specifically the apartments to
boost the registrations. We would make a small setup of small race track for remote controlled cars
and a small jigsaw puzzle. Kids in the apartments were invited to these small events and register
them for the MKF. This way kids would have fun and the company would get a lot of registrations

As part of media integration for Max, we were developing a database for the company. This
included all the details of the concerned contact person, like his name, contact number and his
designation.

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Research Methodology:

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Objective:
For assignment based project:
To increase visibility and recall of the brand.
To achieve it through ATL and BTL marketing techniques.
To know the media preferences of Max customers to promote the brand more effectively.

For research based project:

To know the media preferences of Max fashion customers, so that company could do more
promotions through those most preferred media.

Approach:
Above The Line marketing: Above the line is a type of advertising through media such
as TV, cinema, radio, print, banners and search engines. This is mainly used to communicate
messages to the masses. Here messages are universal and less personalised. This is mainly used to
get immediate response.

Below The Line Marketing: It uses less conventional methods than the usual specific channels of
advertising to promote products, services, etc. These may include activities such as direct mail,
public relations and sales promotions for which a fee is agreed upon and charged up front.

To get collect the data we decided to make a questionnaire and get the answers from the Max
fashion customers. This helped us to know which media Max consumers are more interested in.

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Rationale and Motivation:
Above The Line marketing:
As mentioned above ATL marketing has the highest reach. When an advertising is telecasted
through ATL medias it reaches most of the potential consumers, this because TV, Radio and
newspapers are commonly used ATL tools and as we know these medias have the highest
penetration and reach.

Below The Line Marketing:

Again BTL marketing uses list of highly targeted consumers. Here company concentrate on
frequently visiting customers, loyalty customers and potential consumers. So here commonly used
tools are personalised messages and e- mails. Apart from this social media is extensively used to
give a personalised feel to the consumers. Usually BTL marketing works more effectively for
targeted customers.

Description of Approach:
Max fashion has a lot of events like Max Kids Festival (MKF) and Max Little Icon (MLI) lined up
for the months of April and May. These are events mainly targeting kids and their parents and pull
as much crowd possible towards the stores. So Max needs maximum promotions during these
events. As a part of ATL marketing campaign extensive promotions were made in newspapers,
radio and TV. Apart from this summer camps, play homes were contacted to motivate them to
attend and participate in the event. Discount vouchers and coupons were provided as incentive to
participate in the events.

As part of BTL marketing apartments were targeted, where we arranged small events like small car
race and jigsaw puzzle were conducted to attract the kids to register for the events. Apart from this
extensive promotions were conducted on Facebook. Facebook pages were contacted and event
promotions were made through these pages for free of cost. This was successful for some extent.
The Facebook pages were selected based on their type, target users, geography and so on.

Challenges Faced:
Main challenge faced was, for social media promotions, no budget was allotted. This was a
huge challenge to get promotions for free of cost.
For the events we were conducting, kids were the main target. But the main problem was the
summer holidays and most of the kids were out on holidays. This was a huge problem to
bring them to the event as many of the kids were not available.

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 In the research another major challenge was to get the responses from the Max customers.
This was because most of the respondents were not ready to answer the questionnaire. We
had to make a lot of changes in our approach to get responses from the customers.

Questionnaire:
Name:
Gender:
Age:
Occupation:
Mother Tongue:
1. Have you shopped earlier in Max?
Yes
No
2. Do you read News Paper? (If No, go to question 5)
Yes ____________________ (Please Mention the name)
No
3. Which Kannada newspaper do you read?
Prajavani Vijaya Karnataka
Kannada Prabha Udayavani
Vijaya Vani Sanjevani
None of the above
4. Which English newspaper do you read?
Deccan Herald Times of India

The Hindu Bangalore Mirror

Hindustan Times Economic Times

None of the above

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5. Do you watch TV? (If No, go to question 12)
Yes
No
6. When do you usually watch TV?
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Night
___________________ ( Please specify the time)

7. What language TV programmes do you watch?

English Hindi
Kannada Marathi
Malayalam Tamil
Telugu

8. What type of programmes do you watch? ( You can select multiple options)
Entertainment
News
Sports
Movies
Lifestyle
Regional
9. Which is your favourite TV show in entertainment category?
____________________ (Please mention the name)
10. Do you listen to Radio?
Yes
No
11. If yes please answer the following question by putting a tick mark in the space provided
below each option.

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 12. Mention the RJ you like
_______________ (Please mention the name)
13. Which social media platform are you using?
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Youtube
None of the above

Radio channel you listen to Red FM Big FM Radio City Fever FM Radio Indigo Radio Mirchi

Average time spent on radio Less than 1 hour 1-2 hours 3-4 hours More than
4 hours

When do you listen to radio Morning Afternoon Evening Night

14. Are you an active social media user? (Like, comment and share posts)
Yes
No

On a scale of 1 to 5 rate the media depending upon its influence on your shopping

1 2 3 4 5
Media Least Influence Low Influence Moderate Influence High Influence Very High Influence

17.TV

18. Radio

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19.Newspaper

20. Magazine

21.Social Media

This was the questionnaire designed by us for the research. In this most of the questions are
designed to know the specific media preferences of customers, usual time when they use these
media channels and its influence on their buying.

Sample:

We considered a sample size of 200 members and all of them were either residents of Bangalore or
were shopping in Max fashion stores located in Bangalore.

Respondents were selected based on their age and the age limit was 18- 40 years. The reason to
select this age group is because we wanted to select people who make buying decision at home and
people above the age of 18 years are usually the independent decision makers in the house. Another
reason was that we needed people who use and watch media very frequently. Usually people
between the age group of 18-40 years are very much active on social media and frequently watch
TV programmes, read newspapers and listen to radio.

Survey:

30
Above excel sheet is the data we collected from the 200 samples we spoke to. This includes the data
of all the questions in the questionnaire. From the above data we created pie charts to know the
results from the survey.

Survey Results:

Mother Tongue

This is the results we got for mother tongue of the respondents. From all the respondents Kannada
was the mother tongue of 34% of the respondents, this was followed by Hindi with 21%, Tamil
with 9%. Though Kannada has the majority, it may be not certain as the geographical areas matter a
lot in a city like Bangalore as some areas speak one particular language more compared to other
areas. Areas like Shivajinagar has more Urdu speakers than any other area in Bangalore.

Newspaper

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Majority of the respondents said that they read newspapers daily. This could be because most of the
respondents were students and employees.

Newspaper Preference

Coming to the newspaper preference Times of India was the most popular newspaper with 33% of
the respondents reading it. People from all the age groups read TOI. Next preferences were
Economic Times and The Hindu with 22% and 21% respectively. In case of ET and The Hindu
most of the respondents who read this newspapers were either students of employees. As the
research was concentrating on respondents from Karnataka region or people in Bangalore in

32
specific we had to include some Kannada language newspapers, but the number of respondents
reading Kannada newspapers were very less.

TV

This was the question to know whether the respondents watch the TV or not. As expected majority
i.e. 90% of people watched TV and people who did watch TV were also not active on other media
platforms like newspaper and radio.

Time when TV is watched

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Above question was asked to know the preferred time to watch the TV. 58% of them said they
watch during night followed by evening and morning with 18% and 17% respectively. This may be
because most of them are either students or employees, so they get time only during morning,
evening and night to watch the TV.

TV programme language preferences

Coming to the preferred language in TV channels English and Hindi were the most preferred
languages with 33% and 29% respectively. Most of the employees watched English programmes.
Third highest was Kannada languages and again this may be due to areas we conducted survey in.
One more observation was that respondents who watched Kannada channels also watched Tamil
and Telugu channels, and people watching Tamil channels also watched Malayalam channels and
vice versa.

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Type of TV programmes watched

In the above question 33% of the people watched entertainment programmes followed by Movies
and sports with 20%. But there could be an error in people watching sports channels because at the
time of this survey was being conducted IPL was going on, so more number of people could have
chosen Sports channels based on IPL influence. The number might have changed if survey was
conducted after IPL was over.

Radio Preferences

This was a surprising result as 51% of the respondents said that they do not listen to radio or they
listen to radio very rarely. This was surprising as radio is quite popular in Bangalore. Frequency of
listening to radio could have played a role in this as people who listened to radio less frequently
might have chosen the response NO as their answer.

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Radio channel preference

Coming to the language preferences Red FM was the most popular radio channel. This was
followed by Big FM and Radio FM. Company was expecting a good response for Radio City as
they had ongoing campaigns with them. Radio city stands fourth with 12%, this is very less
compared to other channels.

Social Media preferences

This result was very much expected. Facebook is still the most popular and most used social media
platform. Almost all the respondents said they used Facebook. It was followed by Youtube and
Instagram. Only 1% of the respondents said that they do not use any of the social media platforms.

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Active social media usage

This question was asked to know who are active on social media, because have a social media
account alone is not enough. Users need to be active on those platforms. They have to actively
view, like and share content on social media platforms. For that question 81% of respondents said
that they are active social media users.

Rating of media based on its influence on buying

This was a rating scale given to the customers to rate each of the given media based on their
influence on the buying. Here 1 being least influential and 5 being most influential. Here also the
results were as expected. Social media got the highest average rating of 3.91 and it was followed by
TV with an average rating of 3.52. Newspaper was third with average rating of 3.05. Most of the
people said that radio was least influential and gave an average rating of 2.14. This could be mainly
because more than half of our respondents did not listen to radio, so they felt that radio has least
influence on them when it comes to buying behaviour.

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Learnings from the survey:
Main learnings from the survey are as follows.

The number of languages spokes may vary because in a city like Bangalore, as the area
changes the languages changes. In places like Electronic city Tamil may be a major
language spoken or in South Bangalore areas like Jayanagar and Malleshwaram Kannada
will be the major spoken language. So the area matters a lot so to tackle this sample must be
taken from all the stores across Bangalore.
Newspaper is major influencer on people. Almost all of the respondents said that they read
newspaper and among them TOI has the major share. We can see that TOI is more attractive
than other popular papers like The Hindu.
TVs popularity was very much expected. Every customer said that they watch TV and they
even agreed that TV is one of the most influencing media on their buying.
As the age group we considered was 18- 40 years most of them were either students or
employees. So this affected the time they watched the TV. Most of the respondents watched
TV either in the morning or during night. Almost all of them watched TV at least once a
day.
In the languages people watched TV in was depending on the area we made the survey. As
the languages change the channel preference changed. Still English and Hindi language
programmes were most popular irrespective of the mother tongue of the viewer.
Radios popularity was less than expected. Many of the respondents said that they listen to
radio very rarely and most of the time during commuting to the work. There was so specific
time to listen to Radio. So I felt that advertising in Radio may not be much effective.
Social media was expected to be very popular than any other media and the survey results
were in favour of it. Most of the respondents were very active in social media and everyone
used at least one social media platform. Many of them had seen advertisements on social
media and remembered it. That means they were giving attention to it. This says that social
media was more effective media to advertise than other forms of media.
To finish of everything the rating scale gave us a clear picture, the average rating showed
that social media influenced customers the most on their buying and TV was the in second
place in influence. So to advertise Max fashion it is better to go for social media and TV
advertising.

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