Marketing Strategy: Decoding Consumer Behaviour.

 

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

–Henry Ford

After World War II, the clouds of war started to fade with each sunrise. Along with that, the economy of Japan began to flourish again. The reason behind the acceleration of the Japanese economy was the effective allocation of resources - the workforce of Japan shifted to the non-agriculture sector from the agriculture sector. As a result, the per capita income of Japan postwar rose at a 7.1% average annual growth rate.

Nescafe was the leading coffee brand of Nestle in the global coffee market and thought this would be the right time to enter the growing economy of Japan. It wasn't a secret that tea was part of Japanese culture. Nescafe thought it would be easy to replace tea with coffee to penetrate the Japanese market. They observed the Japanese consumer cautiously and carried out many focus groups to analyze the taste and preferences of Japanese consumers. As anticipated, all market research was in the favor of Nescafe, and almost all volunteers of the focus group loved the taste of coffee. Nescafe was all set to dominate the beverage market by investing a huge amount in the advertisement of the coffee brand. They shifted to the top gear and executed a rollout plan to have their coffee on each shelf in Japan at an affordable cost.

However, the result was disappointing marketers of Nestle failed to acquire Japanese consumers. Though the market research showed positive signs and the Japanese consumer loved the taste of coffee, Nestle Coffee wasn't selling in Japan. Nestle became eager to know why Japanese consumers stuck with the cup of tea. This time Nestle appointed Dr. Clotaire Rapaille to dig to the root of the problem.

Gilbert Clotaire Rapaille, a French marketing consultant had expertise in dealing with intricate marketing problems. He approached this problem with his way of doing things. Clotaire believed that the desires that drove humans were unconscious ones, and only a very few were aware enough to understand them. He called this reptilian instinct. Clotaire interviewed consumers and asked them about their

previous association of them with coffee. Surprisingly, they hadn't any childhood memory associated with coffee. Japanese kids grew up with the smell of tea and watching their parent drink tea. No wonder the Japanese chose tea over coffee as they had cultural imprints of the tea, and those imprints come with emotions.

Clotaire reached out to the brand managers with the suggestion to stop wasting money on marketing the brand as the problem was much deeper. When you first comprehend a word, you imprint its meaning on your mind and establish a mental association that will last the rest of your life. And you need some emotions to form this mental link. Neurotransmitters cannot be produced in the brain without emotion, hence a connection cannot be made. So, each word has a mental highway. In the case of Japanese consumers, the emotional link for coffee was missing.

This time Nestle rolled out coffee candies in the Japanese market to create imprints of coffee. Japanese kids started liking the taste of coffee candies and it became part of their childhood memory. Nestle cleverly moved them from candy to cold sugary coffee-flavored drinks and after that, they followed the generations. A decade later, Nestle entered the market again with the same energy. And before Japanese consumers knew their reptilian instinct chose a steamy mug of Nescafe coffee over tea. For the Japanese working class, black coffee became the reason for the short breaks between the long office hours. Furthermore, canned coffee that was distributed through vending machines became popular among the younger population.

The patience and perseverance of Nestle to understand its consumers paid off. In 2020, according to Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence’s report, the instant coffee market in japan was valued at USD 3.19 billion and expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.85% to USD 4.15 billion in 2027. Nescafe is one of the key market players in Japan.

This case study delivered by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille was an ideal example for marketers to learn the correlation between the consumer's cultural imprints and consumer preferences and their buying behavior patterns. A smart marketer should not limit his market research to the word of consumers. Consumers never buy anything unknowingly, there is some psyche behind their purchase, and sometimes they may fail to put it into words. To market their product better, marketers should understand the psychology of consumers beyond words.

Blog By:

Blog By:

Jayesh Kangare
MBA II Year 2021-23
Mail- Jayesh.Kangare@indiragbs.edu.in

Dr.Aaatish Zagade

Dy. Director

Indira Global Business School, Pune.

Mail- aatish.zagade@indiragbs.edu.in.

Next Gen Supply Chains

   Delivering promises and adding delighted customers to your business network is the underlined requirement of today’s cut-through competitive era. Every company wants to meet its delivery deadlines and quarterly goals, and an efficient supply chain can be a valuable investment towards that end.  

Supply chains around the world are struggling to serve the surging demand, post pandemic impact includes labor shortage, lack of raw materials and key components. Next generation supply chains handle these issues with IOT.  Management, forecasting, and oversight applications help fleet managers to improve efficiency in processing and add transparency to decision making. It is a growing practice nowadays even for small business. 

 

 There are many reasons for using IoT in supply chains. Like real- time location tracking can be done with the help of IoT, it provides decision makers with real time data regarding the location of the product and transportation environment. Alerts can be sent when the product is shipped in the wrong direction, also monitoring delivery of ready goods and raw materials is possible. IoT supply chain solutions gather data about temperature inside the vehicle or warehouse, pressure, humidity that could impact the product’s integrity and trigger automatic condition adjustment. With the help of real time tracking, companies can monitor goods during shipment and predict the delivery as well as forecast and mitigate risks associated with delays. These trackers are also used in warehouse automation with little or no human supervision. 

Forecasting plays a key role in decision making, thanks to IoT and data analytics, helping supply chain managers plan routes with the visibility to, traffic alert, weather, accidents, or other delay-including occurrences.  

Significance of IoT in supply chain: If you are still wondering how IoT can improve supply chain efficiency, here is your answer.  

When you build your supply chain with machine learning, you can reduce logistics and transportation costs with shipping routes that maximize flexibility in case of an emergency. It provides predictive maintenance and repair schedules for valuable equipment. Real-time decision-making prevents geographic supply shortage-based on data from multiple systems. Data analytics helps with handling massive data efficiently, this data if compiled can provide effective machine learning models. 

Machine learning provides real time visibility of organization, delivery network, inventory management, it helps process massive amounts of data and distill it. This level of visibility enables the organization to respond to changes quickly and share real-time information with supply chain vendors, partners, and customers.  

 

As IoT is still an emerging technology some challenges are yet to be overcome. Most supply chains are universal, and it is not secure to accept what’s accessible and how things work in your domestic geology and how your products travel. Those gaps within the organizations can make a part of issues when the rest of your frameworks are depending on steady streams of information all through the supply chain. We know that the complexity for execution happens within the IoT environment since the IoT gadgets are connected to multiple points, such as endpoint gadgets, mobile applications, and cloud platforms. Industries focus on cutting costs, but IOT gadgets are not affordable. They have a high price and when it comes to maintenance it needs monthly maintenance too.  

IoT offers a cognitive system that learns from and infuses intelligence into the physical supply chain world to ensure product reliability and even save lives. The future success of companies in industries are indeed heavily dependent on digitized real time supply chains. 

A promising future will make a variety of advanced technologies universally accessible, such as: Assessing manufactured products for defects or damage, verifying product authenticity at every stage of the supply chain, providing shareable visibility across supply chain networks for both commercial entities and consumers, building smart warehouses with efficient inventory management, Reducing supply chain costs, product and raw material waste and transport congestion.  

The age of intelligence has arrived, and surviving disruption will require creating it. 

References:https://www.blumeglobal.com/learning/internet-of-things/https://www.digi.com/blog/post/iot-supply-chainhttps://ubidots.com/blog/iot-supply-chain-management/https://www.digiteum.com/iot-supply-chain/

Blog by:

Mr. Amit Narayane

MBA First Year.

Email: amit.narayane@indiragbs.edu.in

 Prof. Pranita Bhujbal

Assistant Professor,

Indira Global Business School, Pune

Email: Pranita.bhujbal@indiragbs.edu.in

 

 

The Future of Work

 Flexibity is the new incentive that employees want. The future of work! It’s a question many are asking as the collective call to reimagine how and where we work is strong. The prospect is looking very exciting because lots of companies prefer remote work, freelancing, and flexible working hours. Digitalisation and globalisation have sparked radical shifts in how we live and particularly work.

Even before the pandemic, we were more likely to move jobs and to have a shorter job tenure than ever before. This was partially due to big changes in our economies, but also to new business models, with a shift towards more service jobs and more “non-standard” jobs in some countries. These are ones in which people work part-time, have temporary contracts, or are self-employed, including as “gig” workers. The future of work depends upon the changing role of human resources, new strategies in employee engagement, and the concept of influential leaders focused on unlocking human potential and pushing employees to be and do their best. No one knows exactly what the future will look like, but we do know what workers need to thrive anywhere.

· Big Emphasis on Wellness: Offices will be much healthier environments, whether that’s good lighting, relaxation areas, sleeping rooms, music, pets at work, etc.

· Flexible Floor Plans: When workers arrive at their office building, wearable devices will let them know what floor to go to, that can be changed based on sensor data.

· The future demands offices configured in new ways to support diverse, flexible, and tech-enabled workforces. Technologies are forcing companies to reconsider their offices. Virtual meetings are more effective and also, it’s less expensive than Indoor office meetings and virtual meetings allow people to collaborate from anywhere in the world. SaaS (Software as a service) tools or apps like Teams, Skype, Zoom, and GoToMeeting make meetings and communication very easier. Cloud computing and office 365 enable businesses to offer remote working as a part of their company culture.

· We are in the midst of a monumental shift in the way people work. Nobody knows exactly where we are in 2022, but we all know that there will be more interaction with technology and that the nature of work will transform more and more.

· The global pandemic has gotten to be one of the most prominent quickening agents for working environment change of our lifetime It’s clear now, that the pandemic has forced organizations to change their working lifestyle or we can say because of the Covid-19 organizations conceptualised working remotely, re-thinking trade travel. Sectors like the manufacturing sector or industries from the primary sector, which could not even have dreamt of working remotely, found novel ways to embrace this change. Now just head into the 2021 work environment, how we work, where we

work, and the innovations we utilize to remain associated with group individuals and clients will alter until the end of time.

Trends Shaping the Future of Work:

1. Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication: The Future of Work depends upon the changeful act of the workforce, new approaches in attendant date, and the idea of powerful directors fixated on unlocking human potential and aggressive agents expected and do their best. This extending field is reviewed inside the circumstances of many energies, and skilled are few creative idea heads providing visions into what the future of work will appear and by what to favourably lead guests in the right route and espouse the changes.

2. Driving Employee Experience: We live experientially. The climbing significance of the program that controls display has comprehensive to the institution also. Working, still, the attendant occurrence is not restricted to the mechanic’s interfaces unique – each interplay that an attendant has accompanying the arranging right from the entertainment industry of application to when the worker leaves or retires.

3. Unique and new technology: If there’s an individual element, we can all agree on, it’s that the realm of work is changeful… and it is superfast. In the future of work, the synonym to “late adopter” will be “out of business.”

Undoubtedly, the workplace needs a new purpose—and organizations that clearly define it can unlock competitive advantage.

References: https://www.business2community.com/human-resources/top-20-blogs-future-work-0801411 https://www.spiceworks.com/hr/future-work/articles/future-of-work-key-trends/ https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/Future-of-the-workplace?cid=other-soc-lkn-mip-mck-oth---&sid=7287165378&linkId=174030078

Blog By

Ms. Sayali Thigale

MBA First Year

Email- Sayali.Thigale@indragbs.edu.in

Dr. Priyanka Darekar

Assistant Professor

Indira Global Business School, Pune

Email- priyanka.naik@indiragbs.edu.in

FACTOR INVESTING: Insights to stay ahead of the curve

 

Blog by: Ms. Kaushiki Bugde and Dr. Supriya Desai

“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

The art and science of investing are constantly evolving. Every investor is unique and has specific financial goals and requirements. Hence, investors need an investment strategy that is customized to their needs.

When you decide to buy a mutual fund, investment experts ask you to assess your risk tolerance levels, the time horizon of investing, and financial goals to choose the right funds for you. However, there are different strategies used by experts to choose investments. Today, we are going to talk about one such strategy – Factor Investing.

Factor Investing is a strategy of investing where investments are chosen based on certain factors that can help generate higher returns, increase diversification, and manage the overall risks of the investment portfolio. While factor investing has been used by experts for a long time, it is only recently that it has started gaining popularity among investors. There are two broad categories of factors that are used in this investment strategy:

Common factors used in factor investing:

While there are hundreds of factors that you can choose from, here are some of the most commonly-used factors.

➤➤ Value: When you use value as the factor, you try to find stocks that are being traded at prices lower than their fundamental values. By investing in such stocks, you can earn high returns when they increase in price to match their intrinsic values.

There are many financial ratios that can help you identify undervalued stocks including: Price to Earnings Per Share (EPS) or P/E Ratio Price to Book Value or P/B Ratio Price to Sales or P/S Ratio Price Earnings Growth Rate Ratio [PE/Annual EPS Growth Rate] Debt to Equity or D/E Ratio Debt to Asset or D/A Ratio Dividend Payout Ratio, and many more

There are many mutual fund managers that base the fund’s portfolio using the value. If you are planning to get started with Factor Investing and want to invest in

a basket of value stocks, then you can consider investing in such funds. Note that, there are various mutual funds that use factor-based investment strategies.

➤➤ Size of the company: This factor can help investors identify small-cap companies that have the potential to offer better returns than large-cap stocks.

➤➤ Quality of the company: This factor helps identify stocks of companies that have strong corporate governance, low debt, and consistent returns. Such stocks tend to outperform their peers. You can identify high quality stocks by using factors like: Return on Equity or ROE Ratio Earnings Stability Dividend growth stability Cash flows, and many more

➤➤ Momentum: This is an important factor as it allows investors to choose stocks that have witnessed strong growth in recent quarters. While the reasons behind the growth may vary, some investors look for stocks that have momentum on their side and invest in them.

➤➤ Volatility: Some investors believe that stocks with low volatility can earn higher risk-adjusted returns than those with higher volatility. They choose stocks based on the volatility in their prices.

➤➤ Dividend Yield: This factor can help you identify stocks that have a higher dividend yield than the sector average. Many investors believe that such stocks tend to outperform stocks with lower yields in the long run.

➤➤Active and Passive investing: Active and Passive investing are investing techniques used by investors and fund managers across the world. In active investing, you choose stocks and mutual funds based on your research and analysis. You monitor your investments and buy/sell them based on their performance. In passive investing, you invest in an index fund or a set of securities where you try to benefit from the growth of the said set.

When one understands the factors to be considered for factor investing and employ the strategies best suited for them, they can earn exceptional returns. To summarize, factor investing is a simple yet beneficial concept for financial market traders. It helps gain the necessary knowledge required to assess the returns over risks for an investment strategy.

Ms. Kaushiki Bugde

Mail- Kaushiki.Bugde@indiragbs.edu.in

Dr. Supriya Desai

Mail- supriya.desai@indiragbs.edu.in

The next big thing: Meta-marketing

 

Blog by : Ms.Saumya Jadoun & Dr.Aatish Zagade

                The 21^st century has been special if we take into consideration the extent to which we have innovative technology or its applications. Products or services that we have admired in sci-fi movies have become reality today, to name a few are drones, flying cars, and self-driving cars. Mankind has been always in the pursuit to build something magnificent, till date we have been only using technology but now it’s time to enter the submersive mode of technology. Here we would like to help the readers understand a magnificent technology, it’s the virtual universe that we all can be part of and it’s known as Metaverse.

Metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds that facilitate social connection and serves as a  bridge between real and virtual worlds. The Metaverse refers to a virtual environment that includes different internet services, such as gaming, socializing, and business opportunities, all within an immersive virtual reality universe. The most remarkable advantage of the metaverse would be the fact that it completely makes geographic barriers insignificant. Once you’re in the virtual world, your physical location doesn’t matter anymore and you are no longer bounded by it. The metaverse will play as a neutral space where everyone can meet without any inequity to some extent. The things are different in the metaverse with social interactions and events being way more happening, allowing users to experience a personal connection with their friends and loved ones. Physical proximity or presense is no longer a limiting factor for any event or gatherings you may want to attend. Social media has helped to create many business opportunities and gave rise to a new form of marketing and advertising on such platforms, the metaverse will likely provide even bigger opportunities.

Metaverse offers a completely immersive way of nurturing and promoting products and services using new marketing and advertisement strategies like virtualized storefronts, organized  shows, and highly interactive customer relationship and customer service. This means that you can see the product, hold it, and even feel it using tactile technology. This type of interaction will aid both the consumer and business, as both sides will receive a better user experience on Metaverse. Traditional methods of marketing are really not enough anymore.                  Metaverse Marketing is a new concept that will enhance the ways of marketing your products on a digital platform and increase the customer base by showing the virtual existence of your product on Metaverse.

Marketing strategies must be meaningful and fascinating to be considered successful and this is exactly why metaverse is guaranteed to achieve this for businesses of all sorts in the near future. In some ways, the critical aspects of marketing in the metaverse favour those of designing authentic and enhancing brand experiences in the physical world. But the application of these aspects in the metaverse can be very different. Many approaches are done for driving value online to evolve, the effective engagement of consumers in the metaverse that will require its evolving recipe for success. Targeting is an important process through which an advertiser identifies its target audience and then advertises to them through a variety of channels. By constructing the right user platform, understanding user habits, and finding the right base to reach them, a marketer uses process of targeting to improve the performance of the different campaigns. So marketers on Metaverse should think of targeting and segmenting their user audience. Marketers are aware that Gen Z and millennials are main focused target audiences. These users rely on technology and already use some forms of Metaverse, such as virtual reality. Marketers should create unique and mesmerizing experience similar to those they provide in the real world.

Let’s take an example of Hyundai Motor Company for Metaverse Marketing - ‘In October Hyundai Motor Company launched Mobility Adventure, a metaverse space on Roblox that features Hyundai Motor’s products and future mobility solutions. The combinely shared virtual space let users meet and experience Hyundai’s mobility facilities and customize their avatars. As the first virtual experience on Roblox designed by a global automotive brand, Hyundai Mobility Adventure is targeteing at young consumers who are advance in technology at exploring the virtual worlds. By familiarizing them with Hyundai Motor’s products and services and different future mobility solutions. Hyundai Mobility Adventure nurtures a ever-lasting relationship with users’. So let’s step into the virtual world of Metaverse and amplify the new methods of Metaverse Marketing.

 

References:

·         https://www.practicalecommerce.com/12-examples-of-brands-in-the-metaverse

·         https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/marketing-in-the-metaverse-an-opportunity-for-innovation-and-experimentation    

Ms, Saumya Jadoun MBA 21-23 Batch

Indira Global Business School, Pune

Mail- saumya.jadoun@indiragbs.edu.in 

Dr. Aatish Zagade

Dy. Director

Indira Global Business School, Pune

Mail- aatish.zagade@indiragbs.edu.in

From an Engineer to an MBA in Finance.

Greetings, I am Ankit, A couple of years ago I was a Mechanical engineer surrounded by machines, tools, equipment and a lot of drawing sheets. Today, I am surrounded with calculators, numbers, charts and a lot of excel sheets. But things which I always enjoyed were common in both of these fields i.e. brainstorming and analysis. I always watched my idol self as working in a team solving strategic challenges and making key managerial decisions. This kind of life was more probable after an MBA. But why Finance you would ask.

I entered IGBS with an open heart open for every possibility whichever would put me in a position where I can become my idol self as soon as possible. I knew academically branches of MBA were all common for first year. I read every subject with equal enthusiasm. But I find myself inclining towards subjects like Managerial Accounts and Indian Economy. I was getting a very crucial and foundational understanding on the topics like National Income, GDP, Balance Sheets, Cost management, etc. Further I discovered that doing an MBA in Finance opens new opportunities for CFA, CMA, CPA and even CA. These are the people working in top management at MNC. I decided to take Finance as my area of specialization.

When I shared my decision with my peers I faced some resistance that how could I tackle Finance as a non-commerce background student. Here, I would like to thank all the faculty of IGBS all were very supportive especially, Dr Supriya Desai Ma’am my mentor and our Director, Dr. Virendra Tatake sir. She understood that it is very difficult to cope up with subjects like Managerial Accounts especially for a non-commerce background student and taught accordingly. She assured me that it is not a bad decision to go for Finance with an engineering background on the contrary it is much sought after combination in corporate world. IGBS also arranged its career development program where we are provided with certification like finance gym, derivatives market, interacting with industry leaders and financial modelling.

Cumulative efforts of IGBS faculty, my batch mates and peers helped me drastically in my journey. For helping me work in technical skills as well as soft skills, I was fortunate enough to secure a placement from campus itself. I am really very grateful for all the guidance and learnings that I got from the institute. One important thing which I underestimated all my life and now I cherish the most is the relationships with people around me. MBA made me realize people will always be at the center of business, every project in fact every step of your life. I would like to end my blog with a Pop culture reference from a popular TV show ‘The office’ – “A good manager doesn't fire people. He hires people and inspires people. People, Ryan. And people will never go out of business.”

Blog By

Ankit Bhimte MBA II Year Student 

Email- Ankit.Bhimte@indiragbs.edu.in

Indira Global Business School, Pune

TEACHERS FOR LIFETIME

-Fatema Raja MBA I Year 

Few call them a teacher, some others guru, while some call them mentors and I call them my life makers. The ‘Teacher’ is not a word its an emotion. Life began with the most merciful teacher, God. God is the only teacher who teaches you without actually teaching you. People say you get a teacher at every step of your life, but I have only three categories of teachers, God the Almighty, My family and my core teachers.  Someone has rightly said “School is the temple and teacher is God”. In this blog, I would like to express about my core teachers. Let’s go back to school days and figure out how teachers, a resemblance of God has made our lives different.

With eyes full of tears and a water bottle around my neck, beautifully dressed with an identity card attached with a handkerchief on the left of the uniform, I was forced to go to school and there I came across my first God like teacher Miss Pasquina Norman. She was the one who held my hand and made me understand the importance of schooling. I still remember reciting, “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, and things wise and wonderful, the good God made them all”. Here I understood the most basic but the most important lesson of life. From there my journey towards learning started.

A good teacher believes in you, when you lack faith in yourself. Being a student from science background, taking up commerce in graduation was a major turnaround in my career. Almost everyone discouraged me, but there was one distinguished personality amongst those people, Dr. Arzoo Rode. She was the one who believed in me. She made me believe that I can do the best and can see a topper in me. Her belief in me made me the Gold medalist of my batch. 

Roll no. 32 was call out. With the miniature of handmade fort/castle, I started walking towards Miss Nancy Thorat, my social studies teacher for evaluation of my project work. Everyone had made giant unique models, my miniature could have easily been ignored. But Miss. Thorat pointed out towards my fort and said “that’s the model I have been looking for, beautiful, Miss Raja”. The nervous low-paced walk transformed to a confident high headed walk, the nervous look on my face was now cheered up. Even now when I feel low, I just have a glance at the fort and my heart cheers up. That’s the beauty of a teacher she boosts up the confidence in you.

A teacher invents the best version of you. Do you know who made you realize that you are good at speaking or good at dancing? Yes, they were your teachers who found the best in you and brought out the best from you. I might not have been writing this blog if my teachers have not showed trust in my writing. You might give up but teacher never gives up on you.

I would like to appreciate and praise all the teachers who helped me in climbing the ladder of life. Setting high standards for me, encouraging me, motivati
ng me are the ways in which they bought a positive change in me. They are the true preachers of our lives. 

It’s sad that we remember our teachers only on the teacher’s day or day of Guru Pournima. They do not expect wishes but have a desire to hear the milestones achieved in your life. Remember the dream begins with a teacher, without teacher life would have no class. 

Blog By

Fatema Raja MBA I Year

Indira Global Business School, Pune