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This paper aims to determine a scale for measuring psychological factors of apparel-buying intention for young Indian online shoppers.

Churchill’s three-stage systematic scale-development methodology is used to develop a psychometric scale. Items were generated and selected in Phase I, followed by scale refinement in Phase II and scale validation in Phase III.

The final scientifically validated scale has 36 item scales that measure 10 psychological factors of apparel online-buying intention for online shoppers, from which “perceived value” emerged as the most significant factor.

This scale is a sector-specific scale that cannot be generalized to other sectors; therefore, further iterations/customizations should be made in future studies for applicability in other sectors.

This reliable and valid scale will help marketing managers to understand online shopper behavior and formulate effective strategies for online shoppers.

This paper, to the author’s knowledge, is the first attempt to develop a validated tool to measure the psychological factors of apparel-buying intention for young Indian online shoppers. This scale encompasses all important touch-points in measuring psychological factors influencing online buyer behavior for apparel products.

The case is written on the basis of published sources only.

Doodlage, a start-up incorporated in 2012 by Kriti Tula, Paras Arora and Vaibhav Kapoor, used discarded waste to create sustainable fashion products. It had a first-mover advantage in recycled fashion goods in the first 10 years of its existence. The company contributed to sustainable fashion by providing an alternative to fast fashion production, creating enormous clothing waste and environmental degradation. In the first quarter of 2022, it saved and reused 15,000 m of fabric waste. From 2018 to 2021, the company grew 150% annually, targeting the right customers and regions to expand its business. It ensured that postproduction industrial waste and postconsumption garments were used to produce clothes. It also confirmed that the waste generated in its fabric screening process was used to create stationery items and other valuable accessories.

However, the sustainable fashion model that gave the company a competitive advantage became obsolete in 2022 due to increasing competition in the industry as various players using unique ideas entered the market. The company is encountering operational and logistical challenges that are affecting its performance. The demand for its products was also subdued due to high prices of upcycled and recycled clothes and less consumer spending post-COVID pandemic. The competitors of Doodlage offered multiple products produced using environmentally friendly farming and manufacturing techniques, attracting sustainable purchasers. What should be the new portfolio of products for the company to explore future growth opportunities? Considering their vast price, can consumers be encouraged to buy upcycled clothes? How should the company ride the winds of change in the industry?

The instructor should initiate the class discussion by asking questions such as how frequently do you shop for clothes? Do you care about the fabric of your apparel? After you discard your clothes, do you think about where these goods finally end up? Data on the amount of total waste generated in the fashion industry should be communicated to students to connect it with the importance of the concept of circular economy. Post this, the instructor should introduce the business model of Doodlage to bring the discussion into the context of the fashion industry before going ahead to discuss the company’s dilemma.

The case throws light on the unforeseen challenges new entrepreneurs confront. It highlights how the challenges of manpower, sales and operations are intertwined. It also put emphasis on holistic planning prior to initiating a business.

This case can be used in the introductory courses on entrepreneurship and sales and distribution for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Business Schools.

This case revolves around the pursuit of an entrepreneur to develop and service sweetcorn vending kiosks in an Indian State. It narrates the dilemma faced by the entrepreneur when she discovered a notional loss of revenue as a result of her selecting a particular distribution channel. The entrepreneur realized that the entire range of products sold through the dealer was fetching her far less revenue in comparison to the only product she retailed herself. She also realized that the retail though paid better dividends, but also brought along host of manpower and operative issues. With the day of signing a firm contract with the dealer coming close, the entrepreneur must decide quickly her future course of action.

The students will be able to gain understanding of the unforeseen challenges confronted by small entrepreneurs, interconnection of various functions of business and the significance of holistic planning.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and areas of improvement for taking organizations one step ahead in terms of adopting digitalization, analytics and governance. Also, the paper aims to identify the organizational cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance.

A quantitative analysis of survey questionnaire collected from working professionals of various manufacturing industries to find out the driving traits and the restraining traits and to propose which is dominating. Sector: manufacturing, sample: working professionals across functions and sample size: 80–100 people.

This research suggests the cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance in any organization.

As organizations explore new ways of working, their organizational culture and employee perspective would play an important role in prioritizing the interventions. This research aims to suggest a strategy to strengthen the driving forces and/or weaken the restraining forces.

There are various papers available on the individual topics but the uniqueness of this paper is that it represents all three factors in a single research and their influencers.

The purpose of this case study is to highlight the role of feedforward as a potential tool for managers in encouraging coworkers and subordinates to excel at their workplace performance.

Insights were captured through real-time observations made during three feedforward sessions conducted at regular intervals during the course of a six-month training intervention. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with participants to gather individual perspectives.

The findings of the study showed positive results in feedforward as a mechanism to strengthen employee performance at the workplace. Participants also reported deeper involvement in the feedforward process as compared to the conventional feedback method.

The study has wider practical implications in the corporate world, as it provides managers with a practical tool to mentor subordinates and coworkers toward on-the-job performance. Feedforward is easy to apply and forward-looking in its approach.

Feedforward has applications in corporate environments as well as families, associations, and academic institutions. It offers immense value by fostering a climate of social support and mutual co-operation.

The feedforward exercise mentioned in the study is relevant on account of its applicability in various organizations across industries. It provides managers with an opportunity to receive and share insightful suggestions with coworkers in an open and transparent environment.

This paper aims to explore the composition of “shopping experience” for shoppers in the metropolitan area of Delhi national capital region (Delhi NCR) in India..

The paper applies data reduction using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on a sample of 200 respondents drawn from four constituent urban clusters within the NCR and condenses a set of 22 mall attributes into a list of five comprehensible factors.

The research shows that shoppers visualise shopping experience as a combination of five factors: ambience, physical infrastructure, marketing focus, convenience, and safety and security. They assigned different weightage in terms of significance to each of these factors. Internal configuration of these factors also reveals interesting patterns.

A non‐probability sampling method is applied in this research. Future studies should replicate the research in different social, economic and geographic contexts to see if the factor composition and structure remain unchanged.

Mall developers in India should focus more on improving convenience and creating ambience. Disproportionate expenditure on adding to physical infrastructure is not expected to yield matching dividends.

The study assumes significance as India has seen a rapid mushrooming of shopping malls in the recent past. Such malls are struggling to attract shoppers. The paper explores the expectations of mall shoppers in Delhi NCR

This paper is among the few works done on understanding Indian mall shoppers. It adds significantly to the meagre body of knowledge in this area in an Indian context.

This paper aims to identify the factors that influence students' mental health, particularly in the context of MBA students passing through an emotional phase of the placement season.

A conceptual model through literature has been proposed. To test the proposed model of this study, a survey was conducted among the students of three MBA institutes of national reputation in India. The study's hypotheses were investigated using partial least squares-structural equations modeling and analysis of variance. To corroborate the findings of the survey data, a qualitative study in the form of open-ended interviews with five students was conducted.

The study revealed that female students, non-engineering graduates and students from non-family business backgrounds undergo stress, anxiety and depression higher than their classmates. Cumulative grade point average and bank loans do not significantly affect students' stress, anxiety and depression during the placement season. It was found that the increase in the levels of mindfulness scores led to a significant negative impact on stress, anxiety and depression among the students.

There is a gap in the literature that addresses the mental health of MBA students during campus job placements and the role of mindfulness in mitigating stress, anxiety and depression in these students. This research attempts to fill these research gaps.

Strategic Marketing Management. This case is also relevant for discussion in other courses like brand management.

Postgraduate Management students.

Just before the official launch of “no-negative” news edition by Dainik Bhaskar Corp. Ltd, there was widespread speculation that the group was risking too much by going against the set convention of the newspaper industry. The common belief in the industry was “If it bleeds, it leads” and “good news is no news”. While endeavoring to do away with this perception, the management needed answers to questions like “Would it really be an attractive proposition for the readers?”, “Was the group compromising the role and responsibilities of press in presenting the truth to the world?” and “How would it add value to the brand?” The entire debate was pivoted around the sustainability of positive marketing strategy and “Is it a good idea to go forward with No Negative?” For decades, Dainik Bhaskar was known for its strategy of capturing untapped markets or denting into monopolistic markets and become a leader. This case is an odyssey of moving away from the “me-too” to category (positive newspaper) positioning. The main objective of this case is to build the concept and rudiments of positive marketing in practical perspectives using the backdrop of the Hindi newspaper industry and its largest player breaking the myth “only negative news sell”. Besides this, the case also evolves the process of institutionalizing positive marketing in organizations.

The primary objective of teaching through this case is to make students aware and understand the emerging strategy of positive marketing and its ability to break through the present clutter in the market. It also elaborates on how companies can use this tool for differentiating themselves from others.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Director interlocks, with their extended resources and shared experiences, have the potential power to go beyond the basic role of providing advice and monitoring the activities of an organization. Interlocked directors can have a cross-cultural role in manipulating corporate choices and strategies in several areas, including capital structure, based on learned behavior in their internal company. Shareholders and creditors are the two main capital providers for a company. However, their risk return horizons are very different, and policies that benefit one group may not be optimal to the other. Interlocks can act as carriers of sub-par practices that affect the behavior of several organizations. Such transactional and relational activities may increase short-term value for equity shareholders, but increase the risk for the creditors. The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural effects of interlocks on corporate strategies that affect this essential agency relationship.

This paper surveys the extant literature on board interlocks, board practices, equity valuation and credit risk to develop a link between such interlocks and creditor protection. Based on a brief survey of the central concepts of governance and the role of directors, this paper then provides various propositions on the role of interlocking directorships and their effect on the shareholder–creditor agency problem.

Director interlocks, through their linked common practices, have the potential to increase or worsen shareholder–creditor conflicts by magnifying strategic practices like short-termism, earnings management or through its effects on chief executive officer compensation. Such cross-cultural effects persist across ownership structures and cultural differences in governance.

The paper is not an empirical study of the conflict. This paper uses a literature review to arrive at propositions that may impact shareholder–creditor conflicts.

Several studies have shown cronyism and the dense corporate network has been a large factor in the financial crisis that affected both shareholders and creditors. As the influence of creditors grows with the current availability, and therefore increase in debt levels, this conflict can be magnified through homophily inherent in interlocks. For an organization to be successful in its role of protecting all stakeholders, especially the two major providers of equity capital, factors that cause conflicts must be taken into account while developing the tenets of governance policies and, on a regular basis, during the strategic planning process within the organization. Regulations affecting interlocks, including governance policies, must therefore take into account such influences.

Board interlocks act as channels of information between companies, creating a social network where processes and polices are shared and implemented as defined by the concept of homophily. Such management actions reduce both the quality of information available to creditors and their monitoring capabilities. This juxtaposition of shareholder and creditor interest can, therefore, be worsened by director interlocks.

Prior literature has not specifically linked director interlocks and their mutual impact on the culture and strategy of linked corporations to the shareholder–creditor conflict.

Based on knowledge-based view of the firm, and salesperson attributions, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a contingency-based framework featuring how salespeople’s product knowledge: product and brand knowledge (PBK) and competitors’ product and brand knowledge (CPBK) and optimism impact salesperson performance.

Hypotheses are tested on survey data from 185 car salespeople in Southeast USA.

Results document support for the main effects of PBK, CPBK, and their joint effects. Furthermore, under high optimism, the positive impact of CPBK on salesperson performance is attenuated. However, optimism × PBK interaction was not supported.

Extant literature lacks insights into the impact of salespeople’s product knowledge. By examining salespeople’s product knowledge in a disaggregated fashion, and the interaction of product knowledge × optimism, this research highlights the multi-dimensional nature of product knowledge, whose complex ramifications cannot otherwise be uncovered by a globally conceptualized construct.

This study isolates salespeople’s domain-specific knowledge of products from the more global construct of salespeople’s knowledge. The focus on how PBK and CPBK exert a joint positive influence on performance is novel. In addition, by examining how optimism weakens the relationship between CPBK and performance, this research provides a notable contrast to extant findings and broadens the learned optimism paradigm.