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A global brand is bleached with the culture of the respective country
[Dr Michael Dorsch is the associate professor of Department of Marketing, University of Business and Behavioural Science, Clemson, USA. Dr. Dorsch's work has appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Financial Planning, Journal of Professional Service Marketing, and various national proceedings.]1. How has marketing evolved over the last decade and how is it different from the marketing that was practised in the 1980s and …
Automation is needed to manage complexity in marketing
[Bruce Brown is managing director of Unica Corporation's Asia Pacific operations.He oversees Unica's sales, marketing, and business development throughout the region.] 1. Can you shed some light on critical changes that are taking place in the marketing arena? As the business environment becomes complex, firms are operating under tighter internal and external constraints than ever before. For example, on the one hand we have multiplicity of communication channels leading to a need for higher spend in these areas. On the …
Street Smarts Usually Trump Academic Brilliance
Philip Anderson is the INSEAD Alumni Fund Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD, in Singapore. He is also director of the 3i VentureLab and director of the International Centre for Entrepreneurship, which includes the Caesarea Rothschild Entrepreneurship Centre in Israel. His undergraduate degree in Agricultural Economics is from the University of California at Davis, and he received his Ph.D. in Management of Organizations from Columbia University. Manoj Khatri caught up with him on his visit to India. How would you define …
Not Clean Bowled
MK: What is the right attitude to exams and results? Harsha Bhogle: It is easier said than done. It is easier for us to comment because we have the advantage of looking back at something. But if our experience is any indicator, students need to tackle an exam exactly the way a sportsman does a match. You prepare hard, the secret is in the preparation, and the executions often takes care of itself. I believe a student needs to replicate …
Anti-control freak
Maverick Ricardo Semler has been called the anti-control freak and the Mahatma Gandhi of the business world among others. The President of Semco S/A, Brazil, which is better known as the world’s most unusual workplace, was in Mumbai for an exclusive seminar last month, which was attended by eminent individuals from the Indian industry. Manoj Khatri captures the Maverick’s revolutionary thoughts: On official meetings At Semco, attending meetings are voluntary. The employees are informed about agenda of the meeting in …
Vitamin King
On his early life and his foray interest in Vitamin technology I was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1931. After partition, my family moved to India. In Pakistan, my father ran one of the biggest wholesale and retail pharmacies of the time. In 1956, after my B.Pharm, I left the Indian shores and went to London for higher education. There I acquired a post-graduate degree in pharmacy before proceeding to Germany for my doctorate in Medicinal Chemistry. After a brief …
Low penetration means big opportunity
Manoj Khatri: What are the principal drivers that influence the underlying profitability of the brown goods industry? Gulu Mirchandani: In the current market scenario, where the value erosion stands at 15 per cent for 2003-04, it is increasing becoming difficult to hold on to the bottom line. Nevertheless, the following are the key drivers of profitability in this industry: Volume Growths: The low penetration levels of these products is a big opportunity area and the industry is strongly taking this …
Superior customer experience, courtesy technology
In this era of parity in product quality and product price, the only distinct competitive advantage is superior customer service. If employed sensibly, technology can be a potent instrument in effectively enabling organisations to provide superior customer service consistently. Realising this, organisations are using technology as a competitive tool to create the customer experience that differentiates them in the market. But experts concur that technology must be used prudently, for sometimes what is designed to serve the customers ends up …
Generic positioning platforms will not work any more
MK: Can you chart the evolution of liquor industry during the last 10 years?Alok Gupta: The alcoholic beverage segment represents a vastly different scenario today in comparison to a decade ago. Since last 10 years, the Indian liquor industry has evolved at every stage. To start with, the industry has changed from being "seller’s" market to a "buyer’s" market. Consumer groups, which earlier were targeted as one large demographic island, have got fragmented into distinct psychographics’ groups. Brand and media …
Services are performances, not manufactured products
Manoj Khatri: What are the special challenges of marketing and managing services in today’s technology-driven environment?Dr. Parasuraman: The proliferation of technology-based systems offers tremendous opportunities for companies to communicate with and serve their customers. At the same time, technology-based systems are not a panacea. There is a real danger of companies going overboard in this regard. For instance, all too often companies are overeager to migrate all customers to self-service systems because of the potential for reducing …