Wheat Flour Marketing in Bangladesh: a case study on packaged Atta, Maida and Semolina in two major City Corporations of Bangladesh

Abstract

Wheat flour is one of the most preferred cereal items of the world. This paper tries to identify demand supply gap of commonly consumed wheat flour like Atta, Maida and Semolina in two major city corporations of Bangladesh. The objectives of the research is to explore the demand supply gap, key players’ performance, their pricing and distribution strategy, SKU wise contribution to sales as well as consumers’ preferences to brands. This study is mostly in quantitative nature while some secondary information has also taken into consideration to estimate the market size. Study reveals that “Teer” brand is the market leader in Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) in all of the three flours whereas “Pusti” brand dominates Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) market in both Atta and Maida flour and brand “Horse” ahead in Semolina flour. Comparing with the sales performance of the most selling brand “Teer”, study shows that there is an approximately 5300 Metric Tons monthly demand supply gap in the market for all these three products. Interestingly, study unveils that DCC market is based on 2 kg SKU while CCC market completely based on 1 kg SKU. In case of Atta and Maida, selling of 1 kg SKU is comparatively more profitable than selling of 2 kg SKU. Both in DCC and CCC, retailers mainly purchase from distributors but in CCC, some retailers purchase their stocks from whole sellers. Both in DCC and CCC “Teer” is the most preferred brand.

Keywords: Wheat flour marketing, demand-supply gap, brand performance, pricing, distribution, consumer preference, Bangladesh