INTERNATIONAL MARKETING

ASSIGNMENT

GROUP 6

NIRVANA SHRESTHA

SAFAL TULSYAN

HISIHLA TAMRAKAR

YUZEN AMATYA
Introduction 5

SWOT ANALYSIS 5
Strengths – 5
Weakness- 6
Opportunities- 6
Threats – 6

Marketing Mix : 7p’s 7

Product: 7
Promotion: 7
Price: 7
Place: 7
Process: 7
People: 8
Physical Evidence: 8

Porter’s Five Forces with Blue Ocean Strategy. 8

• Threat of new entrants/exits 8
• .Bargaining power of buyers : 8
• Bargaining power of suppliers : 9
• Pressure from substitutes : 9
Pressure from existing competitors in the market 9
Blue ocean strategy 10

Marketing Strategy/ Strategic approach 10

The future 12

Introduction
Pathao began its journey as a delivery service back in 2015 with its armada of motorcycles. They
acted as a delivery service for a few E-Commerce Companies of Bangladesh. Afterward, in
2016, Pathao began bike-sharing services in mid-2016 and had effectively marked up more than
100,000 drivers and around 1 million users in March 2018 over the nation. In September 2018,
Pathao propelled its services in Nepal. Pathao is the primary Bangladeshi company to offer On-
demand Transport Sharing services abroad. On 3 December 2019, Pathao got to be the primary
major ride-sharing service providing company in Bangladesh to urge enrollment certificate from
the specialists in Bangladesh.

Pathao is the greatest and most prevalent ride-hailing service provider in Kathmandu, it is
among the fastest-growing tech new companies in Asia, devoted to creating ideal solutions for
the day by day transportation issues of the public and authoritatively begun on September 25,
2018, in Kathmandu.

Pathao Services right now gives ride-sharing, parcel, food delivery, and On-demand Transport
Sharing services in 3 major cities of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet, and in
Kathmandu of Nepal. Its food delivery services are as of now accessible in Dhaka Metropolitan
Districts and Chittagong Metro areas.

SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths –

· Have a positive brand image

· Affordability and trustworthy

· Can be easily be downloaded on smartphones and can reach massive people

· Quicker service provider in various field

· Promotional offers than other biking riding apps

· Strong tracking systems

Weakness-

· Fully dependent on App

· Advance Technology often creates more technical issues

· Not having strong customer service and helpline

· GPS hinders use for its customers & riders which demotivates customers to use its
services

· Many drivers may be disloyal towards pathao as its not a full-time job

Opportunities-

· Can Introduce the female riders and drivers to fill the gap in the market

· Increase its service matrix by providing a different way of services like reserved cars, vans
etc

· Can expand its services in a foreign market which has a low labor cost

· Can provide shipping services in the borderline of countries and expand their segments.

· Huge demand during office hours and mostly during off days weekends

Threats –

· No.of competitors arising in the market

· It charges competitive prices which results lower profits and growth is slower
· Security issues for the customers as well as riders

Marketing Mix : 7p’s

● Product:

Technological transportation product making it easy for people to commute from one
place to another and also send important packages in the time of emergencies from one
place to another. People can also use the app for ordering food at their doorstep.

● Promotion:

They tend to do personal promotion by offering vouchers for recommending their app to
other people and also promote the restaurants affiliated with their Pathao food. They keep
on creating various campaigns which provide customers with discounts.

● Price:

They follow cost leadership pricing as they are the market leader and constantly fight
with their competitors by providing various discount offers.

● Place:

They usually operate from their app rather than their website as it is easy for their
customers to use the app from anywhere rather than from the website, for now they have
limited their service in some of the major cities of Nepal.

● Process:

The operation process of Pathao is through their app rather than any other platforms as it
is easily accessible for customers in this technological world.
 ● People:

Pathao is mostly used by people who commute a lot and they also employ people with
verified driving licence and a bike, scooter or car. Their customers are from the age of 15
- 40 and they also manage to give good customer service. The customers have the right to
review their drivers to sustain a good customer service.

● Physical Evidence:

The physical evidence of Pathao are the stickers in the cars and helmets of the drivers
and also the outfit of the drivers as they don’t have any physical stores. The other
physical evidence they hold is the datas of the customers.

Porter’s Five Forces with Blue Ocean Strategy.

• Threat of new entrants/exits

The threat of new entrants is quite low as the market for the Patho rides is at its maturity level
with patho operating at maximum efficiency due to competition given to it by tootle.

But now as patho also has patho food, the threat of new entrants is still quite high as new online
food delivery services is an attractive market and few existing players in the market are not able
to cover the majority of the restaurants that exist in Nepal.

And for patho parcel the threat of new entrants is high but this being a niche market not many
new competitors are attracted towards it.
• .Bargaining power of buyers :

The bargaining power of buyers is moderate as for bike ride sharing only patho and tootle exist
in the market, so customers only has two choices if they want an affordable bike ride to
commute.

The bargaining power of buyers in the online food sector for patho food is quite high as
customers have a lot of options to choose from with Foodmandu being the market leader.

• Bargaining power of suppliers :

The bargaining power of suppliers for ride sharing is high as the market demand for economical
ride sharing is high and the supply is limited with only 2 suppliers existing in the market.

The bargaining power of suppliers for online food is moderate as most restaurants themselves
cannot afford to deliver food in distant areas but they already have lots of offers from online
food delivery service companies.

• Pressure from substitutes :

The core product of patho is the economical ride sharing on two wheelers that customers use to
commute. So the substitute for patho are the taxis/cabs and public transports.If someone takes a
taxi the prices are double compared to the bike ride that patho provides, and patho also has car
services. So the threat from Taxies is low in theory but when someone needs to commute with no
access to the internet, or are in emergency, or do not care about the prices, taxies are still opted
by medium upper class and upper class SECs. Public transportation is packed, uncomfortable but
extremely affordable as they have a fixed extremely low cost. So the overall Pressure from the
substitutes is low but considerable.

Pressure from existing competitors in the market

The pressure from existing competitors in the market is high in both the online food delivery
sector and ride sharing market.
Even though Pathou is the market leader in the ride sharing market,Tootle, its major competitor
has declared a price war. And the promotional efforts from both the companies are massive.Even
though Patho may win this price war as it has larger capital, both the company would suffer in
the short term.

For the online food delivery sector the Pressure from existing competitors is massive due to the
fact that older players have already affiliated with the majority of the restaurants. The brand
awareness of other players is stronger too.i.e. Customers hardly think of patho when they think
of food, foodmandu and bhojdeals have that head space for now.

● Blue ocean strategy

Blue ocean strategy is a non-zero sum game hence here no one really loses and the competition
is irrelevant. Pathao parcel is one of those product offerings as parcel deliveries within the city
with the help of the internet is a new service that no other companies offered before.

Before pathao and tootle, the demand for bike ride services did not exist as the customers did not
know about its existence, but today for the youth with internet access shared bike rides is the
most convenient way to travel. So Patho has indeed used blue ocean strategy as its core
product.i.e. Shared bike rides were an innovative differentiated product and the costs are almost
halved compared to the existing substitutes.

Marketing Strategy/ Strategic approach

Pathao since entering the Nepalese market in 2018 in an already established monopoly market
and swiftly gaining all the customer base from tootle is very impressive. So further let us discuss
some of the marketing strategies they used:
1. User experience: Pathao’s app has always been very user friendly and easy to use. The
connection between the user and rider has always been professional and smooth. Since it
has already established itself in Bangladesh and the market in Nepal is very similar to
that in bangladesh so there are less or non-existential bugs or lags while using the
application. The map/Gps on the app is very accurate and has multiple options to add
 permanent locations which makes it easier for the user to add in locations if they are a
regular user. I can confirm this because I used pathao everyday to go home from
university, which made me save so much time.

2. Promo codes/ offers: Promo codes and offers are pathao’s speciality! As soon as we login
to the app we get a Rs 50 off. On a daily basis it provides users with codes that give users
discount at hand which is what users want and are drawn towards and are more likely to
have a great word of mouth! Personally speaking I was a tootle user but one day a friend
recommended me pathao and I never went back to using tootle again. Due to this
discount model it resulted in people recommending others to join pathao which is a great
strategy on pathao’s part

3. Targeted Advertisements: This segment focuses on text and traditional advertising

segments. Pathao has been sending messages to their users as a reminder that they exist in
the market. Notifying users for promo codes, app updates, traffic updates and so on. This
helped pathao reach out to more and more people on an everyday basis and swiftly
shifted their customer base from tootle to pathao. Sponsorship has been another great
example of traditional marketing strategy of pathao.

4. Digital marketing: It was the first app in nepal to actively use facebook and instagram
advertising. As we all know, in this day digital marketing has been specializing on
targeted ads, to which I believe pathao has exploited its major benefits. What pathao did
is molding their offers to advertisements in digital marketing platforms. Also, they did
not just put offers for users but riders as well, so the rider that used tootle also
recommended pathao to others. Hence, digital marketing has exceptional marketing
powers and everyone should utilize it to the max.

5. Addition of four wheeler: Pathao has expanded to four wheelers drivers as cab drivers as
registered to it! As people tend to use the same product for different options, pathao
became the go to app for everyone. Not just that when people had to go somewhere the
 “keyword” in everyone's mouth became pathao gardim? Which became a go to statement
for people.

6. High employment: Pathao entered the market at the right time and the right place, where
the youths of Nepal were looking for various part time jobs options. They gave riders
various employer benefits which made them completely switch from tootle or at least
they started using both. This gave many youths an opportunity to earn extra money,
which was a great confidence booster for the youths.

The future
Pathao has been able to add online food delivery in the past using the same platform that it had
which consisted of thousands of registered riders who would give rides to customers all over the
Kathmandu valley, as pathao saw the market for online food delivery, the same set of riders also
started delivering food in the free time when there were no demands for rides. Now as the pathao
riders are growing in numbers every day, with riders getting more comfortable with the system,
the next big thing we see for pathao is a pathao community

So in the next 5-10 years, for pathao’s future, we see pathao making a community come together
as it has been successful in bringing people together in the present times! Pathao has already
started a change in the transportation for people, goods, and food. Similarly, it will start a new
era of Sharing; we believe “The Future is sharing”
So the idea is that pathao will have an app extension that would create a community that is
similar to social media apps such as Instagram and Facebook where people upload pictures of
products that they would like to lend/share. The button used to post a product will be called
“Pathaidim?” which translates to “Should I send it” in English. The act of sharing has
increased in our Nepali society after the devastating situation hit the world. This is what we as a
group sees pathao bringing in its future.
Also, we all have lots of things that we have but seldom use and just take up space at home, but
if those things could be shared it would turn back into an asset rather than the liability those
products have turned into.
For the future market analysis, currently, there is a website called hamrobazar which is used to
sell second-hand products but is hard to use as it is not a very user-friendly website and it is also
not reliable as you never know what you are buying and no one is credible for frauds. So the
patho community would be an indirect competitor to hamrobazar. Also the substitute of pathao
community is the existing social media apps where people can upload the pictures of what they
want to lend, but It is seen to be quite un-cool uploading the pictures of random things on social
media these days.

So if Pathao is able to implement this idea here successfully it can potentially apply the same
formula in other countries too.