Research Reports on Consumer Taste and

Preferences: Set Top Box Installation

The direct home to home (DTH) TV sector in India continues to expand rapidly,
attracting large investments from new and existing players over past few years and
is showing no signs of slowing down due to economic recession. The DTH market
which began commercial operations in 2003 has been able to acquire over 12
million subscribers during the past six years.
As per " Indian DTH market forecast to 2012", the number of DTH subscribers are
forecasted to grow at a CAGR of around 25% during 2009-2012. Currently , the
Indian DTH market is being served by the five private players , Dish TV, Tata Sky,
Sun Direct, Big TV and Airtel Digital TV. Given the superior quality of DTH services in
terms of viewing and interactivity, the number of DTH subscribers has been soaring.
However, the current number of DTH subscribers constitutes only a meager
population of the total number of TV households, indicating vast future growth
potential.
This research provides extensive research and rational analysis about the set top
box market in India. India is an important and growing market for set top box. By
2012 India's pay TV market is expected to reach 90 million subscribers. Though
imports constitute a major share of set top boxes, due to Government's incentives
to encourage Indian Companies to manufacture them, the demand for STB will
increase considerably. It can be estimated in the range of greater than 1.0 billion US
$ worth market for STB by 2012. The semi conductor Companies actively involved in
selling STB devices in Indian market are ST Microelectronics, national
Semiconductor, NXP and Broadcom. Tensilica is another fables firm with STB device
offerings.

The STM 5107 from ST Microelectronics is fully developed at ST's India design
centre. National Semiconductor has sold geode processor based STB solutions to
some key customers in India. Just few days back Bharti Airtel has selected Broad
Com's satellite Set Top Box system on a chip solutions to power its direct home to
home TV service. Therefore we can say that India's TV and consumer market is sure
to present some pleasant surprise opportunities to the semi conductor and other
electronic component Companies.
Objectives of the Project

The primary purpose of the research is to gain an insight on taste and the consumer
behaviour when it comes to an installation of Set Top Box. Through our research we
have tried to locate the specific qualities which the consumer prefer while going for

a DTH and set top box service. It can be said beyond any shadow of doubt that
price, quality and durability are the three main aspects which influences a consumer
while buying a product.

Amongst the 90 million expected subscribers in 2012 more than 50% buyers will
belong to a mediocre income level. So the aim of the research is to provide an
insight to the kind of service that can be provided at a minimum cost in order to
capture the more of the mediocre market. For this purpose we have designed the
questionaires in such a way so that it reflects the choices of the consumers not only
in terms of the kind of service they look forward to but also taking the price factor
into consideration as well. Moreover, the kind of research tool that we have utilized
in order to generate the results will yield the highly correlated factors which reveals
some specific consumer preferences. This in turn is helpful, in determining the
quality of service that can be provided and it provides a scope for further
improvement. As mentioned earlier repeatedly. Our basic aim is to gain an insight of
the consumer choices. It will also help in determining the prospective customers of
set top box in India. Hence there are two basic objectives of this study.

Locate the section of population that may be a potential customers for this Set
Top Box Service. b) Find out the causes (e.g. Socio-Economic, Psycological causes,
habits etc.) for which customer's interest about Set Top Box differs from individual to
individual.

Sources and Tools of Data Collection

Primary data: The data is gathered through a survey based research approach with
the help of a questionnaire. The respondents lie within the age of 22-51 years .
Questionaires have some pertinent advantage over some other types of surveys
which is why it was selected as a research tool. They are economical, do not require
as much effort as in verbal and telephone survey and often have standardized
answer to make it simple to compile data. It is also easy for the respondents to file
the questionnaire rather than think extensively and answer it in depth interview
questions.

Secondary Data: These sources are books, articles, various web sites and research
papers.

Sampling Techniques: Random sampling methods were used to collect the data as
the questionaires are distributed. The targeted respondents ranged from 22-51
years of age . Simple Random sampling is used because each individual is choosen
randomly and entirely by chance, such that each individual has the same probability
of being choosen at any stage during the sampling process, and each subset of kindividuals has the same probability of being choosen for the sample as any other
sub set of k individuals .

Sample Size: Regarding the sample size question, generally a sample of fewer than
50 observations would not factor analyze and preferably the sample size should be
100 and larger. For this reason we have taken 105 observations. As a general rule
the minimum is to have at least five times as many observations as the number of
variables to be analyzed, and the more acceptable sample size would have 10:1
ratio.

Scale used in Questionnaire: 15 different questions were asked in order to know the
respondents perception regarding various aspects which come into play while they
think about the DTH service. A FIVE POINT LIKERT SCALE was used and the
respondents were asked to rate where -2 represents strongly agree and 2
represents strongly disagree.

Data Analysis

The population of this study encompassed mostly students, the purpose to involve
students included to get an idea about the perception of the youth about the Set
Top Box in the Indian context. The result of surveying this population produced an
effective sample size of respondents.

In the assessment of 21 variables, which assess consumer perceptions and choices

about the entertainment media were measured in a five point likert scale in which
respondents were asked to indicate their perceptions. The respondents were asked
to fill a questionnaire mentioning the factors measuring their perception. In the
research respondents were intercepted and asked to participate in a survey.

Prospective customer : The communication company has several of ideas about who
are the potential customers for this service. They think that the highest potential is
among television viewers who own video recorders and rent video films. They think

that users of competitive services such as cable and DTH services might be
potential customers. But the company believes that people who prefer to go out to
the cinema or to the theatre are not good prospects and the customer must be
urban.

Video owners: The first step is to find out how many owners of video recorders there
are in the sample by running a frequency table, which is shown in Figure 1 . The
table shows that 105 questionnaire forms were entered. 64 respondents do not own
video recorders, which represents 61% of the total respondents. 40 respondents
own video recorders and are 38.1% of the respondents. 1 (or 0.9%) of the
respondents did not answer the question, so no data was entered. Without including
this 1 in the analysis of video ownership, the column labeled Valid Percent tells us
that about 61.5% do not own video recorders and about 38.5% do(approximately
one third of the population only).If management is right, and the sample does
represent the population, 38.5% represents a very low prospects for the company.