The document discusses changes in consumer behavior in Bangladesh. It identifies several key behaviors that are changing: increased dependency on technology as people spend more time on mobile phones and social media; more flexibility and acceptance of diverse occupations as people pursue careers outside traditional fields; greater appeal of emotional messaging in advertising as consumers have less time for relationships; higher health consciousness as people aim to avoid diseases by living healthier lifestyles; and stronger brand loyalty influenced by emotional connections to brands. These changes reflect Bangladesh becoming more globalized and technologically connected, with consumers exposed to new ideas and options.

1.
BRAC University
Marketing Term Paper
On
“Consumer Behavior Change”

2.
Consumer Behavior Term Paper
On
“Consumer Behavior Change”
Submitted to:
Mr. Tahsan Rahman Khan
Senior Lecturer
BRAC Business School
BRAC University
Submitted by:
Raisa Tabassum
#13104124
Nadia Rahman
# 16104167
Rahul Sen
# 13104104
Sajid Ishtiaque
# 13104139
Date of Submission:
3rd April, 2016

3.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
On the very first note we will like to thank the Almighty to help us in completion of this paper.
It has been an honor to work with all those wonderful people who have contributed something of
theirs to this paper. There are certainly some special ones who cannot go without mention.
At first we express our gratitude and indebtedness to our respected faculty, Mr. Tahsan Rahman
Khan for his continuous guidance, important advice, encouragement and suggestion during the
preparation of this paper. Starting from deciding which company to consider for our paper till
evolving the contents to cover, he has been very encouraging of our creativity and always pushed
our thinking one step forward telling us always “I want to see how you all do it”. We also thank
her in advance for sparing her valuable time to read our paper.

4.
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
April 3, 2016
Tahsan Rahman Khan
Senior Lecturer
BRAC Business School
BRAC University.
Subject: Submission of term paper for completion of course.
Dear Sir,
With high reverence we want to state that we have finished our term paper on Consumer
Behavior and through the paper we analyzed how consumer behavior changes. While working
with the term paper, we gathered some valuable knowledge regarding how people behave and
how that can be related to marketing. It helped us in gaining a new point of view on the thought
process of people in practical life and how significantly it’s applied in the field. We did some
elaborate research and came up with sufficient resources to compile our term paper in a
comprehensive manner. This term paper is valuable and a necessity to complete our course
MKT421.
In this term paper, all the team members contributed equally with sheer hard work. We faced
some challenges in working as a team and to construct such a vast open end research to compile
this term paper but due to everyone's collective efforts we overcame them and tried to produce
this paper for you. It was a great opportunity given to us to experience the vibe of the marketing
world, and we will like to take this platform to thank you. To end, we would like you to kindly
accept our term paper and to acknowledge our devotion and efforts.
Thanking you in anticipation.
Yours Sincerely,
________________ ________________
Raisa Tabassum Nadia Rahman
_______________ _______________
Rahul Sen Sajid Ishtiaque

5.
Executive Summary
This paper is constructed on the basis of core consumer behavior aspects and analyzes how
consumer behavior changes over time. It focuses on the behavioral changes of the people of
Bangladesh in recent times and further examines how it can be related to the marketing process.
After conducting this study, we concluded that the main behaviors that are changing in present
time are the dependency on technology, preference in different occupations or occupational
changes, people becoming more health conscious and brand conscious, the people of our
country are easily targeted by emotions, the act of enjoying a buzz and lifestyle changes due to
acculturation. All these changes are very much significant in the marketing process, as
marketers can response to those changes and tailor the market according to the consumers’
updated needs to establish a successful marketing campaign.

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Table of Content
Chapter 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2
1.1 Origin of the Paper ........................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Objective of the Paper ...................................................................................................................... 2
1.3 Scope of the Paper ............................................................................................................................. 2
1.4 Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 3
1.5 Secondary sources ............................................................................................................................. 3
1.6 Limitations ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2.0 The Significant Behavior Changes in Our Country ............................................................... 4
2.1 Technology Dependency ................................................................................................................... 4
2.2 Occupational Changes ...................................................................................................................... 5
2.3 Emotional Appeal .............................................................................................................................. 6
2.4 Health Consciousness ........................................................................................................................ 7
2.5 Brand Consciousness ........................................................................................................................ 8
2.6 Buzz Marketing ............................................................................................................................... 10
2.7 Acculturation ................................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 3.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 13

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Chapter 1.0 Introduction
Bangladesh now is not like what it used to be a few decades ago. A lot of things have changed.
Along with that the attitudes and behavior of the people has changed as well. As the world is
becoming more globalized, people are being exposed to new things every day. They are learning
continuously and overtime that learning is bringing a change in their behavior and value system.
It is very crucial to understand those changes that are taking place in the society. This paper detects
some of the core changes that are occurring in the behavior of the people of our country and relates
it to the marketing concept and process.
1.1 Origin of the Paper
The report is originated to study and analyze the changes of consumer behavior and the response
in return. As part of BRAC University curriculum, this term paper was assigned by course
instructor Mr. Tahsan Khan, Senior Lecturer, BRAC University. The proposed report will be based
on this entity in terms of the above mentioned topic.
1.2 Objective of the Paper
The major objective of this report is to represent the views on changing behavior of the people of
our country. The following has been highlighted in the report:
 The behaviors that are changing in people in recent times
 How those changes are occurring
 How the changes can be related to the marketing process
1.3 Scope of the Paper
This report will provide detailed information on the process of consumer behavior and how it is
changing in Bangladesh. Descriptions based on the focus group surveys has been used to enrich
this report. It can be useful for explaining the consumer behavior process of a certain area.

8. 3
1.4 Methodology
The following methodology was followed throughout the study .The study is mostly based on
Secondary data sources and the analysis and opinions of the group members.
1.5 Secondary sources
 Unofficial survey
 Online information
 Other accredited relevant written materials in BRAC University Library
1.6 Limitations
The research that we conducted was a moderately complex project. We collected many
Secondary data and evaluated our own opinions. After all the compilation and evaluation we
concluded the results. However, while conducting the research we faced some difficulties and this
end report is subjected to some limitations. These are:
 Limited access to extensive information.
 Restricted from obtaining information on people outside our current city.
 No scientific or measurable proof of the results.

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Chapter 2.0 The Significant Behavior Changes in Our Country
2.1 Technology Dependency
As a human being, we always try to keep ourselves updated to the new world. We all know that
technology can keep us updated. As technology helped us to be advanced, we always tried to
attach with it. However, we are fully depended on technology because we spent most of our time
with mobile phones. Recent days, youths are not watching TV or reading newspaper. So what are
they doing? They basically depended on their hand devices like cell phone, Tab, iPod etc. To them
browsing on websites, using Facebook and YouTube is more convenient than watching TV. As a
result, people are losing interest on TV or Radio and focuses on Mobile phone. Five to eight years
back, watching TV shows together with the family was a practice. Now, this scenario is very rare
in every family. Researcher found that, worldwide 84% peoples say that they couldn’t go a single
day without their mobile phones in hand. We are addicted to mobile phones. Sometimes, mobile
phone is still in our hand for browsing while we are having our lunch or dinner. So, it creates sort
of addiction in our behavior.
In social bakers, we found that almost 87% people worldwide use Facebook through mobile
device. How this mobile addiction is changing our behavior? It makes us lazy because people do
not want to go outside for shopping, buying products when you have online delivery. People do
not want to meet each other when you have video call on your mobile. People do not talk with
each other that much because they are busy with their mobile phones. Nowadays, we do not need
any companion as we have cell phones to pass our times. Consequently, mobile phones are
consuming most of our valuable time by keeping us busy with browsing, gaming and YouTube.
The number of Facebook users and YouTube subscribers are also growing with the number of
online users. Recently, we want to create social awareness and protest against crime through
Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Youths are very much involves with these type of activity.
This is ultimately changing the behavior of the youth. Youths are tried to do social work and make
public to understand the recent issues of society. So, it brings some positive attitude among our
young generation.

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People considered mobile phone as a part of their body. If something wrong happened with their
mobile phones, they felt like they aren’t well. This is called extended self in marketing. So, people
consider it as an extended self because they believe this external objective as a part of their body.
That is why people are so attached with hand device and devoted in it.
Another thing is, whenever we are playing games on mobile, we concentrated on it and also it
increases our involvement with the game. After that, it takes us to flow state because of
involvement. We are so much involved that we don’t even notice surrounding things while playing.
People get the updated news and trolls on Facebook. They love to keep updated with the news
and also need a source of entertainment. Moreover, we often react through Facebook status or
sharing if something wrong happened to our society. So, if we think deeply, all the Facebook users
act like a member of normative group in Facebook and that’s why everyone always engage them
in Facebook. Everyone has a fear of deviance from this group and because of this they are very
much secured about their account.
In future, I think there will be no TVC because everyone has their eyeballs on social websites.
People will be more involved with mobile phones. Digital marketing have a huge scope in the
coming days. People will use Facebook or other social media as their media channel because
everyone has the power to write their opinion and corporate sector will use peoples profile as their
resume.
2.2 Occupational Changes
There was a time; whenever you ask someone what will you do in our life? People will come up
with three mainstream answers like Doctor, Engineer or Businessman because these are the most
prestigious occupation in our society. People do not like or respect other occupation. They believed
that if you choose anything unique, you wouldn’t be successful. Now, things are changing with
the mentality of peoples mind. Peoples are not care about what society would think or say.
Everyone has their own ideas now and everyone wants to execute it with their own style. For
instance, now someone wants to be fashion designer, graphics designer, photographer, YouTuber
etc. Peoples are changing their thought about occupation since they are independent enough to

11. 6
think their life. Now-a-days, many peoples are doing great in these sector and others are motivated
enough to do new things. As a result, students are more focused on brainstorming for new ideas
regarding occupation and our society also appreciated these ventures. It builds a positive attitude
in our behavior and parents also encouraged us in this. Few years ago, we were not getting the
support from the family to do new things because everyone involved in criticizing. Moreover,
Youths was not able to develop their critical thinking ability as they have a fear of what society
would say. However, peoples are now try to adept the new ideas to change the traditional thought
about occupation and create more scope for the youth. People started to response in new ventures.
This creates the positivity in our behavior. We are now listening new ideas and helping each other
to make it successful. Recently, young students are lagging behind. They are doing many things
like Online Business, Digital Marketing, online media, Media buying agency, production House
etc. These things make us confident about our career. We thought out of the box for our life.
In our society, there are created different types of needs like biogenic needs, psychogenic needs,
utilitarian needs and hedonic needs. So, whoever find out this needs which is not fulfilled by
anyone they try to solve it with a new ideas and that makes a new venture. It’s like more needs in
the market more ventures are waited to come in the market. In this way people started to think
about new occupation and it’s also changing our behavior.
We also do observational learning. When we found something new, we used them as a model and
try to observe them for learning. Suppose, someone is doing photography and others find interest
on it. So, they learned from them and established this occupation among us. In this way, new
occupation is grab the attention of opportunity seekers and they will apply it.
This change care about people’s value. It cares about what think, what they believe and what they
are trying to do. For example, someone wants to be a physician because he or she cares or
passionate about it. This change helped them to shaped their value or thoughts into reality.
2.3 Emotional Appeal
Consumers of Bangladesh response to emotional appeal positively. It has been seen that in past all
advertisement were using humor appeal to attract there target consumers. Now most of all
company is using emotional appeal mostly and little rational appeal.

12. 7
When consumer makes any decision they consider previous/related experience and values, these
emotions create preference that leads to the decision. Emotions are the primary reason why
consumer prefer brand name product. There are many products which are available in the market
with same ingredients with same or cheaper price but still consumer decide to pay more branded
product because these product repents emotion in consumer’s mind
People suffer from time poverty. They are so busy that they have little time for emotion. In past,
families used to be extended and the interaction between family members was frequent and they
had stronger emotional attachment. Nowadays nuclear family is more common and so interaction
has decreases along with emotional attach men.
Technology is a huge part of people’s life nowadays, they spend more time in social media. In past
people used spend free time with family and friend but now they keep busy in virtual interaction.
The element of emotion is missing from their life and that is why they are touched and empathize
with emotional appeal
For example we can see most of the advertisements are nowadays attracting there customers by
showing advertisement or doing campaign which are catching customers emotionally like
Grameen phone “Maa” commercial. GP associated their brand with mother. Mother has a special
place in everyone’s life and it’s connected to basic emotion. That commercial was very successful
because people were touched with the emotional appeal
GP “Alor Jatra” where they did the campaign on the memory of martyrs. People are emotionally
bonded with the liberation war. GP used that bondage to build brand loyalty and trust.
2.4 Health Consciousness
A decade ago consumer in Bangladesh used think that it’s good to live healthy but no they are
actually living healthy. Consumers are constantly looking for healthy food options which is why
a lot of consumer go to Agora, Meena Bazar, Shopno to get formalin free food. A few of them
who can afford it are bringing their groceries from foreign countries like Malaysia and Singapore
to have healthy food.

13. 8
Health consciousness has also caused a raise in the numbers of gyms and health centers in
Bangladesh. A decade ago there were a very few Gyms but now they are everywhere due to the
increasing number of people going to gyms for health purpose. Increasing number of people are
going for morning/evening walk.
People have been suffering from diabetes, heart diseases, kidney and liver diseases due to
cholesterol which is causes by eating unhealthy and junk food and so they have to have a healthy
lifestyle to survive these diseases. People around them want to avoid these diseases and in order
to do so they are becoming health conscious. This is duo to negative reinforcement; it means ding
something to avoid something. People are living healthy to avoid diseases.
For the last few years, the contamination of foods with formalin is a burning issue; gradually
people are coming to know how formalin is injurious to our health. The ingestion of formaldehyde
over a prolonged period can develop respiratory, digestive, cardiac and neurological problems,
along with cancer. People are looking for shops where they can buy formalin free foods. That’s
why increasing number of people are doing grocery shopping from superstore.
Marketers are coming up with diet food and diabetes food which has lesser calories. For example
Pran diet fat free milk.
We believe the people will continue this trend due to the fact that people are getting positive result.
As long as they there is positive result this health conscious trend will stay. It will cause increase
the number of superstore and low fat, low calories food brands.
2.5 Brand Consciousness
Brand is a phenomenon that becomes a part of our behavior now-a-days. To pace with this updated
world we tend to look forward to things that ranked high in social structure. Brand is one of the
major elements. Consumers are now seeking to have brands in every single way that is possible.
Five to ten years back, we cannot have this tendency towards brand as of now. People are now
more concern about brands. Specially, youths are the group of people that creates this brand
consciousness thing dynamic. With rapid growing technology and free trade helps lots of foreign
companies to enter into our market with their varieties of products which we desire to have.

14. 9
Bangladesh is emerging as one of the world’s great growth opportunities for companies with a
understanding of the country’s rising consumer class.
Youths are the large portion where the brands exhibit the most. They often tend to look towards
brands rather than the domestic alliances. For example: to buy a cell phone most of the consumers
tend to have the branded phone in our hand. Though, some of the domestic brands have made their
mark in the market. Still we want to have products which are globally appreciated. Similarly, in
case of fashion apparels brands do have the touch on our consumers mind. It is getting higher and
higher in our society. Now-a-days whenever we want to consume buy products we don’t just went
to the market and buy. We talk with our related group of people about the product, then compare
with the alternatives and finally buy the product. But most of the times references that comes from
the group that we have shared or from our researches it leads towards brands. Consumers are highly
loyal towards brands but they are also budget and quality conscious. More than 80 percent of our
consumers dictate brands as a top factor that influences their buying decisions. Price is often cited
as a second priority over quality. People are becoming greedy as this brand consciousness is rising.
More and more demand is making our lives product based and we tend to compare with others
about what we have and what don’t? However, brands are grabbing the consumers mind
intentionally or some are unintentionally.
People considered brand as their one of the major factor that indicates their social lifestyle. It is
the brands that differentiate them one from another. Brands have created a strong position inside
consumer’s mind which affects their buying behavior significantly. For example: photographers
are always looking forward to have either Nikon or Canon cameras for their professional work.
Even though there are brands beside these. Still they went for either Nikon or Canon because these
brands have already created a position in the consumers mind.
Another thing that can be related with the brand consciousness factor that is it arises from
observational learning of the certain changes in our society. Previously, we don’t have the
tendency to consider brands as a significant factor. But as we are moving and growing fast,
adopting the foreign culture we do take brand seriously. This change has not occurred over night.
We saw how others to maintain this change and then we accustomed it. With the increasing
technological advancement we are getting the opportunity to acculturate with the global world.
Facebook is one of the biggest sources from where we can get to know about lots of brands global

15. 10
as well as domestic. We share, comment, like and suggest people to have the better knowledge
about different brands. Most of our consumers develop their idea of brand consciousness through
Facebook. Social media impacts a lot in building a strong brand conscious market in our country.
In future, we assume there will be increasing brand consciousness among people. More of brands
will entering the market and competition will be high. People will be much more knowledgeable
towards brands and it will affect in their buying behavior a lot.
2.6 Buzz Marketing
Commercial/Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that is focused on maximizing the word
of mouth potential of a particular campaign or product, whether that is through conversations
among consumer’s family or friends or larger scale discussions on social media platforms. Now-
a-days people are more interested to give their responses to buzz marketing. From the early days
new firms without large marketing budgets have relied on buzz marketing techniques as it is
inexpensive. Buzz marketing is become a popular way to do marketing in our country.
Internet plays a big role in terms of making viral marketing more successful in our country. Most
of our consumers in our country have internet access. Specially, younger generations are the vast
users of internet. And other important thing to add which they are always tends to give responses
toward any negative events they watch over the internet mostly. Social media: Facebook is the
popular way of showing the interest or giving comment on something, sharing with the others is
becoming a regular day to day life routine. For example: recently we have seen the viral of
“Xunaeid” all over the internet. We do not know whether he did it intentionally or just to make
some fun out of it but his negative approach of marketing makes him popular overnight. Negative
marketing is always a better way to attract consumers in our country. It’s not that we do not seek
positivity but we are more interested towards negative surroundings. Another example can be add
like: Recent past there was a marketing campaign which has also gone viral. It was held in Jamuna
Future Park, where Salman Muqtadir one of the popular personality proposed an actor Sabila Noor
in front of everyone inside the mall. People perceive this event dramatically, later found out it was
a marketing campaign of the co. named WEDO. This campaign was also gone viral as expected.

16. 11
Negative word of mouth is the real play here in our Bangladeshi consumers mind. If firms can
create some kinds of buzz around these consumers, there is higher possibility to grab their attention
towards the firms.
We believe that this type of buzz marketing will be increasing as days passes. People love to watch
something that they can laugh at, share and comment and finally drive them to become end user
of that certain product. More of firms will be entering from globally and they will use this viral
marketing technique to create a mark on our consumers mind.
2.7 Acculturation
The behavior of the people of our country is changing gradually due to acculturation. Acculturation
means learning the value system and the behaviors of another culture. In this era of globalization,
and with the advancement of media and communication technology, the people of the world are
being exposed to the elements of different cultures. So, eventually they learn some of the elements
and the behavior pattern changes overtime. Now, Bangladesh is a country that is influenced by
many different cultures. Being a Muslim nation itself, the country follows most of the Islamic
norms and values which, to some extent, matches with the Middle East culture. Then, as our
country was a part of Pakistan before liberation, our culture holds some essence of that. Bangladesh
is hugely influenced by neighboring country India, with easy communication channel like trade
and media. Lastly, like every other country, our country is influenced by the dominating part of
the world, the western culture. These influences show up in various cultural aspects like fashion,
food, festivals etc.
The behavior changes can easily be observed through the fashion. In recent times there is a trend
of wearing hijabs. Especially in the urban areas, we see that females are shifting to wearing hijabs,
many doing so as a fashion statement. On the other hand, people are also getting more accustomed
to wearing western clothes. Casual wears like jeans, t-shirts were not this much prominent a few
decades ago, more in case of women. In the suburbs and rural sides of the country Indian and West
Bengal fashion takes over. For instance, special Indian kamizes named ‘Masakkali’, ‘Pakhi dress’
etc. were a big thing in the last few years.

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In case of food, various international cuisines are taking over the taste of regular, traditional food.
In the cities food like burger, pizza, pasta are pretty common. People are developing taste for
completely different types of food, like Japanese sushi, Mexican nachos, authentic Thai or
Chinese. In small town or suburbs popularity of fast food and Indian varieties are seen as well.
Peoples’ behavior is changing regarding the celebration of festivals. In recent times people are
more enthusiastic about celebrating festivals. Like, our own festival Pohela Boishakh or Bengali
New Year is now more vibrantly celebrated than it used to be quite some years back. Foreign
festivals like Halloween is now being celebrated in the urban areas of our country. Occasions like
Valentine’s Day or Mother’s day are also celebrated ostentatiously.

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Chapter 3.0 Conclusion
So throughout the paper we discussed about consumer behavior and pin pointed some of the main
behavior patterns that are changing in the present time in Bangladesh. We also focused on why
these changes are taking place and what impact it is having, and can have in the future in our
community. Further, we talked about how these changes can be evaluated and incorporated in the
marketing process and how the marketing concepts can be applied in this case to satisfy the
consumers. Focusing on these factors we, as marketers can understand the changing needs of our
consumers and tailor the marketing activities through new innovations to cater to those specific
needs.