DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2019.470
title: A study of current social perception and anticipation towards funeral services in Bangkok

description: A funeral has an extensive activity checklist for the family members of a deceased person, while they undeniably lack of knowledge and time to follow. This is where the demand for local funeral services takes place, and it has been growing significantly over the decades. Funeral services include service arrangements by temples and sales of ceremonial goods and services by local retail shops (caskets, wreaths, flowers, souvenirs, catering, photo shooting and essentials for offering). To a further extent, there are a certain number of fully integrated funeral service providers. The current market value of funeral services is estimated at 40-50 billion Baht per annum. The average expenditure of a funeral in Bangkok alone is three times higher than the one in any other major cities throughout Thailand.The purpose of this independent study is to achieve two research objectives. The first objective is to identify current perception and anticipation of local people towards funeral services in Bangkok. The second objective is to develop a marketing strategy in enhancing the overall experience for both customers and service providers of the funeral services. The subject area of marketing knowledge is societal issues and opportunities using the proposal type two, an applied topic in marketing. Both exploratory research and descriptive research was conducted with the secondary data findings, the in-depth interviews of eight (8) qualified respondents and the online survey of 130 qualified respondents. The qualification process ensured that the respondents had experienced in arranging a funeral at a temple in Bangkok as well as purchasing at least one good or service included in a funeral. The respondents were gathered by a convenience sampling method. The obtained data were analyzed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.The data indicated that the respondents selected the temples based on two factors which were household facilitation and social display. Evaluated under the extended marketing mix of the 7Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence), the current perception towards the overall funeral services were moderately positive. The respondents were quite satisfied with the temples, caskets, flower arrangements, souvenirs and catering that they had experienced. The results revealed that their satisfaction level were significantly associated with the Price of flower arrangements, Product of temples, Physical evidence of caterers, Price of temples and People of souvenirs. The analysis further indicated that the unemployed people and the widows tended to have a higher satisfaction level towards the overall funeral services as compared to the rest of the people. Regardless of being satisfied, the respondents also anticipated to see improvements on Promotion, Price and Physical evidence of the overall funeral services. In order to enhance the experience of both customers and service providers, the effective communication approach should be a Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing. The service providers required to retain a good relationship with the existing customers via online communications such as LINE or Facebook.