Stragtegic Management

Key Findings of Media exposure

From the research result, homosexual men are receptive to various media channels. There is no outstanding evidence to support that any particular medium is the most preferred channel. For each medium, the detailed insights are as follow:

Television: Homosexual men usually watch TV program in the morning or at night. Those local channels are still popular among them because of it is free and reachable, while some people watch pay TV like UBC. For free TV, respondents are mostly mention the channel 3, 7, 9, ITV. The popular program types are news, soap opera, and variety show such as Samakom Chomdao, Tee Sib and so on.

Radio: The respondent show interest in listening to the trendy, soft listening and international stations. Their major favorite stations are FM 105, 105.5, 102.5, 95.5, 89.

Movie: From research, the respondents go for movie at the theater around 1-3 times per month, the preferred place is mostly up to convenience, for example near the office or home.

Newspaper: Mass newspapers especially those Thairath, Komchadluek, Bangkok Post and Matichon are the popular newspapers among the homosexual men

Magazine: when asked about favorite magazine, they usually read female magazine on a frequent basis; the favorite magazine are Image, Elle, Dichan, Lips, Cleo. This is partly contributed from the fact that there is no particular gay specific Thai magazine here and those imported guy magazines like Attitude, Gaytimes are charged at really expensive prices; and also the fashion set in those magazines sometimes focus on the sexy look of guy models.

Internet: Most of respondent are heavy user of internet. They surf the internet daily for chatting, checking mail, browsing web board, searching information, and last but not least visiting gay-related website.

Opportunities

* Serving untapped rising customer groups

Apart from Bond masculine wash, there exist no other masculine wash brands marketing directly to either men or gay segments. These segments are large and growing as men are more interested in their appearances partly supporting by trend of metrosexuality. Potentially, Bond masculine are going to be more sensible products that consumers are willing to buy than the feminine wash. Since it can serve both physical (functional) and emotional needs better. Men and women are different in term of physical, for example, the skin types are different as they have totally different levels of Estrogen and Progesterone hormones ; this partly lead to different needs. For emotion, most of men are shy when they have to do shopping products in women's categories. Having icon men brand, this would serve their needs better.

For gay segment, this is truly attractive segment given their lifestyle and sexual behavior which we could employ strategies to increase usage frequency and occasion. Moreover, gay consumer is sometimes being regarded as DINKs-double income and no kids group. In other word, gays have a higher percentage of two-career couples than the straight population, and are less likely to have children. This demographic then translate into larger discretionary incomes to spend on personal care products.

From many researches, they illustrated that men consumers are less sensitive to price than women. Moreover, price sometimes is using as supporting factor to judge the credibility of products. In other word, product with low price mostly is perceived to be associated with inferior quality. Moreover, from our qualitative research, the preferred price ranges mentioned by interviewees mostly relative high, especially compared to existing feminine wash. With these consumer insights, it helps to justify why this market is interesting.

* Positive feedback to new ideas from end-users

From our qualitative research, there exist positive responses to masculine wash product. Most people are willing to try. Currently, some users of feminine wash are men. Bond could take this opportunity to exploit its know-how to develop and market product to get this group of consumer back. Since those established feminine wash brand are not only lack of some benefits men consumers sought but also still in early product life stage, the loyalty level to brand is still low then it is much more easily to switch men consumers to Bond.

Threats

* Powerful indirect competitors

Indirect competitors here defined as normal soap, shower cream and also feminine wash. It is