Bimeks Goes Catalog

BЭMEKS Goes Catalog

Bimeks is a Turkish Electronics retailer selling through its stores mainly in Istanbul and some other cities and through internet. Bimeks considers distributing and selling through a catalog to reach the potential demand from rural areas and underserved markets.

When I look at the website of Bimeks, I can see its store locations, such as in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Antalya. Therefore, except these cities in which Bimeks have stores, other cities in Turkey represent an underserved market for electronics. This market is really huge for Turkey, so we should divide it into small customer segments to reach every segment in more effective way.

I also looked at the website of TeknoSA, the main competitor of Bimeks, to find an appropriate customer segment to distribute our catalogs. TeknoSA has more stores than Bimeks around Turkey. I think people who can buy a lot of technological products. After that, I get an idea that young people are more willing to get these products, but Bimeks and TeknoSA reach many young people by its stores. Finally, EskiÑŽehir, a big city in terms of population density, comes into my mind as a target city, because both of the two companies don't have any stores in EskiÑŽehir. Also, young population of EskiÑŽehir is really huge, since there are two big universities, Anadolu University and Osmangazi University. EskiÑŽehir becomes a capital city of young people with 40.000 students.

After I designate target market, university students in EskiÑŽehir, I can examine the buying behavior of this market to find the right way of reaching them. Most of the university students are single, so they buy technological products in the direction of their self enjoyment.

According to BetÑŒl Khan, general manager of Millward Brown in Turkey, purchasing power and education level of people in Turkey is rapidly increasing and the consumer enter different searching in more rational way. Also, the competition in the technological market is increasing everyday, in terms of number of companies and sales channels in Turkey. Electronic goods are continual renewing, so companies like Bimeks should make consumer be aware of these changes.

When I come to the topic of variety of products in this market, the main product categories that attract Turkish young people are computers, home music and movie systems, mp3 players, digital cameras, and of course cellular phones. Television is also one of the most consuming products but university students don't give much importance in compare to families spending their whole nights in front of television. University students prefer products to become more social and popular in their friends environment. Therefore, they want to find fashionable, comfortable and flexible technological products.

A catalog that Bimeks wants to distribute should reach university students to attract their attention. By this way, they can buy products via internet, or many university students' hometowns are different from EskiÑŽehir, such as Ankara or Istanbul, so they go their hometowns on holidays and can go to the Bimeks stores to buy product that they liked from catalog. Bimeks should distribute these catalogs to the places that university students spend most of their times. Dormitories and houses that have high population density of university students should be the first place which Bimeks can easily distribute its catalogs. The other places can be cafes, university canteens or movie theaters.

The main advantages of catalogs