Amusement Park of Bangladesh

Chapter: 1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction:

Tourism is considered as the world’s largest and rapid growing industry of modern business world. It has a vital influence on economic development of any country. Bangladesh is full of natural attractive places as well as artificially constructed tourism places. Along with natural beauties, artificial establishments like amusement parks have great impacts on tourism of Bangladesh.

Amusement park can be best described as artificially created park that is designed and developed for the sole purpose of offering visitors entertainment and new experiences. It is the more generic term for a collection of amusement rides and other entertainment attractions. Amusement parks differ from circuses, carnivals, and world's fairs in those amusement parks are located permanently and they remain open either all year or seasonally every year.

Though the amusement park concept is new in Bangladesh, gradually it is gaining popularity like Western, European and other developed Asian countries. The first amusement park of Bangladesh is recorded to be “Shishu Park” established in 1979. Since then, over the years there has been the coming up of very notable high quality amusement parks in Bangladesh. At present, the total number of amusement parks in Bangladesh exceeds 50. There are endless economic aspects that are associated with the establishment of these parks apart from their notable influence on tourism.

In the era of modern and dynamic business functions, developing a proper marketing strategy is the most vital composition for any business. A good marketing strategy is the key factor by which a company can change its competitive position. While the basic tenets of consumer marketing are equally applicable to service marketing like amusement park, the composition of the amusement park market is uniquely different, as are the forces that affect their demand. Amusement park marketing managers must market their offerings in uniquely specialized and amusing ways to their tourist target customers while maintaining corporate objectives and profits. This amusement park industry has huge prospects if proper marketing plan and strategy can be built and implemented.

From the above discussion it is evident that proper utilization of an effective and efficient marketing strategy is a perquisite for success in this potential industry of amusement parks in Bangladesh. This topic is therefore worthy to research.

1.2 Origin of the report:

This report has been prepared as an integral part of the B.B.A program under the department of marketing from the Faculty of business studies, University of Dhaka. This report will definitely increase the knowledge of other students to know the amusement park industry of Dhaka City and the various aspects of marketing strategies in the amusement park industry.

1.3 Objective of the study:

The main purpose of the study is to understand the marketing practices of amusement park in Bangladesh. However in the light of main objective, specific objectives are as follows:

1. To know the integration of marketing mix in amusement park industry.
2. To know the market segmentation strategy of amusement park industry.
3. To identify the target audiences of amusement parks.
4. To discover the positioning strategy and value propositions of amusement park industry
5. To discover the communication strategy of amusement park industry.
6. To know the use and selection of advertising media in amusement park industry.
7. To draw some recommendations.  

1.4 Scope of the study:

The scope of this study is to measure the marketing practices and strategies of amusement park industry in Bangladesh. This study provides the basic overview of amusement park industry in Bangladesh.. This report covers all the aspects of a formal standard report. This report includes proper introduction, literature review, use of proper methodology, analysis of the findings and some recommendations regarding the findings.

1.5 Limitations of the study:

Despite the sincere activity of the researcher, every research project may face some limitations. The study may contain the following shortcomings:

1. The major limitation of this study is lack of clarification in many aspects of the organizational part as well as in the industry analysis part.
2. The data collection was complex because relevant data sources are hard to find out.
3. Time constraints. It was hard for me to complete this study within a very short period of time.
4. Also I had to take a sample of few respondents as in case of broader prospect it would have been too much costly and time consuming.

Chapter: 2

Literature Review

An overview of Amusement Park Industry:

Many developing countries have managed to increase their economic performance `through development of tourism sector (Taylor, 2001).The tourism industry is no doubt a large part of most national economies and it increasingly viewed as an important tool in promoting economic growth (Foot, 2002).

Tourists of modern days increasingly search for calmness, authenticity and soft tourism experiences. (Goulding, 2000).But, side by side of recognized and acknowledged attractions; tourists also search for multi optional offers and experiences, which are delivered in an exciting but also very comfortable atmosphere. So the tourism supply side is faced with new challenges. (Reiter, 2004).

In Sworbrooke’s (1995) classification of tourist attractions, among the four groups of tourist traps, we come across the category referred to as “places designed and built from scratch.” This is an example of an attraction belonging to the group called amusement park. Especially within mature markets, amusement parks in its various forms have been viewed as central means to fulfill new leisure and tourism trends. They offer more quality for less, they are safe and clean, their offers are multi-optional and time-saving as well as emotional and sense giving and their visitation also meets the needs of soft individualism (Bieger, 2002).

According to Camp (1997) ‘An amusement park can be defined as being an outdoor attraction which combines rides, attractions and shows and as being charging a admission fee to visitors’.  According to P.L. Pearce (Jafari J. 2000) “amusement parks are capital-intensive, highly developed, independent recreational areas which invariably charge an entrance fee from visitors. Entertainment, rides, special catering and amusement facilities are usually concentrated around parks or similar thematic complex that indicates to a particular period of history or to exceptional geographical features of the area. But Liu (2002) defined amusement park giving more importance on climate and style. He argued “With specific atmosphere built inside, amusement park is a park in which consumers are deeply influenced by factors such as climate and tourist styles”.