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This case study will allow students to learn about effective segmentation and how to choose an appropriate segment, analyse the attractiveness of the target market by using five-forces analysis and explore business growth alternatives by using Ansoff’s growth matrix.

The Left-Out Store was an online shop that sold products exclusively for left-handers. Maitri Wadher, the proprietor of the store, being a left-handed person and driven by her childhood experiences, started the store to help left-handed people find products for their use. She started the online-only store in September 2018, and in October 2022, she found that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic having abated, her store had not grown as expected. How, then, should she push for growth? Was the niche segment substantial enough? Was her target market attractive? Should she penetrate the market or go for market development? What should she do?

PG level (MBA/PGDM).

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The best way to equip students with the skills to lead and thrive in a global economy is to teach innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership, and make them aware of sustainability. Students can develop the skills to identify and capitalize on new business opportunities through an active learning process. Universities provide students with the knowledge, and serve as the fuel for innovation and entrepreneurship [1]. Problem solving develops complex thinking ability in the students [2]. This is becoming increasingly critical as in many industries technological innovation is now the most important driver for competitive success. Global competition has also put pressure on the firms to continuously innovate [3]. There is also a need to continuously challenge given this the students need to think about building a sustainable society. An increased focus on sustainability will promote meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs [4].

The distribution of state property to the private sector has always been and will continue to be intensely political. Relinquishing hiring, production, investment, and other enterprise decisions constitute a significant loss of potential rents to those who exercise control rights in state-owned enterprises. Additionally, the large transfer of wealth that privatization on a large-scale entails, combined with the potential for unemployment, loss of access to enterprise-based social services (which were substantial in state-socialist economies) threatens to undermine public support for privatization and reform in general.

Mirko Cvetkovic is currently Minister of Finance of the Republic of Serbia. Previously, Mr. Cvetkovic ran his own consulting and advisory firm in Belgrade. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Minister of Economy and the Director of the Serbian Privatization Agency. Mr. Cvetkovic was deeply involved in formulating the country's privatization strategy, its regulations and subsequently in implementing this strategy. As Director of Serbia's Privatization Agency, he was directly responsible for divesting a large number of socially owned companies through auction, tender and restructuring/privatization. Mr. Cvetkovic also had a significant role in drafting the Serbian Bankruptcy Law.

Traditional approaches to teaching in higher education typically fail to prepare students with many of the skills they need to become the knowledge workers employers expect them to be as graduates. Furthermore, successful students expect that the strategies they cultivated during their academic career will transfer to their professional career, only to be disappointed and frustrated when the traditional modes of student learning fail to bring them comparable levels of success. It is the position of this article that those teaching in higher education have an obligation to assist students in developing their knowledge, skills, and abilities, while also cultivating appropriate mindsets that will allow them to discover new approaches to enduring organizational challenges and develop novel solutions to tomorrow's problems. Action learning projects, where students work collaboratively to address a client's real-world organizational challenge through their concurrent learning and application of course content, offer one strategy particularly well suited to help educators fulfill this educational goal. After a brief history of action learning, the six elements of the Marquardt Model are discussed, in terms of both their critical features and the ways in which they support learning innovation. The next section describes the use of action learning cycles as the process by which students engage in the project and develop learning strategies accomplish the client's goal. The final section of the paper describes common constraints that students and instructors engaged in action learning projects encounter.

Since the introduction of Apple's App store and Google's Android Market (now Google Play) around the middle of 2008, the applications (commonly called Apps) for the iPhone and Android-based phones have surpassed 500,000 for each of the platforms. There are Apps for just about anything one can imagine. In the very near future, the use of smartphones and tablet devices for gathering information from the Web and for learning is expected to exceed the PC's and laptops. Given this, the design, development, and deployment of mobile Apps that support learning would be highly beneficial to students and learners. Such Apps could act as very effective supplements to the exiting learning modalities, especially in the areas of Math, Science, and Engineering, where most students have to grapple with abstract and hard concepts. This paper presents the approaches and design elements of an App for presenting concepts in mathematics and engineering.

The purpose of the present work is identification and prioritization of barriers to Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation in Indian manufacturing industries in the context of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) to surmount the impediments in the path of successful implementation.

In total, 27 barriers identified through critical review of literature and expert's opinion are evaluated with Cronbach's alpha values including item-total correlations or corrected item-total correlations (CITC) using statistical tool. Finally, 20 barriers were analyzed and ranked employing Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP).

The study depicts that “Lack of leadership, advisory and monitoring,” “Lack of clarity about economic benefits” and “Lack of integration of LSS with smart tools/I4.0” are potential barriers to drive the path for proper implementation of LSS in Industry 4.0 with due consideration of its technologies in Indian manufacturing industries.

The study provides better knowledge platform for academicians and researchers about hidden aspects of LSS implementation barriers in view of advanced manufacturing technologies. This research will help the practitioners to design their business plans in implementing new quality improvement tools to get advantage in current competitive environment.

The barriers are selected based on literature and opinion from industry and academic experts. Five major criteria are decided after incorporating inputs. The ranking of the barriers is attained by well standard mathematical technique. This will enable the practitioners to design strategies to eliminate the hindrances in order to shape the right path for effective implementation of LSS approach in view of advanced manufacturing technologies.

Using the case of women home-based workers in India and the aspirations they have for their children, this chapter argues that aspirations across generations can reveal constraints and conflicts of current social positions. As workers in the informal economy, women’s work experiences are shaped by a matrix of oppression shaped by gender, class, caste, and religion. Yet, resistance to this work only became apparent when discussing hopes for their children’s future. It was in these articulations of aspirations that women stressed the exploitative characteristics of their work and their wish for their children to avoid these same experiences.

Economic planning, which as a concept emerged as a socialistic idea, is now considered an important aspect of all national economies with varying political and ideological persuasions and at different stages of socio‐economic development. There are as many types and forms of economic planning as the number of countries, because each country formulates a plan according to its political and economic environments and goals of the national economy. In a general sense, the term economic planning can be defined as formulation of control and regulation of economic activity by public agency with a view to achieving well‐defined objective(s). Since the key questions implicit in this definition such as formulation of economic policies, regulation and control of economic activity and goals and objectives of the national economy, are closely related to the political structure of a society, the techniques and patterns of economic planning thus become intricately woven with its political system.