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The key learning objectives are as follows: analyze Mamaearth’s growth trajectory in the Indian market, illustrate the meaning of a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand, analyze the importance of social media in building a D2C brand, analyze the challenges and advantages associated with a D2C brand, analyze growth and expansion options available with Mamaearth and evaluate the strategies for Indian start-ups in the beauty and personal care space.

In 2016, what began as a quest to find safe baby care products for the first-time parents Varun and Ghazal, turned into an entrepreneurial opportunity. The couple started Honasa Consumer Private Limited at Gurugram, which owned the brand Mamaearth. Conceived as a D2C brand for mothers opposed to harsh baby care products, it debuted with just six baby care products with exclusive online availability. For the brand to grow, it recreated the marketing mix to be perceived as a brand for all ages. The step successfully garnered a customer base of over 1.5 million consumers in 500 cities and a valuation of INR 1bn within four years of operations. In February 2021, Mamaearth became a brand with INR 5bn annualized revenue run rate and aspired to double it to INR 10bn by 2023. Though Mamaearth debuted as a D2C brand, after tapping around 10,000 retail stores, the Alaghs realized that many consumers still preferred transacting in the offline space. Alaghs decided to expand by acquiring a robust offline space in 100 smart cities in India. Would it be wise for Mamaearth to take forward their offline expansion plans? Alternatively, would an aggressive product innovation coupled with a more substantial online presence be a more sustainable proposition?

The case study is appropriate for Post Graduate Diploma in Management/Master of Business Administration level courses of second year in strategic brand management, digital marketing, integrated marketing communication and marketing strategy. The case stuudy may also be useful for prospective entrepreneurs planning to embark upon a D2C venture. The case study elaborates on the emergence, marketing and branding of Mamaearth. The case study helps students understand the meaning of a D2C brand and the growth options available in the Indian market for a D2C brand from the perspective of Mamaearth.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Under given environmental uncertainties, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of brokers on the networking behaviour of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) and the subsequent impact on the performance of SMEs. The following five different types of brokers were tested, namely, coordinator, representative, cosmopolitan, liaison and gatekeeper brokers.

Data were collected through an online survey and analyzed by using the hierarchical regression method.

The results from the hierarchical regression analysis of 198 Czech firms showed that coordinator and representative brokers moderate the relationship between environmental uncertainty and networking behaviour. However, under high environmental uncertainty, the coordinator broker worked best, whereas in the host country, under low environmental uncertainty, the representative broker worked best.

The findings of this study have useful implications for SMEs in selecting an appropriate broker for strengthening their networking behaviour in the international market. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of various types of brokers on networking behaviour during their internationalization of SMEs. More specifically, this study examined if and how, given the uncertainties in the international market, multiple brokers help SME executives develop networking behaviour.

This paper aims to develop a thorough understanding of industry-specific networking behaviour on the internationalization performance of Czech small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors used a profile deviation-ideal profile methodology to explore the ideal networking behaviour profile of different industries. The authors argue that firms adhering to ideal profiles performed well in the international market, while firms deviating from the ideal profile performed poorly. Data were collected through an online questionnaire specifically targeted at Czech SME executives. The authors attempted to explore these issues by using four aspects of networking behaviour to test the ideal networking behaviour profile of five different industries (automotive, telecommunications, construction, audit and finance and transportation).

The authors have identified different ideal networking behaviour profile for three industries, which underpinned supported the hypothesis that each dimension of networking behaviour should be fine-tuned for each sector to achieve to attain maximum benefits and performance in the international market.

Although previous studies supported the role of networking behaviour in improving internationalization performance, multiple studies had also provided conflicting results on how networking affects different industries and it is unclear how and why networking affects these various industries differently. The authors believe that the results research provides empirical evidence in proving that different networking dimensions should be fine-tuned as per industry to achieve the highest performance in the international market. The authors believe that the findings broaden the current understanding of the role of networks in the internationalization. The authors believe that the findings extend the current understanding of the role of networks in the internationalization of SMEs.

Businesses nowadays face unprecedented pressures from stakeholder groups to become more transparent by issuing comprehensive reports describing their environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related activities, strategies and policies. This paper’s primary motivation is to understand which ESG disclosure factors are relevant for large Czech companies.

To achieve the above-stated goal, the total ESG disclosure index, consisting of three subindexes (ESG) was constructed and calculated for the 100 largest Czech companies. Furthermore, the relationships between firm-level factors and ESG disclosure indexes were estimated by using censored regression models.

This study found that revenue, number of employees and profitability positively influenced the total ESG disclosures. On the level of the three ESG components, this study found that revenue positively impacted environmental and governance disclosures while the number of employees positively affected social and governance disclosures. Moreover, profitability affected social and governance disclosures positively for large Czech companies. However, this study did not observe a significant relationship between board attributes and ESG disclosures.

This paper extends academic literature on ESG disclosures by verifying the significance of firm-level factors in the context of Czech business realities before the adoption and transposition of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. More specifically, this study has investigated the ESG reporting together and separately for ESG factors. This separation is vital as firms vary in reporting processes across these factors.

After reading and analyzing the case study, the students would be able to identify the main stakeholders and decision-makers and their importance and influence on the environment for a product, evaluate the value chain of the product and critical decision-makers, evaluate the various ways to avoid falling into the trap of greenwashing and examine the marketing strategy to market an environmentally friendly product.

LIKO-S is a Czech manufacturing and construction company. The company has been designing and creating intelligent solutions, such as green facades or vertical greenery systems, to save energy in building heating and cooling systems. The company launched green facades in the Czech market. However, the main obstacle was the need for supporting data to showcase the positive environmental impact of green facades. Under these circumstances, Libor Musil’s main objective was to overcome prevalent misconceptions about green facades and find a suitable market segment. The situation worried the company, as LIKO-S had heavily invested in developing and marketing the green walls. The management had to tackle this challenge as soon as possible to recover the substantial research and development and marketing investments. Furthermore, owing to lack of information, even genuinely sustainable products were seen as greenwashing. In addition, bad or wrong customer perceptions of these walls might spill over to other products, tarnishing the company’s image and threatening its survival in the domestic market. Under these circumstances, competitors might enter the Czech market, jeopardizing the company’s overall profits. Consequently, Libor was in a great dilemma about managing the financial and reputational risk of the company. Should Libor close the green walls unit, explore different markets/uses or help increase awareness among the general population about green walls by finding a suitable marketing strategy?

The case study was designed for graduate-level students in the strategic management (CSR and innovation module) courses. However, the case could also be an excellent addition to marketing courses dealing with customers’ perceptions of innovative products and strategies to improve the adoption of the product.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

This study empirically evaluates the effect of China’s 2016 Green Financial System (GFS) framework on corporate green development, focusing on the role of green investment in achieving sustainability.

This study uses a quasinatural experiment design to combine difference-in-difference and propensity score matching methods for analysis. It examines 799 polluting and 1,130 nonpolluting firms from 2013 to 2020, enabling a comprehensive assessment of the GFS framework’s influence.

This study affirms a statistically significant positive influence of the GFS framework on escalating green investment levels in polluting firms. Robust sensitivity analyses, encompassing parallel trend assessment, entropy balancing test, and alternative proxies, corroborate these findings. A mediation analysis identifies the implementation of an environmental management system as the potential underlying mechanism. A cross-sectional analysis identifies high financial slack, high profitability, mandatory CSR regulations, and marketization level as the influencing factors.

The study’s findings have critical implications for policymakers, regulators, and companies. Demonstrating the effectiveness of the GFS framework in driving green investment underscores the importance of aligning financial systems with sustainability goals.

This study contributes novel empirical evidence on the positive effect of China’s GFS framework on corporate green development. The quasinatural experiment design, coupled with comprehensive sensitivity analyses, strengthens the robustness of the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the inventory replenishment policies when demand rate is a function of the inventory space allocated to the products on retail shelves. Existing results on inventory policies with inventory-level-dependent demand (ILDD) assume deterministic functional forms of the demand rate. In this paper, the authors model the inventory decisions when demand is a function of shelf-space allocation and random uncertainty. The authors provide managerial insights of this paper's results.

The demand rate is assumed to be a function of shelf-space allocation based on two settings in the literature. First, the authors model the demand rate as a function of initial shelf-space allocation. In the next setting, the authors assume that the demand rate is a function of instantaneous inventory level on shelves. In both the settings, the authors also model random demand uncertainty in addition to the shelf-space dependency of demand rate. The objective is to maximize the expected profit and determine the inventory parameters.

In addition to the demand uncertainty, the authors consider linear, power and exponential functional forms of demand rate. Inventory policy that maximizes expected profit is determined when demand rate is a function of initial allocation and displayed inventory level. The results are implementable for practitioners for optimizing the shelf-space allocation and related inventory policy.

Most of the extant results on inventory policy with shelf-space-dependent demand do not model the demand uncertainty. The authors model a variety of functional forms of demand rate with ILDD in addition to the demand uncertainty. The results are a building block for more applications in inventory management for real-life applications.

This study aims to investigate the effects of firm- and governance-specific characteristics on digital trust (DT) and firm value. Firm-specific factors include return on assets (ROA), market-to-book ratio (M/B ratio), size and leverage, whilst governance-related factors comprise board size, percentage of female board members, board independence and institutional ownership. All listed US firms over the period of 2011–2016 were analysed in this study.

This study provides a novel method to empirically measure DT by combining multiple variables to create a combined DT score. The variables include security and privacy scores, security rankings and data breaches, amongst others. Subsequently, a linear regression was performed to evaluate the effect of firm- and governance-specific characteristics on DT, as well as the effect of DT on firm value.

By using signalling theory, this study finds significant evidence that a firm’s profitability (ROA) decreases whilst its size increases DT. This could be due to the fact that firms with lower DT monetise data more actively, decrease DT and increase short-term profitability. Significant evidence also shows that increasing DT leads to an increase in firm value.

Although numerous studies have been conducted on developing customers’ trust by incorporating corporate social responsibility to improve firm value, the literature remains still on its digital analogue. Therefore, this study extends the knowledge of corporate digital responsibility (CDR) by providing a novel method for calculating DT across industries as an antecedent of CDR. Specifically, it sheds light on how firms can enhance DT by utilising firm- and governance-level factors. This enhanced DT can subsequently increase firm value. The study provides important managerial implications by providing empirical evidence that cybersecurity investments increase firm value. This value increase is related to the rise in shareholder value amongst investors and the increase in the organisation’s consumer perceptions as the latter’s interests are better managed.

The purpose of this paper is to update the Team Performance Management (TPM) readership on the development of the journal since the first review article was written in 2007.

Each of the 136 articles published in the journal between 2007 and 2012 were analyzed to identify interesting trends and patterns.

The USA still holds the top positions in terms of the largest number of published articles, and a total of 28 countries are represented by first author affiliation. Academic first authors have increased from 69 to 92 percent since the 2007 analysis. Of the total articles published from 2007-2012, 32 percent of the articles are single authored, while 35 percent are double authored. The majority of the authors published just once in the journal (84 percent) during that period. The publication of research articles has increased from 55 to 67 percent. The most popular article achieved 4,310 downloads.

This study is not a rigorous statistical analysis, but rather seeks to provide an update on the 2007 analysis, with a review of the last six years' articles published in the journal. As before, only the first author's details were used for the analysis, which may have caused a slight bias in the findings.

This article provides a quick guide in terms of the types of articles published in TPM during the last six years and with the 2007 article, gives an overview of the journal and team performance management research in the last 18 years.