Course Information

Course Code: MKT621.2

Submitted By
Group 3:
Nushrat Jahan ID No: 2035381660
Sifat E Arman ID No: 2025239660
Aymaan Hossain ID No: 2025161660
Nishat Anika ID No: 2025343660
Irfan Qadir ID No: 2035029660

Submitted To
Instructor Name: Dr Sheikh Mohammed Rafiul Huque
Instructor Initials: Srf

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Table of Contents:

Serial No. Title Page No.

1 History and Background 2

2 Factors affecting the Case 3
3 Main Problems in the Case 5
4 Situations faced by the Decision Maker 6
5 Analysis in the light of Buyer Behavior 8
6 References 10

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History and Background:
Dhuaan N’ Dukhaan is an ecopreneurial chain of restaurants from Sargodha, Pakistan. This is a
green company, one that not only focuses on profits, but also on sustainable operations. The
company heavily contributes to charity and preaches its environmentally conservative practices
as lure for customers. The company active uses its ‘green’ image to set itself apart from the
competition.
The idea for Dhuaan N’ Dukhaan originated in the mind of Rana Waseem, a university professor
living in Sargodha, Pakistan. Sargodha, the City of Eagles, is Pakistan’s 12th largest city by
population and is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. (PAKISTAN: Provinces and
Major Cities, n.d.) However, being situated 1,200 km North of Karachi, and almost 200 km West
of Lahore, Sargodha is a somewhat isolated city, hosting a population of just 650,000. (Where Is
Sargodha, Pakistan?, n.d.) The majority of the population are simple, middle class people.
Before launching the business, Waseem taught entrepreneurship courses at a local university in
Sargodha. Instead of focusing on the traditional aspects of the subject, Waseem paid particular
attention to new developments in the field. He had become especially fascinated with the idea of
sustainable business development, a concept where businesses would cater the needs of the
present without compromising the limited resources available to them. This would allow future
generations to meet their own needs. This concept of sustainable entrepreneurship or
“ecoprenuership” had caught his imagination, he was hooked. However, at the time he had no
plans to pursue any independent business ventures of his own.
Waseem faced a regular problem in his day-to-day life. He could never find a good place to get
lunch from during office time. Hygienic, quality food was always too expensive, while cheaper
options were unhygienic and unhealthy. He disliked the food available at the university cafeteria
or local markets, and city traffic wouldn’t allow him to go home for lunch and come back in time
for work. This is when Waseem’s entrepreneurial instincts kicked in. He surveyed other
businesses and white collar folk in his city, most of whom agreed with him. Sensing the
opportunity for business, Waseem started planning for his own restaurant. Thus, Dhuaan N’
Dukhaan’s journey officially began.
After months of research and planning, in October of 2017, Waseem quit his job and launched
Dhuaan N’ Dukhaan. In the initial days, the company took lunch orders online via their own
mobile app and delivered food directly to offices. Waseem has financed the company with
limited family funds and used his own family members as employees. Even the cook was his
own brother, who had experience cooking large amounts of food abroad. He hired his MBA
students as interns to help with the business, he hired deliverymen who already owned
motorcycles to help deliver the food and even IT students from his university to help develop the
mobile app. These actions allowed Waseem to reduce the company expenses in the early days.
However, Waseem’s plans weren’t to just build another chain of restaurants in Sargodha.
Hundreds of those existed already. He wanted to build a green business, one that was
environmentally conscious and contributed back in a trifecta of ways: social, economic and
environmental. The company contributed socially by creating employment opportunities for poor
people and by contributing quality, hygienic and nutritious food at affordable prices. The
company also paired up with numerous NGOs to provide to charity. They took up innovative

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practices like reducing the sizes of their napkins, conserving water while cooking and cleaning,
and using environment friendly packaging in an attempt to contribute to the environment.
Waseem would face many challenges along the way, from displeased customers to heavy
competition from the market. But he was able to overcome all and keep going. The company
reached break-even within the first five months of operation and made a profit of 16 million PKR
in its first year. Waseem has now expanded his company into other cities of Pakistan and his
business continues to steadily keep growing.

Factors affecting the Case:

I. Internal Factors:
• The first and foremost internal factor, that drove the generation of this business idea, is
the constraint of the access to healthy and hygiene lunch, faced by Waseem, while he
used to work as a service holder. Waseem, had formed a clear picture of how he cater to
such needs of people
• After, the business idea was generated, Waseem found himself entangles in a dilemma
of the trade-off between maintaining a healthy bottom line-profits, or long-term
sustainability of the start-up. Since, his organization was new, reaching the break-even
point, required much time.
• As Kirkwood and Walton, 2010, asserted in their research that, according to an
ecopreneur like Waseem, the probability of choosing between the monetary gains and
business sustainalibility was 50%. That means, he had to choose the best strategy which
would optimize the two.
• In the execution of the final decision, Waseem opted for the sustainable business model,
whereby he will be consolidating social, economic and environmental factors that would
be leading towards the betterment of the society and alongside, will not pose as a conflict
to the business interest.
• Finally in order begin with, Waseem identified that the problem which he used to face,
while he had a job, is faced by numerous job holders. Thus, he decided to explore into
this target consumers first. Since he had faced the same problem before, he has a prior
involvement and a better understanding on how to solve this problem. Waseem’s
entrepreneurial spirit to solve a ‘problem’, propelled him to materialize his potential further
and better.
• The accumulation of seed capital, had surfaced to be a major challenge for Waseem,
since his target consumers were the middle-income people, hence charging a higher price
was not quite feasible. In a hypothetical scenario, if Waseem had the opportunity to charge
a little bit premium price, he would could’ve had earned slightly higher profits than usual.
Those extra profits subsequently would bring the opportunity to get reinvested for business
expansion and growth.
• In order to begin with, Waseem had the only option to kick-off his business with a single
product line, instead of a portfolio. Maintaining a portfolio of multiple dishes would expose

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 the venture to failure risk. Since they do not possess the expertise to introduce multiple
products (dishes) in their embryonic stage.
• Waseem exploited the opportunity to serve a niche target market consisting of White
Collar citizens, who do not have access to healthy and hygienic food in the proximity of
their workplace.
• In the initial stage, Waseem was using high-quality eco-friendly packaging, to promote
themselves as environmentally responsible firm. However, any decorative edge requires
money (Mckinsey, 2016). There was this internal risk of the operational costs to shoot up.
• In order to enhance the reachability and to resonate the story of Dhuan n Dhukaan,
Waseem initiated a Facebook page, whereby he is publicizing their efforts towards a
sustainable future. He used this social media tool, to retain the customers, even if he
raised the prices of the dishes in future. A research work on the evolving food delivery
business (Carsten Hirschberg et al 2016) revealed that online presence of food delivery
business crossed more than 30% in 2016. His Unique selling Point will be their eco-friendly
and sustainable way of doing business.
• Dhuan n Dhukaan, faced certain financial setbacks in recruiting experienced staff
members. As a result of which, they had to compromise a bit on the qualification of the
candidates. This is very alarming, as in the food industry, qualification of the chef, has a
direct link with the quality/taste of the dishes that are prepared. The employees were
entitle to Herzberg’s hygiene factors, such as good working conditions, better pay and
they were motivated as well.

II. External Factors:

• The work week routine was a major challenge which posed as a threat to the survival of
the business. Dhuan n Dhukaan received regular orders ranging from the count of 25 to
30 orders on a mean average per day. However on weekends, he hardly received any
order. This was raising a concern, as Dhuan n Dhukaan had incurred fixed costs on the
weekends as well, even if zero revenue is generated.
• In the macro-economic perspective of Pakistan, the citizens had more disposable income
due to the economic growth and development. As a result of which, they became more
health conscious. This external factor was a fantastic opportunity for Dhuan n Dhukaan to
seize, whereby they will be able to cater to the needs of the target consumer (Online Food
Delivery, 2018).
• The Pakistan consumers had a common behaviour, they demonstrated utmost loyalty to
a product or a brand, of the prices remained within their budget and constant. This kind of
behaviour is known as behavioral intention. Behavioral Intention means the tendency of
an individual or a buyer to subscribe to a certain good or a service (Venkatesh and Brown,
2001).
• Dhuan n Dhukaan incorporated the use of technology and smartphone application, into
their value delivery chain, as a channel partner. The smartphone application enhance the
convenience of the customers to avail the products of Dhuan n Dhukaan seamlessly. The
online food delivery services have a monumental impact on the advancement of the food
and beverage industry because of the latent potential of business growth, boosting
employee productivity, excelling at delivering order accuracy and building important
clientele database (Moriarty, 2016).

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 • The delivery force of Dhuan n Dhukaan consisted of an army of well-trained riders, who
had the primary motive to deliver food to the end user, in a law abiding manner. These
riders were clearly instructed not to breach any traffic rule while delivering food to the
customers in a timely fashion. Time Saving Orientation is a key driver to the business
growth of an organization operating in any service industry, as it entails future scope of
repetitive purchase and subscription (Yeo et al., 2017).
• The vision of Waseem had a good alignment with Sustainable Development Goal-12,
which promotes the production and consumption of food in a sustainable manner.
Discouraging any sort of wastage whatsoever.

Main Problems in the Case:

Let's talk about why and how he came up with the business strategy before we get into the
challenges he's had when running the business. He used to fail to find hygienic food at a
reasonable price before starting his own company. If the location was hygienic, the food would
be costly; if the location had less expensive food, the food would not be hygienic. After grappling
with all of these issues, he wanted to launch his own Eco-friendly, cloud-based kitchen where
he would sell hygienic goods at a lower cost.
Within a month of starting the company, he began to run into different issues. In the beginning,
he would receive 25-35 parcels a day, but no orders on weekends, but this gradually changed
as customers became more acquainted with the company. When they began receiving more
orders, however, they ran into issues with self-delivery. For most days, they would be stuck in
traffic, and there would be no one else around to deliver the order but him. Due to heavy traffic,
he would sometimes have issues with customers; they would become enraged or irritated, or
refuse to accept the order after a certain time. Since, he started his business with very few
people, his brother was his chef and few other students were delivering the food. For the short
staff, one he couldn’t deliver the orders on time and two he couldn’t have variety of products as
his only chef was his brother.
He began his food company with a very small menu, which served well for a few months, but as
people consume the same food every day, they get tired and seek out different choices. That's
just what happened with Waseem; customers were sick of eating just one decent thing every
day. As a result, customers began to buy fewer from them. In addition, as he was dealing with
food shortages, a new company sprung up as a D n D competition called "Koila Dum." While
Koila Dum is not an environmentally friendly restaurant, it does provide customers with a variety
of food choices and dine in service for people to have a good experience. We all are familiar
with only dine-in restaurants because it gives us a very warm and welcome feeling whenever we
go to restaurants and the food is freshly cooked so it tastes better when we have the food from
the restaurant. So, for Waseem this was also a big challenge since he couldn’t have the dine in
service right away.
Waseem, too, had financial constraints. By that time, he hadn't made much money and didn't
have much more money to spend. He would have to invest for some additional menu extension,
something he couldn't do due to financial constraints. As a result, he made the decision to take
steps to reclaim his place. He knew that cutting costs meant losing his company cost structure,
so he asked his family for more financial support.

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His main concern was the arrival of "Koila Dum," which followed a similar business model but
offered a wider range of food. Waseem wanted to find a way to save his business. Because the
material quality, packing, and sustainable supply chain activities were all more expensive, he
couldn't lower the prices of the items. He also didn't want to introduce the same food items as
Koila Dum because he didn't want to be seen as the market's second mover. He wanted to
preserve the uniqueness of his brand. As a result, he devised a variety of rice options and
package sizes. Therefore, he introduced rice box with kebabs and large chicken pieces, also all
these items were offered separately to expand the product line.
Waseem began his company with just ONE brand, which became a problem for him as people
became bored with that flavor. It is human nature for people to need a variety of tastes; one
single taste will not suffice. Waseem eventually expanded his menu to include more items in
response to customer demand, such as rice boxes with kebabs and chicken pieces in various
sizes. They might order the kebab and chicken with or without the rice box.
Also, somethings to highlight that Sargodha city population is 6.5 lakhs compared that to Dhaka
city which is 30 million. So, most of the people who lived here were middle class. Middle class
people don’t order from outside every day, they try to save their money by bringing in
homemade food. Waseem targeted only white-collar people, which is already a minority in city
where only 6.5 lakh people lived; mostly who are middle class. These people are not custom to
online businesses, where you need to order food through your mobile phone, in other words
they are not tech-savvy. They are familiar with dine-in restaurants, from where they can go, sit,
have conversations and eat with their closed ones. Therefore, Waseem was struggling in the
beginning to get many orders.

Situations being faced by the decision maker:

This case describes several struggles faced by Waseem in his early days and during the growth
stage of Dhuan ‘n’ Dukhaan (DnD). However, despite the struggles, he managed to break even
in just five months and eventually make 16 million PKR in his first year of operation. All the
issues faced were mostly because of two major factors, i.e., limited finance and poor analysis of
the consumer behavior. The problem related to limited finance is unavoidable considering DnD
is a start-up, however, with better analysis of consumer behavior of their market segment, some
risks could have been avoided.

Developing an eco-friendly venture: To develop a successful environmentally sustainable

venture, it is very important that their target market believes in the same values as Waseem,
then it would be very easy for his consumers to accept all elements of the marketing mix that
they have to offer. According to this case, in 2018 the concern for the sustainable aspect of a
venture was in its initial stage, however, Pakistanis are very sensitive to the product pricing. To
be successful in this field, it is important to have an integrated strategy starting from product
concept, manufacturing to the place of consumption. (Hayet et al, 2018)
To create such a customer base with the same belief, it is important for Waseem to invest in
promotional activities to create awareness among his target market. However, this requires
hefty investment if he wants to directly reach out to customers. It is recommended to Waseem

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to team up with local government organizations and developments and promote the eco-friendly
aspect of his venture by which he can reach a large segment of the market. It would be very
cost effective, considering it was a growing concern for the Pakistani government in the last four
decades and many initiatives were taken to mitigate these risks. (Hayet et al, 2018). After all,
culture is adaptive and it is just a matter of time and promotion of all the activities, based on
their SDG goals, that people are aware of the eco-friendly solutions available to them.

Products, pricing, and delivery: From the start DnD was focusing on a single dish and
keeping the Pakistani taste. According to the case, it was observed that there was a large
segment of the market, that wanted varieties in items in menu and for a more affordable price.
This is one of the reason people shifted towards Koila Dum, one of DnD’s competitors. Koila
Dum was able to cut cost since they were not focused on being eco-friendly. However, since
there is a growing attention in the Pakistani culture towards being eco-friendly, it seems there
will be a long-term advantage that DnD might achieve. It is important that Waseem focuses on
delivering the message about the advantages of being eco-friendly to his market segment i.e.,
societal marketing. It is also recommended that he continues the activities to properly guide and
educate his consumers about the environment and extensively distribute green products, which
will reduce the gap between consumer attitude and behavior. (Hameed et al. 2019)
According to a study carried out among 296 dine in customers in Pakistan, food taste and
environmental cleanliness are the major factors that determine success of restaurants an
improvement effort should be in: healthy food option, food freshness, food safety and food
pricing. (Shahzadi et al. 2018) According to this study, continuous monitoring on people’s
feedback and ensuring strategies towards quality improvements are implemented which will
increase customer satisfaction level and create brand loyalty among customers. However, it
was observed that due to limited finance, Waseem could not take actions against the late
deliveries and product quality on time. It is recommended that he focuses more on quality
management and introduce more variety in the menu.
Waseem’s venture was in Sargodha, which is an isolated developing area in Pakistan and his
initial business strategy was running a cloud kitchen, which would be very difficult to establish in
such an isolated area. Also, in a developing country like Pakistan, the idea of cloud kitchen is
relatively new and back in 2018 there was limited technological advancement in Pakistan
compared to these days. Therefore, in an isolated area and with limited technologically
advanced population, it is more feasible for Waseem to have a fine dining area, where he would
have access to a larger market.

Competitive advantage and marketing position: The business idea of DnD had a competitive
edge which made them break-even in just five months and make 16 million PKR in the first year.
Also, it is given that environmental issues were more concerning, and he found a gap in the
market, where people barely knew what they were eating, and the local restaurants lacked
hygienic environment. However, keeping the food taste traditional, made the local restaurants
his competitors. It was also noticed that introduced kebabs and chicken as side dish after Koila
Dum entered the market. It is recommended to Waseem that he brings more varieties in its
menu and at the same time keep his uniqueness of maintaining an eco-friendly, calorie and
nutrition calculated cuisine. Maintaining an ecofriendly business operation might be expensive

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initially but in the long run there will be benefits when the entire market is aware of its benefits.
Lastly, it is also recommended that Waseem finds new sources of finance and invests in
increasing the scale of his business and expand in the big cities of Pakistan, which will not only
increase his revenue, but also carry the name of an eco-friendly brand all over the country.

Analysis in the light of Buyer Behavior:

Looking at the case from the perspective of the 4 Ps of marketing will allow us to better
understand the challenges Waseem faced when he started out. The first challenge was
promotions. Waseem had built a business that was eco-friendly and sustainable for the
environment, but he needed to promote this idea to the masses. He did so primarily through
social media, where he posted ads on his Facebook page. As the business initially only took in
orders via their mobile app, promotions were most effective on a digital platform. The company
also paired up with numerous NGOs to provide to poor people.
Their environmentally friendly practices and charity work was promoted on their social media
page. Their low prices and good quality of food, along with it’s the nutritional benefits were
communicated to the public. This allowed them to differentiate their product from other
restaurants and food chains in the city. These actions gained them recognition and notoriety as
a ‘green’ business, one whose actions were in line with their preaching.
The company took a middling approach when it came to price. The food here was cheaper than
that of good quality restaurants, ones that were unaffordable for most people on a daily basis.
However, they were more expensive compared to markets or cafeterias. This was because the
environmentally friendly packaging and practices that made the business stand apart were more
expensive than Waseem had originally anticipated. Maintaining a hygienic environment every
step of the cooking and delivery process also increased the expected costs on his behalf.
Waseem did not initially have dine in facilities. He instead opted for delivery services instead,
going for a cloud kitchen approach. This was not intentional, rather incidental. Waseem’s
primary reason for not having dine in facilities was a lack of finances. Thus distribution was
primarily done via deliveries to offices which ordered the food. Deliveries were made using
motorcycles. The business operated exclusively in the city of Sargodha during the first two
years. This made handling deliveries easier, since Sargodha city is not too large in area.
The arrival of Koila Dum, DnD’s primary competition, gives us more insight into the buyer
behavior of the people of Sargodha. Pakistan is a third world country with a GDP per capita
significantly lower than that of Bangladesh. People are price conscious and generally opt for low
price over quality. Customer value therefore is determined by low prices. This is apparent in
the case. Once Koila Dum (a company which does not have any sustainable practices and can
therefore charge lower prices) arrives on the scene, DnD starts losing customers. DnD’s
promise of superior quality and its regard for the environment, society and economy is not
enough to sway customers to their side. This is not a surprise however, demographics of
countries with low GDPs show that the populations usually care very little for the environment.
This causes Waseem to make some drastic changes to his business in an effort to retain
customers.

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Waseem may have initially somewhat misjudged how well his business would perform. His only
real differentiation was that his business was a sustainable enterprise that cared for the
environment. His product positioning was well done, as he used social media to really sell the
image of a green business. However, culturally, Pakistan is a poor, desert nation with religious
sentimentalism. The people have never demonstrated an interest in the environment. In fact,
practices like spitting in the street, public urination and littering are common practices in the
culture of Pakistan. While environmental conservation and eco-friendly business practices are
relatively modern, they are mostly prevalent in the western world.
Aside from being influenced by external factors like culture, society and family, people are also
influenced by learning. This allows them to accept new ideas. The cloud kitchen concept is a
novel one, especially in South Asia. It took off in Bangladesh only during the Covid-19 pandemic.
So, bringing it to the attention of the people of Sargodha, an isolated city situated over 1,000 miles
away from Karachi, with a tiny population was a challenge for Waseem. Demographically,
Sargodha is a small city with a large middle class population, who are likely to not be tech-savvy.
DnD was established 4 years ago, in 2017, it was an ever bigger challenge conveying the idea to
them at the time. It is very likely that this innovation was diffused throughout Sargodha by the
young crowd, maybe the university students who studied under Waseem. This might even be an
example of cultural adaptation, since people had to learn to use cloud kitchen services like DnD,
which did not previously exist in Sargodha.
Waseem wasn’t fully successful in this endeavor, he eventually had to open dine in services in
order to retain customers and grab a larger share of the market. This demonstrates the
consumers’ desire for a total product. Eating at a restaurant is not just about nutritious and cheap
food, but also about sitting together, having a conversation and unwinding at the end of the day.
This is partly why Waseem had to expand his menu. People like the idea, even if it is an illusion
of having choices. This goes back to the idea of customer satisfaction. People expect there to
be a variety in the products and services they are offered, otherwise they tend to lose interest and
start looking for alternatives.
However, against all odds and surpassing all challenges, Dhuaan n Dukhaan reached its break-
even point within the first 5 months of its launch. This is a stellar example of a business that
overcame all obstacles to become a success.

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