Customer Satisfaction and SWOT Analysis of Thesis Binding Company

ABSTRACT

As the project is about Customer Satisfaction and Swot analysis of Thesis Binding, It is a marketing research project, for that I have collected the data by using various techniques like questionnaire and by telephone as well. The questionnaire made in different formats for in-house and out-house separately. Out-house survey is being done in the various university of Kolkata like Calcutta university, Jadavpur and so on. And for in-house survey, we are surveying those customers who have already done their thesis binding from Dhar brother. Various parameters in the questionnaire have been used to measure the satisfaction level of the customer and also to find out what are their needs or what they exactly want from the company and to determine the swot of company.

The objective of project is to get idea of what kind of promotion strategies is required by company to increase sales and to attract more customers and apart from that what new services are required company to increase customer satisfaction level and what is the strength, weakness , opportunities and threat for company so company can take action to use opportunities, and to mitigate threats and weakness to get competitive advantage and increase business revenue and profits.

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Dhar Brothers is a family owned business base in Kolkata, West Bengal and it was founded by Late Rash Mohan Dhar in the year 1930. Dhar Brothers started with only book binding in a very juvenile stage and then by the help of supportive community and companies hard work, Dhar brothers is known as a reputed Thesis paper maker in Kolkata.

The Dhar Brothers have a huge client base of student or professionals who need binding of their thesis or project work. The companies target customers who are doing research work as well as those students doing their P.H.D. from all the universities of Kolkata and its nearby cities or areas.

Over the years, Dhar Brothers have broadened our job profile, which now includesDATA PROCESSING, PRINTING, BINDING, PICK UP DELIVERY. It is possible because of Mr. Kishore Dhar who did Herculean task with heart and soul together. Driven by technology, Dhar brothers is able to serve many outstation and foreign clients as well with whom we get in touch through mail orders.

Dhar Brothers have experience of more than 75 years in this trade. Dhar brothers provide customized services to scholars to all the universities according to their specifications. Company’s vision is customers delight. And Dhar Brothers hope is Dhar brother achieved it, and with their blessings, Dhar Brothers are now a most recognized thesis company in Kolkata.

Dhar brothers is a largest thesis binding company in kolkata and is known for its superior quality, customization and betterservices to its customer or picking up online delivery.Company have skilled labour or other resources to serve the customer better .

Kinds of services provide by the company

Hard Binding: Hard bound books are very rigid and finished to a high standard with edges covered throughout encasing up to approximately 500 pages. These books are cloth covered in a wide variety of colours and lettering on the spine & can also take front board lettering.

Soft Binding: Soft bound books are cut flush on the edge and are rigid enough to stand on a bookshelf encasing up to approximately 500 pages. This bookish cloth covered in a wide variety of colours and lettering on the spine. We don’t advice front board lettering.

Simple Binding: Card back and clear plastic front can be used as a temporary binding, but is strong and attractive enough for permanent use. Up to 300 pages 90 g/m2 .

Thesis-CD-pockets: A transparent PVC pocket for holding CDs that you might want to submit with your thesis. These are inserted onto the inside of your thesis rear cover.

THESIS – CRAFT – POCKET: An elegant handmade pocket built into the rear board of your thesis. This is suitable for holding loose sheets, photos, maps, and other documents. It can hold up to 20 A4 sheets of paper.

Introduction of project

Title of project is Customer Satisfaction and SWOT analysis. In this first to understand the business of company and what kind of services are provided by the company to fulfil the need s and wants of customers regarding their thesis binding, the issues which we have to solve in this project is to understand that, customers are satisfied with the current services provided by the company or not and what kind of services customer are expecting from company. So that company can provide those services to customer, to give them value of money and increase customer satisfaction.

To understand all that discussed above, different techniques have been used to collect the data, these techniques are survey of customers by questionnaire, telephonic strategy, personal interviewing. After collecting the data sample size will be taken for the analysis so that we can come to some conclusion regarding the customer satisfaction and some recommendation can be provided to solve the issues.

As discussed above sample size will be used for the analysis of data by using various techniques .Considering all the points, SWOT analysis will be done as per the present situation. As DHAR brothers is a only big thesis binding company in the Kolkata region so it is the greatest strength the company has and to find out the new opportunities, and how to tapped these opportunities and find out weakness and threats of company, and find out the ways to solve those.

NEED OF THE STUDY

The study has been done to know the different type of services provided by Dhar Brothers and what is the customer satisfaction level regarding different type of services of Dhar Brothers and to know the customer response about what kind of improvement they want from company, so Dhar Brothers can take action to fulfil their needs. This study also covers the promotion strategies required by Dhar Brothers where company is lacking.

Through this study I came to know the customer satisfaction and SWOT of Dhar Brothers.

OBJECTIVE OF the PROJECT

The main objective of the project is to understand “Customer satisfaction and Swot analysis of thesis binding in Kolkata” are as

• This project would help Dhar Brothers in understanding the customer needs and get feedback on their product and services.
• Understand the customer satisfaction and Swot analysis for their thesis binding.
• Understanding what kind of services and customization customer expects from company regarding their thesis binding work.
• After understanding customer needs, efforts to fulfil their needs.
• In devising new methods of approaching their customers and in the process making them aware of various products and services on the basis of above needs of customers.
• To increase the services after understanding the customer requirements to serve them better.
• To make good relation with customers so that they will recommend other customers to company in future for their thesis binding, that helps in increasing sales of company.
• TO check present services quality is matching with the customer requirements or not, and what kind of up gradation is required.
• Different methodology will be used for the data collection and data analysis.
• Collected data will be analyzed properly to find out what are the requirements of the customer.
• To understand SWOT of Dhar Brothers.
• TO understand how to mitigate threats and remove weakness and what is the new opportunities.

INFORMATION REQUIRED

• Various services being offered by Dhar Brothers.
• To understand the working procedure of company.
• The kind of responses received from the customers during survey to get information about customer needs and wants and apart from that to measure their satisfaction level.
• Various tools of promotions are required by company to increase awareness and to build brand image and understanding the level of impact it has on the customers.
• The form of activity which is effective from the point of view of customer satisfaction and Swot of company.
• Details regarding the customer satisfaction level regarding various services of Dhar brothers.
• Information regarding what is the strength, weakness, opportunities and threat of Dhar Brothers.
• Finally innovative methods of targeting the customers and building a brand image and increasing the customer satisfaction level by providing them value for their money.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Method of data collection

Primary sources:- It is a marketing research project so to collect the data two type of questioner is used for survey.

I. In-house questioner is used to collect the data of existing customers of company at the time of delivery of their thesis.

II. Outhouse questioner is used to collect the data from different universities of Kolkata.

Secondary sources:-

It is the data which has already been collected by someone or an organization for some other purpose or research study .The data for study has

Been collected from various sources:

• Companies website
• Other Internet sources
• Past Data of organisation

Time: 3 months

Statistical Tools Used:

Simple tools like bar graphs, tabulation, line diagrams have been used for analysis of data.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

• Very small Sample Size as compared to the target customers. Therefore a possibility of making error.
• Limited amount of times as the survey is time consuming.
• Geographic limitations.
• Project is only to understand customer satisfaction and swot analysis for thesis binding not for other type of bookbinding.
• Collection of data is only from existing customers required services not from customers who have already taken services in past..

Description of project in brief

As I explained above in introduction the project is to measure the customer satisfaction level and to find out Swot analysis of thesis binding, So that company can come to know about satisfaction level of customers by its presently available services and came to know about what kind of up gradation is possible to upgrade our services and to serve the customer in better way and to measure that if any step company have taken is it feasible or not.

Companies main focus is services oriented because the company is looking for expanding the business and to attract more customers, and to get the idea of new trends of thesis binding what customer expect from the company so that company can fulfil their wish of customers that helps the company to retain its present customers and to attract new customers .

Recently Dhar Brothers start new services like online delivery services to the customers , that works as more beneficial for both the companies and customers point of view , most of the time what happened if customer have not time to come at company or away from Kolkata like from different state or cities than customer can submit their orders on companies website, where everything is mentioned about services of companies and by filling the demand form according to their requirement and made payment online , from where company take the customer’s order and provide them service and finished the work of customer within 48 hours after that if you are from Kolkata, you can take delivery from company and if you are from outside the Kolkata and if you can’t come , your thesis would be courier on your address.

TO understand the SWOT of company to get advantage from competitors and minimize the risks of business, as I discussed after clear understanding of strength, weakness, opportunities and threat, company can take necessary steps to maintain their strength as a tool of success, and take the advantage of new opportunities and work on remove the weakness, who are coming in path of success of company and mitigate the threats.

The strategy used to proceed the work, first after clearly understanding the work of company and what to do, I first prepare two questioner, one is for in-house survey to collect the data from customers at the time of their delivery, to get their valuable feedback and to measure their customer satisfaction level and to get the idea what kind of new improvement is required according to them, and what company should do to serve them better in future , so that companies sales will increase in future

second is outhouse questioner to collect data by surveying PHD or those people who are doing research work across different universities of Kolkata and then after collecting the data and proper analysis of that data will be done by using different technology to find the conclusions of problems and recommendation and what steps should be taken to improve services and to expand business or to attract new customers.

Market growth rate of company

Market rate has been found out by using the data of the customers who already have done their thesis work in 2009 and 2010. The data has been shown below.

Source: this data is based on the no of copies for the thesis binding month wise of Dhar Brothers.

The data which have been shown in the given table is the number of copies which has been completed in the year 2009 and 2010.

From the collected data which have been shown above shows that there is an increment in the growth rate of 13.6% in the year 2010 compared to 2009.

This shows that customer base of Dhar brothers is increasing every year so to meet with the demands of these customer and serve them better company have to increase their present resources, like skilled human resource , Machinery, better infrastructure etc. to meet with this challenge in future.

Market Size

Market size plays an important role to find out the areas where we can target the customers or it shows which area we should focus for the thesis binding.

The market size can help the company to come to know about the untapped areas or the areas from where less business is coming, so can company can make strategy and can take right decision to cover these untapped areas and areas from where less business is coming.

Number of customers coming in Dhar Brothers from different universities can be understand by the help of below graph, here In this graph I have not showed customers of all the universities I just try to show where we have to focus more to increase business and sales of company.

Source: This data is taken from Dhar Brothers.

Horizontal Axis: Months

Vertical Axis: Number of copies

The data shown in the graph is the number of copies that have been taken on the vertical axis and month has been taken in the horizontal axis.

As we can see from the above graph that in all the Four months from January to April, the number of students coming in company from Calcutta university is more than any other university. And from the other university like Rabindra Bharthi is comparatively less than the Calcutta university, So our market Size is Rabindra bharathi and Vidyasagar University as well as B.Ecollege, Jadhvpur university .

The message which I want to clear with the help of this above graph is that, here in our company customers from Calcutta university is coming more than all other universities of Kolkata, so these universities are like the areas from where less business is coming except C.U., So company should take steps to increase business from these universities, by doing promotion ,make better relationship with guides of students.

Demand of services

Which services provided by Dhar Brothers is more in demand is easily understand by below graph-

Source: This data is taken from survey of customers and from Dhar Brothers past data.

The data collected is of the year 2011 from January to March.

From the above graph we can find out which product of the company is in more demand. As we can see in the graph hard binding is in more demand as compared to the other demand, so company should more focus on hard binding service to satisfied the needs and expectation of customers from Dhar Brothers Because this service is more in demand and as well as company should also focus on superiority of other services.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

• Various products/services being offered by Dhar Brothers.
• The kind of responses received during survey of customers.
• The form of activities which is effective from the point of view of Customer satisfaction and Swot analysis.
• To understand what kind of services and customization customers want.
• To understand the customer needs and expectation from company.
• Developing innovative methods of approaching the target group .

The survey conducted, would help in identifying the perception of a customer about services of company, which would further help in identifying the customer need and expectation and what kind of customization customer wants from company that in other words can say to provide value of money to customers .

The survey conducted would give insight regarding whether Dhar Brothers should increase the services for their customers and if yes then in what type of services.

Design of Questioner: Two types of questioner is used for survey in house and outhouse.

Design of inhouse questioner: In-house questioner is designed for survey of in-house customers at the time of delivery of their thesis binding, the parameter have been taken in this questioner by keeping in the mind that the facts these customer have already taken the service of company, the following parameters have taken, to measure the satisfaction level of customer and analysis of swot areas.

• Details of customers include name, university, area of thesis, contact number, email-id.
• From where customer came to know about company?
• How much customer satisfied with printing, paper binding and price with respect to quality, delivery service within 48hours?
• How much customer satisfied with service like, waiting time, Employee Behavior, Working environment?
• What is the strength of company, measurement is done on the basis of some point, for that I attached the questioner at end of project?
• What is the requirement of customer?
• At the end an open ended question to get the customers view to serve them better.

Design of outhouse questioner: Out house questioner is used for survey of PHD or research students in different universities of Kolkata, in this questioner points have taken by keeping in mind that these customer will use the service of company in future because the Dhar Brother has monopoly in the market regarding business of thesis binding, so by getting earlier the idea of expectation of customers and what type of service they are looking for , so the company will provide that service to customers in future, the point have taken in this questioner are as follows.

• Details of customers include name, university, area of thesis, contact number, email-id.
• University name from which the students belong to so that company can find out from which university maximum students will apply for the thesis binding.
• One question has been put in the questionnaire regarding the month for the thesis binding so that company can get to know their completion of project in advance and will try to capture by using the phone number to increase the sales of company.

Selection of sample size: For measuring customer satisfaction and Swot analyisis I have collected the data of 170 customers by using both in-house and outhouse customers. In this project we have considered only those people who are doing their research work either from PhD or their own research work like thesis on literature. (note: because of time constraint could not gather much ).

Data collection methods: Data will be collected by survey and interviewing of both in-house and out house customers. For in-house data collection surveying and interviewing of customers will do at the time of delivery of their thesis binding, so customer after checking their delivery can have the idea of quality of their binding and give us the proper response regarding their satisfaction level and other methods I m following to collect the data from our past customers by calling them on their contact no. or by the help of e-mail id and in survey of in-house customers I haven’t faced any problem. I have collected the data of 170 customers. And for the outhouse survey, my target was PHD students or students who are doing research in different universities of Kolkata , So by visiting in different Kolkata universities and interviewing these people , I have collected the data I had approached in following universities of Kolkata like Calcutta university . Rabindra Bharti , Jadhvpur university, Shibpur B.E college, WBUT etc.

Challenges faced in Out house Survey: Initially after visiting in Kolkata universities following problems have come in my path are as

• To enter inside universities and do the survey work.
• How to meet PHD students because there are no regular daily classes of PHD students.
• Sometimes Communication problem because here people mostly communicates in Bengali.
• To take permission from authorities to do survey work and to find out at what time I can meet with PHD students.

Strategies used to overcome these challenges:

• By using the
• Reference of college identity card and doing research for academic requirement , till know I have got success to meet with PHD department authorities in universities like Rabindra Bharti universities and Jadhvpur university.
• I m trying to get the record of students PHD departments o like contact number or email-id , so that I can contact them to collect data .
• From project guides and PHD authorities get the time when I can meet with these peoples.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

INITIAL findings

The various findings of from the information collected are

• Dhar Brothers only do binding of thesis of research work.
• By a comparative analysis of customers of different universities of Kolkata as well as from other states and cities, it can be understood that company has reasonable price with respect to overall quality and Dhar Brothers has monopoly in this thesis binding business no other such big player available in Kolkata for thesis biding.
• Company imports material for thesis binding like paper, cover page material from Netherland, so the focus of company is to provide best quality and service to our customers.
• Customers here comes from other states and cities also apart from Kolkata, like Darjeeling, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam etc., this shows that company has good Brand image , and known for superior quality and fast services.
• Company has efficient resources, adequate infrastructure and skilled labour and working environment to do the work.
• Customer appreciate the online order service of company and Home delivery to customers who are away from Kolkata or have some problems to come, this service will help customers to finish their work at time and cost effective also.
• Customers also appreciate the fast delivery service of company within 48 hours.
• Hard Binding service provided by company is more in demand.
• Dhar Brothers has good brand image in this business of thesis binding.

ANALYSIS

Data which have been collected through questionnaire from in-house and out house will be used for the analysis of data. As the data in the questionnaire contains various different parameters like quality price, delivery system, waiting time, location and others. These parameters will be used for the data analysis and found out the relation between the different parameters.

The target group for the survey is PHD students and those who do research work of age group normally more than 25 years of age.

Sample Size: 170

(Note : due to time constraint, sufficient amount of response from customers was not gathered)

Customers response how they come to know about Dhar Bothers:

Friends (Who have used service in past)-62%

Guide- 16%

Others-2%

Family members-12%

Internet-8%

Graph of customers response how they come to know about Dhar brothers.

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey jan.-april)

Above graph shows clear representation from which source number of customer comes here.

As we clearly understand from above data and graph Dhar Brothers required more methods of promotion to increase sales of their company because 62% customer come here are recommended by their friends, so company should do promotion in News papers, and Internet On major Research sites so during research of their work, Customer come to know about Dhar brothers, that will help company to boost their sales and by giving demonstration in education fares and in universities.

Customer Satisfaction Analysis

The parameters which I have taken to measure the customer satisfaction level are , printing quality, paper quality, binding quality , service within 48 hours, waiting time, adequate infrastructure, working environment price with respect to quality . It can be better understand by below graph.

Customer satisfaction on the basis of quality of material used for Thesis binding work.

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey ,jan-april)

As by analysis of above graph it is clearly visible that customer satisfaction level is very high, customers are highly satisfied by the material quality used for thesis purpose like paper, printing quality, Binding quality, so this is good sign for company. Paper quality 85% are highly satisfied and 15% are average satisfied there is not even one customer who is not satisfied Same is the case with printing and binding quality, from binding quality 80% are highly satisfied and 20% are average and from printing quality 77% are highly satisfied and 23% are average satisfied.

Customer satisfaction on the basis of services of company and proximity to location

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey, jan.-april)

From the above graph it is clearly visible the customer satisfaction level of services provided by company, customer satisfaction level is very high except some parameter like waiting time, Proximity of location. So company have to work on reduce the waiting time by increase human resource and more systems to provide fast service and other one proximity to location the company can do improve it by taking online demand and home delivery to customer because to open other branches in different location is not feasible for company it requires lot of resources and wealth. And overall if we focus customers are highly satisfied. This shows that feasible steps which companies should take to improve services and customer satisfaction level.

Customers satisfaction level regarding overall quality with respect to price

Customer’s satisfaction level regarding overall quality with respect to price is given below with the help of graph.

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey from January to april)

From the above graph it is clearly understandable that only 10% customer is very low satisfied with price of Dhar Brothers and 90% are satisfied with price of company with respect to quality out of which 62% customers are highly satisfied and 28 % are average satisfied, so overall customers are satisfied with price, company should not bothered much about those 10% low satisfied customers. Company’s main focus should on 90% of customers.

From the above three graph used on the basis different parameters it is cleared that customers are satisfied except some parameters like waiting time and proximity to location.

The data have taken in all the graphs are of four months January to April.

Analysis of what was the requirement of customers

The parameters we used for analysis of requirements of customers are services provided by company like

Formatting, Printing, Binding

Printing, Binding

Copier and Binding

Only Binding

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey from January to april)

It would be understand from the above graph, what percentage of customers taken which category of service, company focus is that every customer should take our first category of services formatting, printing, binding it would give more profit to company but after collection of data and survey of customers it have been found that those customers who have not good knowledge of formatting only those customers taken this service and those who can do formatting done by self to save cost.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths:

• Company has monopoly in market in the business of thesis binding.
• Company has adequate infrastructure and machinery.
• Company has skilled labour to provide superior quality services.
• Working environment of Dhar brothers is favourable for customers.
• Dhar Brothers is very cost effective for thesis binding with respect to quality.
• Online Delivery system and on time delivery.
• Delivery service within 48 hours.
• Imported material from Netherland used for the purpose of to provide good quality to customers.

Strength of Dhar Brothers according to response of customer during survey and collection of data can be understood with the help of below graph.

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey from January to april)

From the above graph strengths of of Dhar Brothers easily understood on the basis of different parameters like delivery service 91% customer responds, it is a high strength of company and 9% responds it is average strength of company same with other parameters cost effective, infrastructure, employee behaviour and quality can be easily analysed by the help of above graph.

Weakness:

• Waiting time is high according to customers.
• On Companies website doesn't have information regarding prices of different categories of binding.
• On companies website there is no information of delivery time.
• Home delivery
• Proximity to location according to some customers
• According to some customers company should have Hindi communicator as well for those who can't understand Bengali or English.
• Limited Man power
• Requires more machines, space, and human resources.

Opportunities:

• Company should do more promotion in nearby cities or states and in Kolkata to increase awareness about Dhar brothers because mainly customers come to know about Dhar brothers from friends and family, and to cover the untapped are and increase sales.
• Company should do promotion on internet to increase sales.
• Company should start home delivery service.
• Company should expand business because market rate is increasing every year as I mentioned above, so you Dhar Brothers should expand their working space.
• Company should target that universities from where less students are coming by help of promotions as I discussed above it can be understand by below graph of number of students from different universities that shows number of customers from different universities in 2011 from January to April.

(Source: This graph is drawn on the basis data collected by customers during survey jan.-april)

Vertical axis: No. of copies

Horizontal axis: Months

From the above graph point which I want to clear that here in Dhar Brothers more customers are coming from CU, Then followed by Jadhvpur University but less students are coming from other universities of Kolkata. Some are mentioned in graph so company opportunity is to target these universities from where less students are coming, by doing promotion to increase awareness about Dhar Brothers and by demonstration Quality work in these universities to increase sells and by making relationship with guides of students.

Threats:

During my entire project and also by discussing with faculty guide I haven't found any threats.

Conclusions

• Customers are highly satisfied by quality of material used for thesis and services provided by company
• Growth rate of Dhar Brothers is increasing every year.
• Dhar Brother has monopoly in this thesis binding business.
• Dhar brother is known for their services.
• Charges of company are reasonable.
• Company has adequate infrastructure but as market is increasing so Dhar Brothers should update their infrastructure required more space in future.
• Dhar Brothers has skilled labour.
• Dhar Brothers should increase manpower to reduce waiting time.
• Dhar Brothers delivery service within 48 hours and online order and courier facility to customers, those are away is appreciated by every customer.
• Dhar Brothers should Update their companies' website and provide every information regarding price, Deliver etc.
• Dhar brothers should do promotion to captured untapped universities of Kolkata or nearby states.
• Working environment of Dhar Brothers is appreciated by customers.
• Dhar Brother has good brand image in thesis binding business.
• Dhar brother is known for its on time delivery services