Why did DOEL laptops fail in the market?

       
 Branding is very important for marketing and long-term sustainability of a company or organization. Branding doesn’t only help a business earn more profits but also prevents a business from getting effected by negative publicity. Therefore it is vital for any business to give a lot of importance or special attention to build its brand in such a way so that it doesn’t get hit hard when there is negative news surrounding it.

By the name of our national bird Doel, Bangladesh Telephone Shilpo Songstha (TESIS) has assembled Doel laptops with ever low cost prices. This is the first time for Bangladesh assembling laptops. The laptops are assembled bt TESIS with the consultation of Malaysia Thima Film Transistor (TFT). The main objective of TESIS is to hand over these laptops at a very lower price compared to different brands in the market. But this wasn’t easy as different brands like HP, Acer, Lenovo, Dell etc has established their brands in Bangladesh so well that it became very difficult for Doel to manipulate them.

Initially Doel Lauched four different models in the market which are:

DOEL Primary

Price: TK 10000

DOEL Basic

 Price: TK 13500

DOEL Standard

Price: TK 22000

DOEL Advanced

Price: TK 26000

The laptops above have POPs with different laptop brand but don't have a single POD which might help it establish a good positioning int he minds of its potential customers for which the brand has failed to establish itself in the market. There are many reasons for its failure but the main reason is its ineffective IMC campaign resulting from the lack of professional marketing people. Since it was launched in the market, there were not enough significant amount of advertisements or other IMC tools being used properly for which it failed to make its potential customers aware of the brand and also failed to provide enough knowledge to its customers. Apart from bad marketing strategies, poor quality including poor battery backup is also responsible for its failure.
In my opinion, DOEL laptops should think about repositioning the brand using the repositioning guidlines where they should try to establish POD which might give them an upper hand. Since the brand is providing laptops at a reasonable price,it should consider the Hierarchy of effects model for which it has to set up SMART objectives or IMC tools specific objectives such as creating 80% awareness using advertisements and PR within the next 4 months, etc. the company should also hire good marketing professionals who can not only build a good IMC campaign but also execute it effectively to have an effective customers response process.

References:

1. Bangladeshi Laptop named Doel in the open Market for its Marketing. (2012, June 21). Retrieved from News24CA.com: http://news24ca.com/bangladeshi-laptop-named-doel-in-the-open-market-for-its-marketing

2. Huda, S. (2014, February 01). Several causes behind Doel laptops failure to click. Retrieved from The Financial Express: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2014/02/01/16542/print