Showing papers in "Journal of Indian Business Research in 2012"

Assessing India's lead market potential for cost‐effective innovations

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of the present study is to assess India's potential as a lead market for cost‐effective frugal innovations. This is of special interest since lead markets have traditionally existed in economically highly developed countries, whereas developing countries have faced negative country‐of‐origin effects. In the case of India a reversal of this trend may be observed, for some time. The paper aims to identify factors which are impacting India's emerging role as a fountainhead of frugal innovations. The research will have implications for locational decisions in setting up global innovation/ research and development (R&D) activities.Design/methodology/approach – The study crystallizes the inherent characteristics of frugal innovations, their development process and market success in the domestic and overseas markets by undertaking in‐depth analysis of four successful product innovations from India from multiple industries. The obtained results can be treated as critical success factors for ...

Investor sentiment, risk factors and stock return: evidence from Indian non‐financial companies

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pricing implication of aggregate market wide investor sentiment risk for cross sectional return variation in the presence of other market wide risk factors.Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs the Fama and French time series regression approach to examine the impact of market risk premium, size, book‐to‐market equity, momentum and liquidity as risk factors on stock return. Given the importance of inherent imperfect rationality or sentiment risk, the paper further investigates the impact of investor sentiment on the cross section of stock return.Findings – The choice of a five factor model is apparently persuasive for consideration in investment decisions. Stocks are hard to value and difficult to arbitrage with characteristics which are significantly influenced with the sentiment risk. It is naive to argue for the universal pricing implication of sentiment risk in a multifactor model framework.Research limitations/implications – The test as...

Cause and effect between FII trading behaviour and stock market returns: The Indian experience

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the direction of causality between foreign institutional investment (FII) trading volume and stock market returns in the Indian context. There is evidence of uni‐directional causalities from stock returns to FII flows across various sample periods. The paper attempts to establish whether net FII trading volume causes variations in stock market returns or vice versa.Design/methodology/approach – Using daily data on three different measures of FII trading volume as proxy for FII trading behaviour and S&P CNX Nifty returns, Granger‐causality approach is applied to investigate the bi‐directional causality between net FII trades and returns.Findings – Bi‐directional causality between net FII investment and Indian stock market return is observed. In general, the FIIs seem to be chasing the Indian stock market returns. It is found that FII trading behaviour resulting in heavy trading volumes may cause variations in stock market returns only in the very short‐term...

Resistance to change in Indian, Chinese and Estonian organizations

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how cultural differences influence change management in Indian, Chinese and Estonian organisations. The paper focuses mainly on the resistance to change and contributes to management research and management practices in multinational companies by improving the understanding of cultural influences on organisational change management.Design/methodology/approach – The authors interviewed 177 business consultants and managers in India, China and Estonia who had participated in change management projects. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the impact of national culture to change management.Findings – The cause of resistance was found to be mainly fear, in Indian and Estonian organisations, but in Chinese organizations it was the inertia. Increased stress was the most often experienced negative factor during change management projects in all three countries. Stress was caused mainly by leadership problems in India and by increased wo...

Linking turnover reasons to family profiles for IT/BPO employees in India

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop turnover reasons and assess their importance for various family role configurations. Specifically, the authors were interested in whether high levels of family financial obligation related to family‐related turnover reasons and whether low levels of family financial obligation related to job‐related turnover reasons.Design/methodology/approach – The authors used both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop and test the turnover reasons; this involved conducting interviews and pilot testing the turnover items, which were evaluated with factor analysis. The main study was analyzed using MANOVA.Findings – The authors developed six turnover reasons that help explain why individuals were leaving their jobs. It was also found that employees with relatively low financial obligation were more likely to leave the organization because of lack of managerial support, job content and high levels of work‐related stress.Research limitations/implications – The mea...

Role of affect and cognition in consumer brand relationship: exploring gender differences

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore gender differences in consumer brand relationships with respect to affect and cognition, also to examine the difference between genders with respect to the impact of variables such as age and influence of peers and family on consumer brand relationshipsDesign/methodology/approach – For this study, a field experiment approach was used, combined with depth interviews. The experiment was a three‐step process where respondents were first taken through a Resonant Field Imaging (RFI™) in order to identify the types and function of all bio‐energies present in the specific regions of the human brain. In the second step, this was followed by a conversation of about 30 minutes about the respondent's most preferred brand. As the final step, a brain scan was again taken to access the bio‐energies in the brain of the respondent subsequent to the conversation about the most preferred brand.Findings – The authors find that while both men and women form relationships with...

Karma orientation in boundary spanning sales employees: A conceptual framework and research propositions

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this article, based on the Indian philosophy of Karma that all individual actions have the power to bring joy or sorrow based on the nature of action, is to propose a new construct, salesperson's Karma Orientation, and discuss its antecedents and outcomes.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews literature on oriental philosophy of Karma yoga, and on self‐leadership, and self‐control to propose the new construct, its antecedents, and consequences in a sales context.Findings – The paper puts forward four dimensions of Karma orientation of salespersons: work as selfless action, work as duty towards others, detachment from work‐related rewards, and equanimity under environmental influences. Salesperson's Karma orientation is useful for developing relationship with customers, enhances selling effectiveness, ethical behaviors, and spiritual well‐being, by providing the salespersons with a sense of duty, and ownership towards their work.Practical implications – The concept of Kar...

Assessing the ethnocentric tendencies of different age‐cohorts in an emerging market

Abstract: Purpose – The main purpose of this study was to investigate what leads consumers to ethnocentrism and the effects of their ethnocentrism on attitudes toward country of origin (CO), and subsequently on purchase intentions (PI) The other objective was to study the knowledge and product preferences of different age‐cohort's, about CO of high and low technology productsDesign/methodology/approach – Results are derived from primary data collected from a consumer sample in India Data analysis was done using SPSS and AMOSFindings – The Indians, who are found to be ethnocentric, are also willing to purchase products from other countries Indian consumers showed preferences for products from the USA and Japan over China and the UK Additionally, from the result of age‐cohort analysis, age was found to have a significant effect on the attitude toward CO and product preferenceResearch limitations/implications – Consumers were asked to evaluate the attributes of foreign‐origin products without reference to a spe

Interdependence between experience marketing and business strategy

Abstract: Purpose – The extant literature on experience marketing takes a narrow functional approach engaging with issues like defining an experience brand and recommending strategies for creating a unique customer experience. The purpose of this research is to focus on the cross‐level interdependencies in the organization and examine interrelatedness between business strategy and experience marketing.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the extant literature on business strategy and experience marketing and investigating an in‐depth case study on experience marketing this article arrives at strategic principles of experience marketing. It uses an in depth analysis of a case study of an experience hotel brand covering multiple facets of its business strategy in all its complexities. Data were collected from six sources of evidence: documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant‐observation and physical artifacts. A total of 17 interviews lasting from one to several hours each were cond...

Predictors of preference for financial investment products using CART analysis

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 degr...

Analysis of churn behavior of consumers in Indian telecom sector

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of the usage pattern of non‐revenue earning customers (NREC) who cause revenue churn in the company and are susceptible to churn in the near future. These NREC customers were analyzed to discern a pattern in their usage and to serve as proactive measure to prevent customer churn.Design/methodology/approach – Data from a leading telecom service provider were analyzed. The company has around seven lakh consumer mobile users. Within the seven lakhs consumer mobile users around two lakh customers are active users, i.e. revenue earning customers. This group of active customers also consists of around 37,388 customers who move to dormant state (from revenue earning to non‐revenue earning) every month. These customers were analyzed to understand their susceptibility to churn.Findings – Analysis of revenue dump data indicates consumers with overall usage revenue per minute greater than 75 paise (USD 0.01) and those with greater usage of value a...

Innovation strategies of Indian market leaders

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the innovation strategies, and to understand the role of innovation, in the growth of Indian market leaders.Design/methodology/approach – This paper synthesizes recent research on the innovation strategies of Indian companies. It identifies innovation strategy in terms of dimensions used in prior literature such as exploration vs exploitation, market‐pull vs technology push, internal vs external development of capabilities, and product vs process innovation. It also identifies different organizational processes used by Indian market leaders to drive innovation. Finally, it identifies future innovation management challenges likely to be faced by Indian companies.Findings – Market‐leading Indian companies focus their attention on business model innovation for affordability. They use technology as a means to deliver such innovation rather than innovating in technology per se. They display a high level of ambidexterity in their innovation strategies on the fo...

Measuring dynamic effects of advertising: a case study in India

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this study is to estimate the relative contributions of individual marketing mix variables to sales as well as short‐term and long‐term effects of advertising in India.Design/methodology/approach – Time‐series data on sales and marketing mix variables have been collected for two brands. Two double‐log regression modes have been fitted on data to estimate the relative contribution of each effort as well as to isolate the amount of sales due to advertising only. In addition, a log‐linear partial‐adjustment model has been fitted on adjusted sales and advertising data to estimate both short‐term and long‐term effects of advertising.Findings – Results reveal that all the marketing mix variables have significant relative contributions to sales in both the cases. It is also found that advertising does have significant short‐term and long‐term effects on adjusted sales for both the brands.Practical implications – Findings provide a deep insight in dynamic perspective of advertising that m...

Print advertising: Vivid content

Abstract: The present research examines the effects of vivid ad content in two types of appeal in print ads as a function of individual differences in chronically experienced vividness of visual imagery. For informational ads for a functional product, vivid ad content strongly affected individuals high in reported vividness of visual imagery, in that the vivid ad produced a significantly more favorable brand attitude than did the pallid ad. In contrast, vivid content did not affect individuals low in VVI. However, for transformational ads for an experiential product, vivid content increased brand attitude regardless of individual differences in vividness of visual imagery, probably because vivid transformational ads tend to elicit strong visual images for everyone. The findings from the two experiments indicate that advertisers should use vivid, concrete worded copy in informational print ads and a vivid, experiential illustration in transformational print ads.

Recession and job satisfaction of Indian information technology professionals

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to replicate the dispositional source of job satisfaction (JS) in a different cultural setting on the backdrop of the recession of 2008‐2009 and to investigate the specific subjective job‐related aspects that influenced Indian IT professionals' overall evaluation of JS.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 221 IT employees. Pearson's correlation, partial correlation and stepwise regression analyses were used to test hypotheses.Findings – Apart from confirming the dispositional source of JS, satisfaction with nature of work, as well as relations with one's supervisor, emerged as the most important situational contributors over and above that of personality factors during recession in the Indian IT sector.Practical implications – As the personality factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion and Agreeableness showed a key role in JS of Indian software employees in adverse conditions, selection and recruitment of IT personnel should lay emphasis on these facto...

Taking India to the World: CEOs’ Perspectives on the Internationalization of Indian IT Multinationals

Abstract: Purpose – The aim of this paper is to deal with the purpose, process and prospects pertaining to the rapid internationalization of the Indian information technology (IT) services multinational corporations (MNCs) with a view to explore the issues, challenges and strategies of MNCs from emerging economies.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the key findings of in‐depth interviews with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of the top three Indian IT MNCs on a range of issues pertaining to international management.Findings – The findings suggest that the Indian IT multinationals are typical born‐global MNCs that have successfully leveraged on the availability of large and low‐cost Indian IT talent pools and have pioneered the global services delivery model from a global network of development centers. They are currently diversifying into emerging markets where they realize that they need to localize their workforce and business models. They face several challenges in globalizing their talent pool ...