Marketing Bang Bua Canal

Marketing Management Miss Pimpairam Puangmala MBS group1 (109998376)

Chapter 1

Introduction

1. Bang Bua Canal Background

Bang Bua Thong district is located in Nonthaburi province beside next to Bangkok.

This area was mainly focusing on agricultural in the past so many canals were established for

irrigation purpose (Mongabay.com, 2010). One of the crucial canals called “Bang Bua Canal”

is used for transportation to Bangkok because there has a direct connection to Chao Phraya

River a primary river. The canal also has a large community existing along the bank. The

government put an effort to maintain the good living-life in this community by founding “The

Social Development and canal Environment Network”. The network duties are working canal

cleaning, environmental care, community organizing, waste recycling and etc. Previously, the

canal was considered to the economical facility for trade and transportation attracting people

to live near the canal. However, there is no boat running on this canal anymore now. The

community was replaced by poor people instead due to the cheaper living cost.

Figure 1: Map of Bang Bua Thong in Nonthaburi province, Thailand

(Weather-forecast.com, 2011)


The community is combination of 3,400 families from 12 informal settlements along

the bank 13 kilometre. Most of them are low-level workers such as market vendors and

labourers. The residents are built with the poor material that they can find from waste

including advertisement boards and election banners. In another word, Bang Bua Canal

community can be called as slum with a low quality of living. Some of residential people just

moved here and settled their small area without rental payment and the land lord didn’t notice

because the houses were so crowd. Since Bangkok became a central for job hunting area,

people from other province such as Surin, Ubon Ratchatani and Nakhon Sawan began to

migrate here. With many directions, the community got more population and difficulty to

maintain an order. People in community risk their live in this area from various problems

including criminal, fires and water pollution. Consequently, the community start to cooperate

together with a residential project called “Baan Mankong Program” for improving their live

quality.

Figure 2: Houses along Bang Bua canal looked like prior to renovation

(Demo02.opendream.in.th, 2011)


1.1. The location and facilities

Bang Bua Thong district is located on the right bank of the Chao Phraya River in

Nonthaburi Province. It has away from the province to the north-west 15.96 miles. There are

4 marches of the county side as follows;

North: contact with Lad Lum Kaew (Pathumthani province) and Pak Kret

district. There have 2 canals; Klong Lak Kon and Klong Lam Po, which are demarcation

lines.

Eastern: contact with Pak Kret district. Klong Koon Mahad thai, Klong Bang Bua

Thong, Klong Rong Glang and Klong Bang Rak Yai are demarcation lines.

South: contacts with Nonthaburi and Bang Yai district. There has a direct parallel

canal along the canal called Klong Bang Phank, which is a demarcation line.

Western: contact with Sai Noi district. There are 5 canals; Klong Ta Chom, Klong

Pra Pi Mon, Klong Lak Kon, Klong Ta Kai and Klong Lad Yai Pao, which are demarcation

lines.

1.2. The General facts

In the past, the canal network made Bangkok acquiring the nickname “Venice of the

East” during the time that country still primarily used water transportation. After the road and

railway was developed, many sub canals of Bang Bua Canal were replaced by a street but

many sub canals also available and those bank were occupied by low-level workers who

cause pollution and dangerous to community by their daily activities.


1.3. Communities’ network

1.3.1 History of the area

The community was beginning more than 100 years ago. The first migrating people

moved here to plant rice in the flood-plain along the canal. Later, the army has a willing to

build a headquarters across this area causing the eviction problem to local people losing their

farm land. Moreover, the government had planned the connection road between perimeter

area and city centre. The roads will replace the housing area along the both sides of the canal.

The great eviction became a major problem for local people and caused the big fight against

government including protests. At that time, there are no joint communities so the eviction

was easily performed from one family to other family. From these reasons, they have to

collaborate for negotiate with the government for preventing the unfair eviction.

Currently, the Bang Bua Canal community is formed by 12 communities along the

bank of canal. There are approximately 3,800 households in the entire 12 communities. The

community has an official name called “Samaki Ruam Jai Community” by a leading from

Mr. Prapaat and Mr. Tasanai chairmans.

The Bang Bua Canal community project became the first case of the canal community

to improve their life quality. The project aim is focusing on redeveloping the residential area,

infrastructure, water environment, etc. The project was supported by two district offices with

a cooperation of Sripathum University to be a study case for its students in life quality

improvement area.

Baan Mankong project is created for redeveloping the whole 12 communities. The

project mainly concentrated on reconstruction to whole area reducing crowded housing and

establishing waste control. Two districts offices are involves because one side of the canal

belong to Laksi district and the another side belong to Bang Khen districts.


1.3.2 Land and construction

The land owner is under Treasury Department, which offers the lease to entire of 12

communities’ network. Nowadays, the community still negotiates for cheaper rental payment.

The demand price from the community is 1 Baht per square meter but Treasury Department

only able to offer 2.25 Baht per square meter. However, the government has to wait until the

new houses finishing before they can collect the rental payment. The community will pay for

all of 12 communities as a one big block for a year-fee due to increase the power in

negotiation. The district officers and CODI from two districts are invited to meeting with

Treasury Department. The community creates the District Mechanism to be an official

procedure to maintain an order in the area. District Mechanism consists of the necessary

processes for Baan Mankhong project. The actor involved community members, District

officers, CODI, Sripathum University and government, which is mainly of Treasury

Department and some of utility department (Water and electricity).

The significant useful construction is the 3 meter pedestrian road and canal edge for

the light traffic channel without a car including walking, bicycle and motorcycle. However,

the road in emergency situation such as fires and injury can be used for an ambulance and fire

truck. The primary rationale of the road is not to attract the middle-class people that

frequently have cars move to Baan Mankhong houses. This project is saved for local people

in Bang Bua Canal community. The road also becomes a slogan of “Land Sharing” because

of public able usage. Along this small road was planned to plant trees for environmental care

including a space for multi-purpose activities for everyone. The road will link entire of 12

communities and consolidate to be one big community. Some construction that has trespassed

into the canal will be removed to improve the look of the canal.


Chapter 2

The regeneration

1. Table of Contents

1.1. Bang Bua Canal Scheme

The regeneration project contains four crucial efforts; fire hazards reduction, eviction

preventing, communities’ improvement including canal pollution reduction and land

occupation right. Moreover, the original aim still exists to decrease the rental fee and increase

the long-term lease. Previously, the rental fee collection is difficult to manage due to the

crowd of communities making some tenant able to avoid it. After regeneration with

decreasing crowd, all of tenants will have to pay the rental fee to central and then the central

will pay year’s fee to Treasury Department.

How to improve:

The biggest problem of Bang Bua Canal is water pollution. The walkways in

communities were built on this dirty water making a risk to healthy of people in this area. The

material is a cheaper one made from a piece of bamboo and thin wood easy to broken.

Several tenant had fell down into the polluted water and got sickness from it. The community

will give an awareness of pollution problem to people including install the water treatment

facilities to clean the waste water before it releases to drainage system.

The secondary problem seems to be a housing crowd problem. The new houses

building can be classified to three types: Detached house, Twin houses and Row houses for

different price. The built houses are particularly aiming to local people by using recycled

material to reduce the cost. Local people who are the construction labours will also help to

build the new houses with an extreme care because they are local people. Moreover, there are

a welfare housing to support the utility and security management in communities.

1.2. Asian Coalition of Housing Rights (ACHR)

ACHR is an organization for developing the homeless, slum and poor area in a

developing country. ACHR sponsors directly the Bang Bua Canal community in Baan

Mankhong project and other regeneration project. The community also got the assistance

from Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) team that is led by ACHR that has a great experience in


eviction negotiation for the rights of poor people. Consequently, the project received the

powerful advertisement from several media including internet and TV.

1.3. Community Organisation Development Institution (CODI)

CODI underneath the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security take a

role in the project as financial sponsor, middle man between government and Bang Bua

Canal community and general support in Baan Mankhong project. CODI also provides

facilities to the community to improve life style, job seeker and replacing slum image to the

safe and care community.

1.4. Baan Mankong Project

Baan Mankhong project is the typical project of the Thai government for improve

housing problem for particular low-class citizens who have the lowest revenue by providing

the cheap residents with a secure and basic facilities. The project aims to use existing

resource in the local area including labour and material to develop the crowd housing area

into proper residents.

2. Main Concepts of the Program

2.1 Houses and residents

The pollution and tenure is a primary problem of Bang Bua Canal area that need to

reconstruction with a proper residents. The reconstruction will replaced the crowd slum to the

nice residential area with three types of house. The security and utility services such as water

and electricity will be enabled to guarantee the basic facilities working. The reconstruction

also makes the land portion easier and clearly for tenants.


2.2 The community

There are 12 uncooperative communities settling in Bang Bua Canal. To become a

one big community, the aspects must be shared vision in entire community including

economics, environment and health care. The project majority uses local people in the

community to gain more awareness in redevelopment in this area. The close connection

between central organization from district offices and local community will be established for

fund distribution purpose.

3. The begin of regeneration

In 1996, the government declared the campaign to build a road in Bang Bua Canal

area that is generating a large eviction to local people. Most of them had refused immediately

to move from their current location because they lived for long time ago. Consequently, the

Bang Bua Canal community chose join the Baan Mankhong project to fight for their right to

stay. Many supports came to project from various sources such as Bang Ken District, CODI

and Treasury Department. The negotiation focused on the long term solution for increasing

period of lease. The academic support is provided by Sripathum University, which sent their

students to create plans for redeveloping Bang Bua Canal community. CODI released the

loans to support the project financial in part of over budget and local labors were summoned

to economize the house building cost.

4. The detail of regeneration

The row house model, which is the cheapest one and got the most interesting, has a

price about 144,945 Baht to build. There already are 14 families taking the low-interest for

residential loans from CODI as an agreement of the Baan Mankhong project. The row house

model households need to pay for a fee about 40 baht per day (1,145 Baht per month) for the

15 years contract. Those 14 houses have been finished and waiting for a final process of

paper work. The other houses are under building process. The local people have a new name

for the new housed area called “Samakee Ruam Jai Community”.


5. Part of the regeneration

The Samakee Ruam Jai community has a lot of facilities plans to develop overall of

the community. The health centers are built to be a multi-functional area including basic

medical treatment advice, exercise area and playground for children in the community. The

redevelopment also constructs the pathway along the canal bank with a green environment of

trees and flowers to acquire the relax atmosphere of the canal. This pathway also become an

emergency usage for a vehicle such as fire truck and ambulance but it will not authorized for

personal car to avoid the attraction from outside community people to occupy the house in

Baan Mankhong project. Every house are installed the cheap filtration tanks that designed by

Sripathum students to refine the waste water before releasing into the canal. The filtration is

using the organic liquid compost of effective microorganism that majority purify the waste

water from houses. The water pollution will be significantly decreased in a short time.

6. Effect of Regeneration

The awareness of the community well-being was increasing in order to improve the

community. Many activities have been arranged to remove the negative point of the

community. For water pollution problem, there is the canal-cleaning jamborees activity for

collecting trashes from the canal. The water has lower sewage and strong smell. The water

also is able to use for vegetable plantation to be their food and goods. The improved canal

will have a linking with the main city canal network and tourism attraction with a traditional

floating marketing. The total 112 families in Samakee Ruam Jai will have new houses from

rebuilding but, unfortunately, 5 families cannot take more debt in reconstruction their houses.

The eviction problem will no longer fear the people in the community after long term lease

was accepted officially. The overall of living condition is improved in both of environment

and economic and bring the happiness to local people. However, the boat transportation

cannot run in the canal anymore due to the noise problem from boat motor. The recycle

material for reconstruction may causes problem to the houses later.


Chapter 3

The environmental and market forces

1. Bang Bua Canal environments

The company in the macro environment of business, which is affected the business by

its fore (Kotler et al, 2005). There are five main aspects of environments; Economic forces,

Natural forces, Political and Law forces and Cultural forces.

1.1. Economic Forces

The individual tenure leasehold has been chosen by communities about 62 percent of

the projects. Individual leasehold is the existing tenure scheme. However, it can make

thoughtful problems in poor communities in the extensive term. When slum has been

developed and settled up in the communities, suddenly the price of the house and land will

increase, the market will revive and the economic forces will come and trying to induce or

buy off the poor squatter. Some may not feel that sell off a poor family and move them back

to another slum is wrong because at least they will get some money in their pockets.

However, the possession of land as a way to make sure that the project of housing for poor is

still supported – an actual community- for its members who do not essentially stop being

poor and exposed once they also get house and land as well. When the land is combined, it

becomes easy for those who live within that collective to debate, to approve, to usual their

systems and support each other.

1.2. Natural Forces

In the natural forces, Bang Bua Canal has a pollution problem in canal because the

local people in this area often use canal water for public utilities and also garbage into the

canal. These can cause the polluted water and subsequent problems to the community.


1.3. Technological Forces

The collection utilities before regeneration is quite difficult due to some local people

in Bang Bua Canal are theft or unauthorized to use the electricity and water supply from the

main pipe. Moreover, Bang Bua Canal is relatively dense community that makes it difficult

to verify access and the phone system are not fast enough. Therefore, the regeneration will

be able to solve these problems and develop the community to be better.

1.4. Political and Law Forces

Short-tenant contract problem make poor people in Bang Bua Canal have to renew

constantly. These can cause people feel stress in the problem and they need to have a longer

contract. Bang Bua Canal is located between two districts therefore people in the

communities compete to see which side is better developed and to distract the attention of the

government to improve their communities better. It is also based to the political vote of poor

people in densely populated communities in the current as well. Government needs to be

developed to allow the political vote of poor people to improve in the better ways.

1.5. Cultural Forces

There is no specific cultural force in Bang Bua Canal project because the demand of

regeneration is focused on area improvement, which is rarely related to the culture issue.

However it has the school of Dramatic Arts included in this area for long time ago before the

community became to slum. The regeneration will help school to have a nice facility to use

in teaching skill to be more efficiency.


Chapter 4

Recommend marketing strategies

Brassington F. and Pettitt S. (2003) described marketing Strategy as a consideration of

board CEO that is created for defining the direction of management. This consideration is a

set of collaborate objectives from various issue including market segmentation, focus group,

positioning and mix segmentation.

1. Market Segmentation

There are three types of market segmentation in Bang Bua Canal; detached house,

row house and twin house. Detached house is the building that does not share an inside wall

with other houses or residences. Detached house is also build next to canal because mostly

people in the community need to have house that can see view easily. Row house is located

in one area and built for benefit trading. Particularly, their price will vary depending on

people demand. People can have small business investment for rent house or small grocery.

Twin house is a half house that shares a center wall and share with other people to save their

rent. It is also reduce the community and structural costs for people who want to be the large

community.

2. Target Market

Target Market of Bang Bua Canal is for poor or low-class people. However it is

mostly for community than outside district to avoid more crowded communities in this area.

Bang Bua Canal has several construction buildings to prevent the attraction of middle-class

people to enter the occupied space such as three meters for motorcycle, bicycle and footpath.

Nevertheless, ambulance or various officers can be thoroughly accessible if there has an

emergency.


3. Positioning

Bang Bua canal has an image of the unsecure and low life quality resident in the past.

Since the agriculture had been neutralized and the road transportation has been developed

widely. Bangkok is the center of career including labour, service worker and market vendors.

People from other province immigrate to Bangkok with an expectation for earning money

and they need to find a cheap rental place. Slum and undeveloped community became the

target of them. However, Bang Bua Canal is the largest slum area in Bangkok perimeter.

When the community began to be crowd, it will appear the criminal and pollution problem

due to the poor. The government realize these problems and try to eliminate this community

from road building project that created the unfair eviction to local people who stay here for

long time ago.

4. Marketing Mix

The Marketing Mix is the set of manageable strategic marketing tools in the four main

proportions, which are the product, the price, the place and the promotion (Kotler et al, 2005).

The place is one of these tools, which is important for Bang Bua Canal project.

Regeneration in Bang Bua Canal marketing distribution (place) decisions is about getting the

products to the customer and related with networks of distribution that assist as the incomes

for getting the product to the target customers. The distribution system performs

transactional, logistical and facilitating functions. It is also include market coverage, channel

member selection, logistics and levels of service. For the project to be effective, it is

important that the product or service contribution is the right place at the right time.

Consequently, the extensive importance should be set in defining the distribution medium.

The assortment of distribution process should be attentively made keeping in notice the target

interview and the arranging of the product in the market.


Conclusion

The Bang Bua Canal is one of the first cases of the community regeneration project in

Thailand that develop the well-being of living in local people. There has many problems was

found in this community. The problem is cumulated from long time ago so the solution

includes the destruction the old one and recreates the new thing such as houses and utility

system. There has lots of involving in regeneration project to maximize the potential of

project. The collaboration from many sides shows the necessary of government, community,

charity and academic assistance. This regeneration project is made for poor people so the cost

is the key to success the objective. However, the cost also crosses with a quality which may

generate the problem later. The result seems to reach the satisfy level but the paper work and

negotiation between internal government department causing a delay to let the local people

move into a new house.

References

Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S. (2003), Principles of marketing, 3rd ed., Harlow: FT Prentice

Hall.

Demo02.opendream.in.th (2011). House renovation Bang Bua Canal. [Online] Available

from: http://www.demo02.opendream.in.th [Accessed on 28 April 2011]

Kotler, P. et al (2002), Principles of marketing, 3rd European ed., Harlow: Financial Times

Prentice Hall.

Mongabay.com (2010). Bang bua thong Thailand. [Online] Available from:

http://population.mongabay.com/population/thailand/1619602/bang-bua-thong [Accessed on

23 April 2010]

Weather-forecast.com (2011). Map of Bang Bua Thong. [Online] Available from:

http://www.weather-forecast.com [Accessed on 20 April 2011]

http://www.weather-forecast.com/

http://population.mongabay.com/population/thailand/1619602/bang-bua-thong

http://www.demo02.opendream.in.th/

Documents

Marketing Bang Bua Canal