Jaydeep Mukherjee

User acceptance of hedonic versus utilitarian social networking web sites

Purpose – The technology acceptance model (TAM) was developed by Davies et al. to understand the utilitarian benefits of web sites. In recent times, scholars have extended TAM as theoretical underpinning to understand user acceptance of social networking web sites (SNWs) that were hedonic in nature, which seemed inappropriate. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in the user acceptance phenomenon of hedonic versus utilitarian SNWs, and highlight that it is essential to provide justice to varying value propositions offered by SNWs.Design/methodology/approach – As the research study was variance based and followed a positivistic paradigm, the authors used survey methodology and collected data through online and offline questionnaires. In total, 181 usable responses were subjected to mediation analysis using structural equation modeling.Findings – The perceived usefulness emerged as a significant mediator in the case of utilitarian SNWs and perceived enjoyment emerged as a significant medi...

Market Development by Multinational Brands: Empirical Evidence from Indian Fast Food Retailing Business

One of the major dilemmas faced by the multinational marketer is to decide on opening up new markets. This study develops a framework for market development activity by multinational brands based on literature. In the framework, expected customer demand (ECD) is dependent on acceptance of global brand (AGB), image of the parent brand (IPB) and quality perception (QP) about the product. The framework is empirically tested in urban Indian fast food market. The results demonstrate that each of these variables have significant impact on ECD. The priority of marketing budgets allocation should be in order of improving the AGB and IPB and then on QP, so as to have the highest impact on the demand.

An Investigation Into the Concept of Brand Love and Its Proximal and Distal Covariates

ABSTRACT Brand love has emerged as an important marketing construct among practitioners and academics. Literature on brand love is mainly concentrated on its conceptualization rather than its antecedents and consequences. The authors have applied social exchange theory to the concept of brand love and proposed a conceptual model that highlights the factors affecting brand love, such as respect, brands liking for consumers, and brand experience, as well as its behavioral outcomes, such as affective commitment, consumer citizenship behavior, and willingness to pay a price premium.

Understanding the Drivers of Brand Loyalty in Mixed Media Context

With the increase in the popularity of the internet, brand loyalty building initiatives have evolved. The shift is from managing a predominantly one-way communication to a two-way communications with the consumer, as well as facilitating the peer to peer communication among consumers. Academic research has been focused on either the traditional media which uses primarily a one-way communication, or the digital media which employs two-way communications. However, in the present marketing context, both these forms of media coexist and interact with each other. This study attempts to bridge this gap in research by exploring the drivers of brand loyalty in mixed-media context and the relative strength of the different constructs studied. For this study, a comprehensive model of brand loyalty in mixed-media context has been developed from literature, which included constructs like satisfaction, interactivity, emotional value and perceived co-creation, perceived belongingness, perceived empowerment and brand equity. This model was tested empirically in the Indian market.

An investigation of antecedents and consequences of brand love in India

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that drive consumer love toward a brand and the opportunities a consumer’s love create for a brand in India. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with consumers. The interview transcripts were analyzed through thematic analysis using qualitative software Nvivo10. Findings – This paper proposes a conceptual model where respect, brand experience, and brand reputation have been identified as factors driving brand love and affective commitment, consumer citizenship behavior, repurchases intention, consumer forgiveness, and attitude toward the extension as outcomes of brand love. Practical implications – Consumers bond with brand helps in mitigating the feelings of transgressions by the brand, and also protects brand from negative word of mouth. Consumers who are in love with a brand show positive attitude toward its extensions. These results provide pointers to brand managers on how to protect and expand th...

HCL: Facing the Challenge of the Laptop Market

113 Mr. Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman and CEO at HCL Infosystems Limited, a major technology hardware player in India, was pondering upon the company’s marketing strategies to build its laptop sales in 2010-111. Driven by powerful and sustained marketing campaigns by the multinational companies (MNC), namely Dell and Acer, during 2009-10, the laptop market had witnessed tremendous growth. Dell’s 1,500 million Indian Rupee (INR) marketing initiative had catapulted it from the fifth position (in terms of sales revenues) in 2008-09 to a second position in 2009-10 in the Indian laptop market2. Similarly, Acer had gone on a marketing and distribution blitz that catapulted it from No. 6 to No. 3 in the market, thereby more than doubling its market share.

Using New Case Studies for Evaluation of Marketing Student’s Academic Performance

Case method has been a popular pedagogy in management education. It is a preferred evaluation tool which is inherently subjective in nature. This article compares the results of case-based evaluation in marketing discipline, in announced and unannounced settings, for full-time and part-time management programmes and discusses its implications. The data were collected from the formal evaluation made by a faculty of an Association of MBAs (AMBA) accredited management institute of India. The results suggests that for full-time residential MBA programmes, use of relative marks for grading each component of the evaluation is likely to be a more robust evaluation mechanism than using just the marks or using the consolidated marks for final grading. However, neither surprise quiz nor announced quiz provide any robust and unbiased method of evaluating the performance of the students of part-time non-residential MBA programme as the result are also dependent on variables like work and family, which are extraneous to the student’s interest and proficiency in the subject.

Managing Sales Team at Balram Beverages

Shyam Sundar, General Manager (Sales and Marketing) at Balram Beverages Pvt. Limited (BBPL), was pondering over the final decision regarding whom to offer the post of Deputy General Manager - Sales. Choice was between Sandeep, Arun and Vimal. Sandeep was an ex-employee of BBPL and had worked with Shyam from 2006 to 2015 as a Sales Manager - Route to Market. Arun Mohan was from a very reputed Indian fast moving consumer goods company, which operated through an entirely different channel than BBPL, and dominated the packaged fruit juice market in India. Shyam expected the sales figures of Coca Cola and BBPL would increase considerably over the next few years due to the natural growth in the market and the planned increase in the product portfolio. The key to harnessing the growth and profitability would be essentially by expanding the distribution channel to include the fruit juice / milk product specific retail outlets, and by driving execution excellence and productivity of the sales force. He wondered how important would be the stability of the sales force as compared to the need to infuse new talent and knowhow about new channels in the sales team. It was further complicated by the resignation of Vimal Dhingra, one of his best performing and trusted Market Expansion Managers, who was tasked with growing the untapped and small rural markets. Vimal however shared that only if he were offered the position of DGM - Sales by BBPL, he would be ready to take back his resignation. How much risk he could take in recruiting someone in senior level of the sales team was a debate for him, also the likely signal that his choice would give to the entire 200 strong field force was unknown.

Sustainability marketing research: current status and future challenges

This paper reviews the academic literature on sustainability marketing, compile, classify and analyse the papers to understand the role of sustainability as a marketing strategy and provide a comprehensive bibliography. A range of databases from 1960-013 were researched. One hundred and fifty one articles were selected and each of these was further reviewed and classified according to various criteria. The content analysis led to classification of literature into three broad categories - environmental, social and economic sustainability which were further segregated into 15 sub-categories. The study identifies various untapped areas for further research in terms of sustainable product development process, sustainable supply chain management, sustainable consumer behaviour, etc. The findings relate to the field of marketing from selected online databases for the given time period, but not to the larger universe of literature on sustainability from other disciplines.

Stopping Territory Infringement

Sashi Kujur, Branch Manager, LPB Ltd. (a major Television marketer in India) was losing sales in Baleshwar district of Odisha as the distributor of West Bengal (neighbouring state) was selling materials in his territory at substantially lower prices. The Regional Manager of LPB was not very keen on taking any action as the region had a greater stake on West Bengal distributor and the problem was quite common in these areas across competitors and other product categories. Odisha sales team as well as the distributor were demotivated by the unabated infiltration and were also losing faith in Sashi’s leadership. The discount structure of LPB was much higher for a greater volume of sale; hence, competing on price with West Bengal was not a sustainable solution for Odisha. Sashi needed to find a long term solution for the problem and had to take concrete steps immediately.