Leather Industry in Bangladesh: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Leather is a unique commodity that links grassroots villages with high societies and traditional practices with emerging technologies. For many developing countries, leather and leather manufacturers constitute an indispensable and dependable source for export trade and foreign exchange earnings. For Bangladesh, leather is a high priority industrial sector and footwear exports, an extreme focus area. Bangladesh has, just few decades since Independence, made significant gains from the leather trade, progressing from the status of an exporter of 90% plus raw hides and skins to that of an exporter and predominantly leather product manufacturer. However, there is little systematic research into this sector. This study is trying to address the research gap by seeking to understand the current status, problems and prospect of leather industry in Bangladesh.

Investigating the Factors of Consumers’ Purchase Intention Towards Life Insurance in Bangladesh: An Application of the Theory of Reasoned Action

“…Addressing the problems and prospects of the insurance business in Bangladesh, past studies pinpointed several problems such as human resource, operational, marketing, and ethical problem (Mamun, 2013), lack of awareness, lack of government supervision, lack of promotional program (Khan & Uddin, 2013), negative image of life insurance (Nekmahmud et al, 2017), strong religious belief against life insurance, lack of diversified products, unethical practices of insurers, and more focus on "push method" rather than "pull method" (Islam & Mamun, 2017;Islam, 2019). Besides, the prospect areas include economic, operational, new entrants, and industry growth (Mamun, 2013).…”

“…More specifically, employees of three educational institutions, in particular, the University of Dhaka, Jagannath University, and Jahangirnagar University, and five randomly selected private banks located in Dhaka, were used as the sampling frame. The data collection area was Dhaka city, as it is the capital city of Bangladesh and a hub of almost all financial and commercial offices (Mamun, 2013;Khan & Uddin, 2013). A convenience sampling strategy has been adopted as a sampling technique (Souiden & Jabeur, 2015).…”

“…Extant findings on consumers' purchase intention towards life insurance cannot be entirely generalised in a country like Bangladesh, as there are several cultural, social, political, and financial differences among countries. However, in the context of Bangladesh, past studies addressed the problems and prospects of the insurance business (e.g., Mamun, 2013;Khan & Uddin, 2013), as well as the ethical standards of the life insurance business (Mamun, 2014). Only a few researchers (e.g., Islam & Mamun, 2017;Islam, 2019) studied the factors influencing consumer purchase behaviour of life insurance.…”

Use of Social Media in Election Marketing in Bangladesh: Its Impact on Voting Behavior

“…Despite its huge market potential, the life insurance industry is suffering from several problems from both industry and policy holders' end. Lack of risk awareness, low purchasing power, higher degree of risk in the market and lack of spontaneity from company are some barriers that hold back its desired growth (Khan and Uddin, 2013).Alongside much human resource management, operational and ethical problems, life insurance has also ripened with marketing problems. Though some private life insurance companies are trying to reduce the existing fallacies among the clients about life insurance, nationalized company is still devoid of innovations and competencies in their propositions (Ahmed, 2016).…”

“…But little attention has been drawn on this aspect in previous literatures in Bangladesh perspective. Several existing literatures focused on the problems, prospects and policy implications of insurance business (Mamun, 2013;Khan and Uddin, 2013) ethical standards in life insurance companies (Mamun, 2013) and customer perceptions toward insurance companies (Chowdhury, Rahman and Afza, 2007).…”