BRAND IDENTITY CRISIS IN WESTECS LIMITED, BANGLADESH

CASE SYNOPSIS
This is a case that discussed about brand identity crisis in a leading retail fashion brand namely, Westecs Ltd. in Bangladesh. Westecs was established in 1990 in Dhaka city by some local entrepreneurs, under the private limited company act of Bangladesh. Westecs carried two categories of product lines; namely old stock lots from local garment manufacturers and the other one is their own brands. Despite the great initial acceptance by the retail customers, this retail brand started to go through a brand identity crisis after twenty years operated. The crisis started when Westecs started to offer its own exclusive brand in addition to the existing local export garment products. The initial idea of the management was to position Westecs own manufactured product as better quality and image compared with the existing product line. When it was introduced, the loyal and regular customers of Westecs started to interpret wrongly the advertisement and promotional messages of Westecs as its brand identity seemed, somewhat, confusing and out of the way to many of its customers. This case illustrated how the customers interpreted the brand identity of Westecs, in accordance to its purchased products and self created brands.

INTRODUCTION
Mr. Aziz was appointed as the retail management consultant at Westecs Ltd on 1st February2008. He had been given a responsibility to do process reengineering for the marketing department of this particular company since the company suffered from unexpected low sales performance of its own manufactured products. It was discovered that Westecs Limited suffered from brand identity crisis. After been observing the current operation of Westecs Limited, Mr Aziz noticed that wrong perception of the brand by the customers became a critical issue in Westecs. Mr. Aziz believed that the publicity, promotion and advertisement for all of the product lines of the company were not properly done in a manner that it supposed to be. He was also recommended about the full scale implementation of the customer orientation programs in all the stores of the company to let the walk in customers know about the pros and cons of Westecss
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own products so that they could compare themselves between the existing offerings and make their choices. Once he started his work with the company, Mr. Aziz made frequent visits to most of the companys outlets in order to get a clear picture. Mr Aziz went to the store and met the customers. He found that customers were not confident about the product and service quality of Westecss own manufactured brand. They tend to confuse in identifying Westecss own manufactured products with the local export garment products and in many cases thought that the product lines from the local export garments as Westecss own lines. He also observed that customers were comparing the quality and price of Westecss products with their local garments inventories. After the initial survey Mr. Aziz had discussion with all senior officials of the company and decided to do some process re-engineering to strengthening Westecs own product brands over the local garments stock to give Westecs a distinct and unique competitive advantage.

ABOUT THE COMPANY In 1990 in a humble 8x16 feet garage in a very quiet residential street on road 138 in Gulshan, Dhaka, Westecs started its high street fashion journey guided by an unwavering desire to develop countrys first ever international brand. The initiative was taken by local Bangladeshi entrepreneurs. Initially when Westects started its operation, Westecs only focused on selling the unsold garments stock lots from different garment factories in Bangladesh, which are of very high quality as they had been made for international leading retailers from mostly European countries. These local manufacturers produced garment products for international retailers, to name a few such as Tommy Hieger, Gatt, Boss and Giacomo. The defect items that were not exported to the buyers were bought by Westects as its merchandises. These rejected products were marketed by Westects using their own original name but with much lower prices than the actual price. The rejected garment stock lots received high acceptance among consumers and Westects been marked by customers as a place that sell branded kind of products but with low prices. Few years later, Westects realized that since their name have got popularity among customers, then it is the right time now for them to start marketed their own brands. Then, Westecs introduced its own manufactured products using two distinct brands. These were Westecs Women and Westecs. These own brands were marketed with unique and distinct designs and features, at a little bit higher prices and they were marketed together with the existing garment stock lots. Today it stands out as the symbol of inspiration and entrepreneurial spirit. Westecs believed that customers are the most important visitors in their premises. They are not dependent on the company, the company depended on them. The company viewed the customers as financial assets, needed to be managed and maximized like any other assets.

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HOW THE CUSTOEMRS PERCEIVE THE MARKETING EFFORTS BY WESTECS Once Mr. Aziz joined the company, he started to experience numerous customer complaints from different outlets. Most of those issues centred on meeting the expectations by the day to day walk in customers. They started to raise different issues on the customer service, advertisement and product display of the brand. In some cases, the offerings made by the company were higher than the expectations, while in other cases they were lower then what the customers opted for. Mr. Aziz, as the retail management consultant, perceived the problems as customers inability to position the brand because of the mixed assortment of products from the two types of product lines. Mr. Aziz started to talk and get information from the walk in customers on a regular basis. He used to make trips from one outlet in the city to another, as a part of his day to day job description. He isolated a few issues in this matter. The outlets of Westecs had their products displayed in a very similar pattern and design. In the shelves and racks of the outlets both the stock lot products and the exclusive Westecs manufactured products were displayed together, based upon customers requirement and convenience. In doing this, the visual merchandisers of the company did not put enough care to separate both categories of product lines. The job responsibilities of handling the walk-in customers were given to the general sales staff of the outlets. Once a customer walked into any of the outlet of Westecs, they were informed, persuaded and offered both kinds of product lines with the same approach. And, these kinds of initiatives were not helping the customers to distinguish the product lines from each others. As the sales people were not well oriented and trained about the different features, advantages, strengths and weaknesses of the products very thoroughly, they could not present the products to the potential customers in a manner that could portray a strong brand preference among them. Again, many of the product categories that Westecs got from the stock lots of the garments factories were almost similar or very close to its self manufactured products. As a result, the customers had very little opportunity to distinguish between the two types of the products offered in the aspect of product types and categories. The common visual display measures also augmented this effect, among the minds of the customers on many occasions. In addition to that, the store layout and floor designs did not hold any strong pattern and ambience to separately distinguish the two types of products. When the customers took a walk through the vast displays of the Westecs product lines, sometimes it seemed that all the products were holding Westecss own in house branding, but in reality it was not. On the other hand, in another part of the outlet the opposite connotation took place in the minds of the customers. Once the customers finished their purchasing of Westecs product, they had to line up in the same counters for both the types of products with no separate counters for their change, alterations or replacing services. The same counter and cashier served all the customers and entertain the customers product and service related complaints and suggestions. By this, Westecs could not critically and effectively distinguish the problems coming out of their stock lot products and their own products. Mr. Aziz also observed that the same sale staff handling customer complaints and recording the suggestions by from all the customers. There was no way to determine and detect the issues raised by the customers who bought the stock lots as well as own products. This was not helping at all in categorizing the problems related to the stock lot or own brands.
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Mr. Aziz then made a quick tour around the city to find out about several advertisement tools of Westecs. He checked out many of the billboards, seasonal banners and wall displays of the company over a period of two weeks. He noticed that the messages in these promotional vehicles did not explicitly differentiated between the stock lot products and Westecs own items. Mr. Aziz also reviewed the companys last few years advertisement and surprisingly found out that all the newspaper and magazine advertisements were based upon an approach which clearly did not separate and pin point the product lines of the company. He found out that in the same graphical promotional message models were wearing both the types of products. By this there was enough ground for the audience to misunderstand the primary focus of the company, which is crucial for building brand image for a retail brand with product from versatile sources.

SOLUTION At the end of his in depth analysis Mr. Aziz determined his role as a retail management consultant. He decided to sit with the marketing and promotional teams of the company and shared with them his findings. He specifically identified few areas where the marketing team required putting immediate attention. The issues which the team needed to pay their attention were; 1. Identify the target audience for each line of products Westecs offered. 2. Design and develop all the promotional messages as well as the media based upon the product lines. 3. The retail outlets needed to re-arrange their shelves and display boards with each distinct line of products in the same manner and fashion. 4. In every store, there should be specifically designated retail sales staff whose sales specialization would be limited to the scope and boundary of the individual product lines. 5. Westecs should identify the common products from each type of products and discard the less acceptable and profitable products from their offerings. By this way it can cope with the cannibalization effect within companys own product lines. 6. In the end, Mr. Aziz recommended the company to made a strong stand on its Brand identity stance in portraying and presenting its brand identity as A unique fashion retail brand with unique and up street product lines for all walks of life.

Based on the information above, evaluate the effectiveness of the recommended branding practices by Mr. Aziz and and recommend any new solution (s) (if any) to the problem.

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