Client Name

Continental Biscuits Limited

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Ubedullah Khoso,Assistant Professor at Institute of Business Administration, Karachi

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Behavioural Studies

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

Endeavors of IBA School of Business Studies are classified into four broad thought leadership classifications:

1. Entrepreneurship and Innovation

2. Behavioral Studies

3. Investment Decision Making

4. Islamic Business and Finance

If we have to classify our ELP project in any of four, we will claim that our ELP project falls into the classification of behavioral studies. To know the rationale behind the classification, the reader should remind themselves that the project included the following:

1. Recommendations for the establishment of strong association of Candi with friendship among the age group of 18-25

2. Investigating and exploring the resonance of Candi’s slogan "Khaas Mithaas" with the sweetness that the friendship one cherishes adds to one's life

3. Generating insights into the attitude towards friendship of age group 18-25.

All these three areas fall into the domain of psychological investigation as these three areas of investigation were inquiry of the attitude, perception, and mental associations of the target audience. All these fall in the broad category of behavioral study. As human behavior is as much about physical aspects as it is about the intangible psychological aspects that lead to an action or, in fact, to the decision of no action.

Moreover, to support our claim, the substantial chunk of questions in our focus groups, interviews and surveys were the exploration of the attitudes, perceptions, and mental associations. Further, most of our insights were of the behavioral nature.

So, despite the fact that our project, to classify it into the corporate departments, falls into the marketing function, but to deliver on that marketing task we had to choose the route of behavioral studies to scrutinize the factors affecting the marketing decisions.

The major implication of our project for our chosen classification will be that the rich insights we generated through our behavioral studies will encourage future investigators of marketing-related topics to include in their tools of research behavioral studies and give it at least as much importance, if not more, as the other types and modes of investigation.

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

Aligned SDGs Justification

As the world at large is realizing at an increasing pace that corporations have a responsibility towards the societies they operate in and that they should have some aims other than bottom line, top line growths, and increasing shareholder value, we also tried to incorporate these values and attitudes in our ELP project to make this project more meaningful.

To do so, we tried to connect our project with the Sustainable Development Goals. There are 17 goals in total1, out of which the link is made with two of the Sustainable Development Goals. They are:

1. Good Health and Well Being: It is with this admittance that not every food can be of highest nutritional value and biscuits, generally speaking, cannot be included in the category of foods providing highest nutritional value, we still connect our ELP with this goal because Candi is still a product in food category that is not harmful and not a product that causes the degeneration of health. While, at the same time it provides a good amount of energy and with its good taste provides a psychological uplift promoting the well-being of the individual consuming it.

So due to these reasons we believe that our ELP project relates to the “Good Health and Well Being” of the Sustainable Development Goal.

2. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: The aim of this goal is to encourage peaceful, inclusive communities, ensure equal access to justice, and establish transparent, accountable and representative institutions to support sustainable development.

Now, as one can see that the goal is too ambitious for one organization, let alone one brand. However, if we just take the first two parts, “to encourage peaceful communities” that is something that the brand of our project’s focus Candi is engaged in.

Since Candi is about friendship, which is a form of human companionship and human bonding. So Candi, through its brand, is reminding people of friendship, is encouraging people to develop friendships and most importantly to maintain those friendships. And since already explained that friendship is a form of human bonding, so effectively Candi is encouraging human bonding.

The authors of this report believe that the more individuals in a society believe in forming human connections, human bonds, and the more individuals believe in considering those bonds special, making it of paramount importance to maintain them, the more the society will be peaceful and inclusive in nature. Friendships tear down the differences and stereotypes that foster hatred and distances in the communities. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

So knowing a person better is development of friendship and friendship as argued above leads to more peace and inclusion in communities. As our brand and strategy fulfills the partial criteria of the goal of peace, justice and strong Institutions, therefore we relate our ELP project with this Sustainable Development Goal.

NDA

No

Abstract

Towards the end of January, a project, by the name of Experiential Learning Project was undertaken at the Continental Biscuits Pakistan (CBL), one of the leading players in the Pakistani confectionary business. The project’s scope was the Candi Brand of CBL. The main objective of this project was to devise a strategy that enables the resonance of Candì with friendship while at the same time increasing the love youth has for the Candì brand.

Along with the main task of devising a strategy for establishing Candì’s resonance with friendship amongst youth, the supplementary tasks to aid in the main task were exploring the attitudes towards friendship of the target audience, exploring the association of slogan “Khaas Mithas” with the sweetness of friendship, and the attitude towards its product attributes. All these led to rich insights helping in the main task. The research design encompassed qualitative research (focus groups and interviews) as well as the quantitative research (survey forms).

The findings due to this research were various but the major ones included the discovery that Candì has a very loyal customer base. Candì’s brand association with friendship is almost non-existent but at the same time Candì’s brand association with its product features of sweetness and crunchiness is very strong. Based on these insights, we were able to come up with a new strategy that will foster the Candi’s association with friendship – the main goal of this project. The strategy, to put it as simply as possible, is to explicitly link the product features of Candi with the friendship in branded communication and advertisements.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

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