Joffi Thomas, Ashok Pratap Arora and Rajen K. Gupta
Transforming a production-oriented firm into a marketing-oriented firm; aligning marketing strategy of local companies in globalizing emerging markets; creating sustainable…
Abstract
Subject area
Transforming a production-oriented firm into a marketing-oriented firm; aligning marketing strategy of local companies in globalizing emerging markets; creating sustainable competitive advantage.
Student level/applicability
Post graduate management courses in marketing management, strategic marketing, international marketing, business strategy.
Case overview
This case is about how the leader in the Indian paper industry, Ballarpur Industries Ltd (BILT), is proactively transforming a production-oriented firm to a marketing-oriented firm to compete in the globalizing emerging market scenario, in the wake of economic liberalisation. It requires the participants to evaluate the impact of marketing initiatives made, and align BILT's marketing strategy to leverage it's strengths and help create sustainable competitive advantage.
Expected learning outcomes
To understand the need for local companies in emerging markets to proactively align marketing strategy to build competitive advantage in the globalizing industry.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes.
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Shalini Kalra Sahi and Ashok Pratap Arora
Indian investors have been exposed to a plethora of investment opportunities in the past decade and a half, after the liberalization process which commenced in 1991. Over the…
Abstract
Purpose
Indian investors have been exposed to a plethora of investment opportunities in the past decade and a half, after the liberalization process which commenced in 1991. Over the years, the increased competition has brought a wind of change, not just in the economic environment within the country, but also a radical change in the choices and preferences of the financial consumers. In the endeavor to provide more personalized advice to the financial consumers, financial service providers need more insights into the minds of the consumers. However, little work has been done to understand the Indian individual investor. The purpose of this paper is to study the Individual investor in India: to segment the investor into distinct behavioural groups based on their biases; to understand the investment preferences and profile of the identified segments; and to understand the implications for financial services providers.
Design/methodology/approach
Exploratory research, using In‐depth interviews, was undertaken to explore the manifestations of the biases among the individual investors. The initial inventory of 97 items pertaining to biases was assessed for content and face validity and subject to pilot test and subsequent rounds of modification. The final data were collected on a sample of 377 respondents, using a questionnaire that captured eight biases: Reliance on experts; Overconfidence bias; Self‐control bias; Categorisation tendency; Budgeting tendency; Adaptive tendency; Socially responsible investing bias; and Spouse effect. The segments of investor biases were identified using cluster analysis.
Findings
A cluster analysis of data, collected from individual investors was conducted in India (n=377), yielded four main segments of individual investors biases, which have been termed as the Novice Learner, the Competent Confirmer, the Cautious Anticipator and the Efficient Planner. This typology has predictive validity with regard to financial satisfaction and perceived financial market knowledge.
Practical implications
The paper presents a very important practical tool which can help financial service providers define their target audience more sharply and understand how people in these segments differ, behaviorally. Better understanding of investor's perceptions would help in designing more attractive financial products and development of marketing strategies that would impact the customer's financial satisfaction levels and create trust and customer loyalty.
Originality/value
This paper is a first of its kind to empirically identify the segments of biased behavior among investors and contributes to furthering the understanding on investor behavior.
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Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya, Arunditya Sahay, Ashok Pratap Arora and Abha Chaturvedi
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to develop a framework that will help managers to design firm level corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives which can be of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to develop a framework that will help managers to design firm level corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives which can be of strategic interest for an organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews concepts from the domains of strategic management and CSR literature. The concepts are deliberated and analyzed to build up a strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework. The article starts by identifying the salient stakeholders of a firm, based on the three stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency. The framework then talks about the identification of a firm's interest in CSR, on the basis of firm value chain, context of competitiveness and intention of creating new business opportunities. Finally, this literature talks about the expected benefits to be achieved by carrying out strategic CSR initiatives.
Findings
In a competitive atmosphere, it is important to utilize the firm resources in a proper manner and for a worthy cause. The undertaking of CSR initiatives calls for the sacrifice of firm resources. Resources are scarce and valuable. Managers can design CSR initiatives in a number of ways. But the real challenge for managers is to design firm CSR strategy in such a manner that it helps address a social issue and also provides the organization with some business benefits.
Originality/value
Though managers are aware of the need and benefits of undertaking strategic CSR, a comprehensive theoretical framework which can guide CSR managers to design and implement CSR activities for strategic gains is not present. This study provides for such an integrated framework from the stage of identification of stakeholders, to the design of CSR, to the nature of strategic gains to be incurred.
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Shalini Kalra Sahi, Nand Dhameja and Ashok Pratap Arora
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a post hoc predictive segmentation procedure to find out the variables that are the most important predictors of investor's…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a post hoc predictive segmentation procedure to find out the variables that are the most important predictors of investor's preference for specific financial investment products.
Design/methodology/approach
The study considers various demographic, socio‐economic and psychographic variables for the purpose of understanding the investor's preferences. Using a sample of individual investors (n=377), a classification and regression tree (CART) methodology was used to determine whether psychographic variables were better predictors than demographic and socio‐economic variables for understanding an individual investor's preference for the investment alternatives.
Findings
The results showed that psychographic variables emerged as the most important predictors in the case of investment products with greater degree of risk, and the demographic and socio‐economic variables emerged as the most important for the investment instruments with lesser degree of risk. However, when the sample was divided based on occupation profile (government and non‐government), for both the fixed returns based instruments and the non‐fixed instruments, psychographic variables emerged as the most important predictors.
Practical implications
These results show the need for financial service providers to consider the psychographic variables along with demographic and socio‐economic variables, so as to better understand and advise the financial consumers. This would enable the financial service institutions to target their audience more sharply, so as to develop appropriate marketing strategies and further build the investor's trust.
Originality/value
This paper is a first of its kind to empirically identify the most important variable that determines the financial consumer's preference for investment products in India, using CART technique. This study contributes to furthering the understanding of investor behavior.
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Jayasankar Ramanathan and Sanal Kumar Velayudhan
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of parent brand characteristics and brand-extension fit on attitude towards the extension in the context of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of parent brand characteristics and brand-extension fit on attitude towards the extension in the context of services-to-goods (SG) brand extension compared with services-to-services (SS) brand extension.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey design was used to collect data from 626 individual respondents. The respondents were selected using probability sampling from two cities in India. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).
Findings
The study indicated that context (SS or SG) moderated the influence of factors on attitude toward brand extension. A favorable attitude towards the parent brand had a greater positive influence on SS brand extension compared with SG brand extension. Quality variance among service types under the parent brand had a higher negative impact on attitude towards SG brand extension than on attitude towards SS brand extension.
Practical implications
Managers may prefer extending a service brand to another service rather than a good when consumers have a favorable attitude towards the brand. Furthermore, when the perceived quality of service types under a service brand varies substantially, extension of the brand to a good requires greater concern than extension to a service.
Originality/value
The unique contribution of this study is the examination of the moderating influence of the characteristics of an offering (SS vis-à-vis SG) on the link between brand extension attitude and its influencing factors.