ARS - 2006
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/164
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Item Future prospects of value added tea sector of Sri Lanka: comparative study,(University of Kelaniya, 2006) Wanninayake, W.M.C.B.; Dissanayake, D.M.R.Sri Lanka has been position in the world as one of leading tea manufactures and it has more than 100 years of experience for Sri Lankan tea industry. The world tea market has been rapidly growing with newly emerging customer needs. Specially it could be identified that the relative importance of unbranded (basic) tea consumption is being decreased among those high end segments all over the world. Although Sri Lankan tea industry had been mainly focused on bulk tea from the beginning now, Sri Lankan tea sector is being diversified into value added trends with some value added strategies in terms of new product levels, value features, branding and packaging too. But again, the major international tea competitors such as Kenya, China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Argentina are also aggressively following those value added strategies to penetrate and capture the potential markets. With this background Sri Lankan value added tea sector has to scan the existing and potential competitive forces to develop effective competitive strategies for having sustainable marketing results. Here, this research focuses on identifying the present competitive situation of Sri Lankan value added tea sector compared to international competition and further it discusses the existing strategies followed by this sector in terms of international brand development. The research has been broadly based on secondary data published by Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Tea board, web site published articles, journals and news papers. Further some primary data has been collected through unstructured personal interviews. Finally researchers have found following major findings. The relative importance of value added tea in Sri Lankan tea industry has been growing tremendously. It has achieved relatively higher net gain by Sri Lankan value added tea than other competitive countries. Sri Lankan tea sector is following tea import strategy and re-export them with added values successfully. The overall brand development in Sri Lankan tea industry should be further developed so that it can acquire a higher competitive share. Here the researchers have concluded some recommendations for competitive development in Sri Lankan value added tea sectorItem Effect of perceived risk and context on consumer inferencing about missing information(University of Kelaniya, 2006) Weerasiri, R.A.S.; Dissanayake, D.M.R.Consumers adopt different strategies for evaluation of a brand when information regarding an attribute is not available. One of those inferencing strategies is consumers’ inference or ‘Construct’ the values for missing attributes and evaluate the brand. Past studies have shown that inferencing has significant effect on likelihood of purchase of a brand. However, determination of the proportion of consumers who adopt inferencing strategy has received less attention. Simmons and Lynch (1991) attempted this and found that inferencing occurred only in 13-19 percent of the cases. They measured incidence of inferencing by asking respondents to describe their thought process during the evaluation and identifying those who had mentioned the word infer in their description of the process. Since inferencing is a cognitive process, such elicitation of the process is likely to result in under reporting. There has been no other study to corroborate the above findings. The present study attempted to measure inferencing using indirect methods. The study also examined influence of consumers perception of risk associated with a choice and the composition of the set of brands available to the consumer at the time of evaluation on inferencing. Respondents were classified into those who inferred and those who did not, by comparing their overall evaluations of brands with overall evaluations of the same brands by respondents in control conditions. The composition of the set of brands presented to the respondents was manipulated varying the number of brands with complete and incomplete information. Different purposes of buying were used proxy for different levels of perceived risk. Data from 200 respondents in Gampaha district were analyzed using ANOVA. The major findings of this study are: i. Inferencing occurred in about one third of the cases, far more than previously reported. ii. It was found that respondents were not risk averse while making and inference. This is in contrast to the normal tendency of people to be risk averse. iii. The composition of the set of brands available to the respondent at the time of evaluation had influence on inferred value and probability of making an inference. As inferencing is a spontaneous cognitive process and influences consumer’s evaluation of brands, it is absolutely vital for marketers to understand the phenomena. The findings of the study would provide marketers a better understanding about inferencing. It has the potential to help them in formulating their communication strategy and in designing advertisements in a comparative format.