bKash and its Brand Positioning
bKash, a joint venture
between Branc bank ltd, Bangladesh, and Money in Motion LLC, USA, is a
full-scale mobile phone based payment switch in Bangladesh.
bKash is a very
powerful brand in terms of educating its customers, their emotional, favorable
attachment with the brand and user friendly experience with the overall service.
bkash is a brand with customer-based brand-equity as its investment is
thoroughly focused on improving service quality for customers and has
successfully made them aware of and familiar with the brand. It occupies a very
distinctive place in the minds of the customers and this is why most people now
say ‘bkash it’ instead of ‘send money through a mobile financing service’. The
mission of bkash is to ensure access to a broader range of financial services for
the people of Bangladesh and it has a special focus to serve the low income
masses of the country to achieve broader financial inclusion through services
that are convenient, affordable and reliable. It positioned itself through
promoting its service benefits and creating values and beliefs among its target
market. bkash geographically, socio economically and behaviorally segmented the
market in terms of customers’ location, income, occupation, user rate and
involvement. As bkash’s target market includes rural and low income people who
are in dire and regular need of exchanging money from one place to another but
were primarily not interested in mobile banking, it has successfully educated and
introduced them to all the benefits they can receive through their proper
branding strategy. There are many competitors playing in the market for
example- Mcash, Ucash, Mobicash, DBBL mobile banking etc. The Points of Parity
here are- customers spend the same amount for all service providers. But the
Points of Differences are huge and bKash’s brand positioning wins here because
of its more desirability, fast and secure service, and nationwide availability compared
to others. In its branding strategy, bkash emotionally attached people with the
brand based on trust, reliability, friendship, happiness, protection, family
bonds with the service. bKash uses all sorts of promotional tools for its
branding and uses general people from its target market to better connect with
them. It has redefined customer-provider relationship and so there is hardly
any potential customer in Bangladesh who does not know about bKash. The Brand
Mantra of bKash - Brand function: being available everywhere with high quality,
fast and secure service, Descriptive modifier: target market is mostly rural,
lower income people and people who need to exchange money on a regular basis,
Emotional modifier: trustworthy, most reliable, friendly and happy service
experience.
As bkash is the market
leader in this industry, they should compete in an international scale and
focus on how international MFS companies are doing to satisfy their customers.
bKash should customize its service depending on its different market segments
as different segments have different types of need.
