The study examines the factors influencing acceptance of wearable devices among university students and teachers in Punjab. It is based on Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2). A comparison has also been made between university students and teachers to find out whether there is any difference in the factors influencing the purchase intention among these two important consumer groups. It was found that in the case of students, significant variables are price, hedonic motivation and performance expectancy. Maximum variation is explained by price (42%), followed by performance expectancy (26%) and hedonic motivation (25%). Whereas, in the case of university teachers, the significant variables are hedonic motivation and price, with hedonic motivation as the most important variable explaining 59% of variation, followed by price with 33% of variation. It is expected that the study will contribute significantly in explaining the consumer behavior towards wearable technology-based devices. FullArticle...

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With digitization, the test is to see how customers are getting more relevant content on Over-The-Top (OTT) and whether the companies are working on it to capture more markets. The main aim of the study is to identify the factors leading to buyer's choice of an OTT platform among viewers of the Pune region. This study is basically on some of these OTT platforms-Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hotstar, Voot, Jio Play, Zee5 and Alt Balaji. The participants in the study were various viewers of the different platforms. The sample included around 250 respondents to examine the viewpoint, that is, how these consumers got to know about the platforms, and which factors influence consumer choice of the different services, such as, preferred platform for watching shows, awareness medium, preferable place of watching, etc. Based on the analysis of the data, there is enough evidence to show that the factors that influence consumer choice are Ad-free viewing experience, cost of subscription, and payment options. Today, viewers are more into the digital world and the contents provided by these OTT platforms are catchier and hassle-free. Amazon Prime Video was the most preferred platform for viewers among all OTTs available in the market. FullArticle...

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As the tourism industry is very susceptible to crisis and pandemics, Covid-19 has changed its working scenario around the world. Countries put restrictions on travel movement, closed international boundaries and enforced lockdowns. Sooner or later the industry will rise again and bounce back with differentiated traveler needs and preferences. The study examines the impact of Covid-19 on tourism and analyzes the likely travel behavior and preferences of Indian travelers post Covid-19. It investigates the different aspects of post-Covid travel behavior and preferences of Indian travelers related to tour planning and selecting the destination, mode of transportation, accommodation and activities at the destination. It is empirical in nature and descriptive methods were employed to analyze the data. The study also highlights the key outcomes through a model which will help tourism stakeholders, including the travel companies, to have a clear understanding of Indian travelers' changed needs and behavior towards traveling post Covid period. The study also has practical implications for the tourism service providers. FullArticle...

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Management institutes have grown by leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Some have established themselves as a brand, but many are still struggling. Apart from academics, students need healthy living and mental peace. In a critical situation like Covid-19 pandemic, it becomes very important for parents and other stakeholders that their wards stay in good and healthy living conditions. Hence, it is a must for every management institute to ensure that they provide the same. The objective of this paper is to identify the preference of students for on-campus hostel and canteen facility with reference to Kano model. The preference of offering hostel and canteen facility by the management institutes will certainly go a long way in being beneficial, as it will increase the satisfaction level of students and hence will make their stay more rewarding. FullArticle...

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The purpose of this study is to understand the Continuance intention of consumers who have adopted Mobile Shopping for Groceries (MSG) during the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, the authors propose an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by integrating the TAM with perceived threat and the continuance intention model. Gender, age, family type and prior experience were chosen as controlled variables. A total of 266 usable responses from respondents were collected using Google forms. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that Perceived Usefulness (PU) has a significant direct impact on Continuance Intention (CI) and an indirect effect through attitude (ATT) towards using mobile phones for grocery shopping. This study also found no significant impact of Perceived Threat (PT) on perceived usefulness. Based on the findings, the paper puts forth the limitations, implications for future research. FullArticle...

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The purpose of this paper is to comprehend the causes and outcomes of smartphone applications brand retention among young consumers, specially college students belonging to Gen Y in India. The smartphone applications market is witnessing one of the most competitive market conditions today because of expanded rivalry and change. Thus, it is very important for the marketer/app developer to identify variables that influence the consumer decision-making process in downloading and utilizing smartphone applications (app) brands. On this premise, and based on the insights from marketing and information technology literature, this paper attempts to investigate shoppers' decision rules in downloading/utilizing smartphone application by examining the factors that prompt customer brand engagement and the results with regard to smartphone application brands. PLS was used to analyze 232 completed survey responses out of the 650 collected responses, for testing the validity of the proposed relationship. The findings indicated that all the relationships are statistically significant, increasing the robustness of the research framework proposed in the study. FullArticle...

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With the paradigm shift in retail from brick-and-mortar stores to e-tailing, retail marketers are forced to incorporate different experiential techniques as their survival strategies. Effective marketing communication points are created through atmospheric marketing in retail. Retail organizations have started paying attention to create a positive buying atmosphere that ultimately leads to desired emotional effects in the purchasing behavior of consumers. Though this is a burning topic in the Western markets, not many studies have been conducted on this aspect in India. This current study seeks to explore the relationship between different factors of store ambience that influence consumers' perceptions towards the coffee outlets. Also, this paper provides significant statistical insights on the topic. FullArticle...

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The influence of the famous is a widely researched topic. It is equally a sure-shot success formula for marketers selling clothes, cement, life insurance, cars, electronic gadgets, seeking political endorsement, and a plethora of consumption choices. Marketers have been successful with celebrity endorsements to launch a new product, change negative attitudes towards brands, influence trial and even convince a purchase. Celebrities, though not at a comparable scale of consumer product advertising, have also shared their liking and views, and endorsed social issues ranging from immunization, safe driving to creating awareness for rare disorders. While academic studies have explored and validated the influence of a celebrity on consumption-related outcomes, is it any different when celebrities endorse behavioral change for social good? This paper presents the conceptual framework to understand the influence of the source (celebrity) and celebrity-fan relationship on the cognitive and affective components of attitude towards a social cause. The conceptual framework examines the source credibility factors (Ohanian, 1990) of source attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness and proposes the influence of celebrity-fan relationship as measured through Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) (McCutcheon et al., 2004) on the attitude outcomes mediated by Need for Cognition (Cacioppo and Petty, 1982). The conceptual research model is developed using the Eight-Step Theory Building Framework of Dubin (1978). FullArticle...

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This study proposed and verified the model of retailer-buyer relationship and presents the association among perceived association investment, perceived association quality, interactive loyalty and emotional/attitudinal loyalty. This framework was created based on De Wulf et al.'s ideal of retailer-buyer relationship exchange, and hypotheses were further established. The outcomes show that the perceived relationship investment has a direct impact on perceived relationship quality that has a direct effect on interactive loyalty intent; and in turn, interactive or behavioral loyalty intent contributes to emotional or attitudinal loyalty. FullArticle...

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This study aims at empirically examining the influence of Transcendent Customer Experience (TCE) on website patronage intentions both directly and indirectly (through two mediators, namely, attitude towards a website and attitude towards the product). In this regard, the study analyzed 120 responses collected from a large Indian university. Hypotheses testing using structural equation modeling with IBM SPSS Amos 21.0 revealed that no direct relationship exists between TCE and website patronage intentions, whereas a significant relationship exists between the two forms of attitudes (mediators). Similarly, indirect effect testing using PROCESS macro for IBM SPSS 22.0 revealed that TCE does not influence website patronage intentions when mediated only through the attitude towards the product. Full mediation as well as serial mediation effects were identified by the multiple-mediation analysis procedure. These findings led to a decent number of theoretical and practical implications. FullArticle...

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Agriculture is considered the main driving force in the Indian economy employing around 42% of the country's labor force and generating 18% of national GDP. Indian agriculture sector is facing numerous challenges, including non-adoption of agricultural technology at the farm level due to farmers' lack of access to the latest information. Farmers need to take timely effective farming decisions for improving productivity and their revenue. These decisions may be contingent on the information available to them. The government-funded extension services failed to meet the changing needs of farmers and they need to look for alternative sources of information. Mobile phones act as a good source of information dissemination. This facilitates the farming community in practicing sustainable practices. Given the important role mobile phones play in the agriculture sector, this study attempts to review the literature on factors influencing the adoption of mobile phones by farmers. The factors identified in the review are broadly categorized using content analysis. The findings revealed that there was a huge focus on studying the influence of demographic and socioeconomic factors on adoption in extant literature. Despite testing the impact of these variables in many studies, the influence of these variables on mobile phone adoption is inconclusive. FullArticle...

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Students are the principal customers for universities and institutions offering higher education. To succeed in the increasingly competitive market, it has become imperative for universities to provide overall experience in terms of quality and satisfy the needs and expectations of the stakeholders, primarily the students and the parents. This study was conceived as an attempt to determine the correlation between the dimensions of student experience quality, including service outcome quality, interaction quality and peer-to-peer interaction quality, corresponding to the overall student experience quality and loyalty. The results indicated that a significantly positive correlation exists between all these dimensions. Universities offering higher education must recognize that these dimensions are very important to retain students and enhance their loyalty towards the university. FullArticle...

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The design and implementation of strategies to enter into the base of the economic pyramid requires a thorough understanding of market potential, opportunities and challenges. Life insurance market is a less explored territory in low-income emerging countries. This paper investigates life insurance services using the 4As framework for the bottom of pyramid (BOP) market. The study conducted a systematic literature review in the BOP context, life insurance, and other related services. Literature that fulfilled certain inclusion criteria was subjected to a quality evaluation before being considered for review. The study presents a very good discussion on various key attributes, opportunities, and challenges for life insurance in the BOP market in terms of acceptability, affordability, accessibility, and awareness. Furthermore, it provides suggestions and implications for marketing life insurance in the BOP market. FullArticle...

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The aim of this study is to examine the shifting loyalty and brand switching behavior of Indian millennials in three specific categories of online businesses, pertaining to food ordering and delivery, travel booking, and purchase of fashion apparel one-commerce channels. The primary data was collected through an online survey using Google Form, with a structured questionnaire. The technique of Markov Chain analysis helped forecast the value of a variable whose future value is influenced only by its current position or state, not any prior activity. Calculation and analysis were done manually, using cross-tabulation. It was observed that in all the three selected business categories, two-thirds of loyalty is retained by the top two players in their respective industry, whereas about one-fifth to one-fourth of the market is captured by new entrants who exploit the shifting loyalty in the targeted market. In the cross-sectional study, the respondents were asked about their latest usage of the brands studied, and hence the findings may subsequently vary over time. This paper highlights application of Markov chain analysis in an Indian context. FullArticle...

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Selling and trading goods over the Internet is referred to as e-commerce. It has become convenient and this platform has redefined the conventional mode of purchasing goods and services. Besides, the active participation on social media makes it evident that there is indeed great scope for leveraging on this behavior in social commerce such as Facebook Marketplace, WhatsAppShop, LinkedIn Groups, InstagramforBusiness, etc. The purpose of the present study is to identify the social commerce preference among the youth in an emerging economy like India through word-of-mouth promotions, satisfaction that is also aligned to the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of the social commerce platforms, observing the placement of the four social commerce platforms using MDS technique, and identification of pain points they faced while having their social commerce experiences. As social commerce is expected to have the potential to overthrow e-retail in the future, the study holds major significance in the present market scenario. FullArticle...

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Previous researchers have made an attempt to study trust as an antecedent to student loyalty in higher education institutions but took a very narrow view, thereby treating it as a unidimensional construct. This study conducted an empirical investigation considering all aspects of brand trust that would be useful to fill this gap in the literature. A non-proportionate stratified random sampling technique was adopted and data was collected from 580 respondents. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), followed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), was used. The results show that different dimensions of trust have different impact on student loyalty. The main contribution of this study lies in validating a diverse measurement model of brand trust in the education context, which includes components like reliability, benevolence, credibility and integrity studied as separate dimensions, that was so far examined narrowly by previous researchers. By using these components as individual antecedents, the study was able to evaluate the relative effects of those on student loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. This in itself is a novel contribution, as no prior study has examined them this way. FullArticle...

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Zomato, one of India's leading Food Service Aggregators (FSAs), was engaged in a conflict with restaurant partners over its practice of offering high discounts to customers. On August 15, 2019, hundreds of restaurants under the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) launched a logout campaign and delisted themselves from platforms of FSAs such as Zomato, EazyDiner, Nearbuy, Magicpin, and Dineout, alleging that the aggregators had distorted the food service sector through aggressive discounting and predatory pricing, which hurt the core value proposition and bottom line of restaurants. Zomato, in particular, came under severe criticism as its premium subscription-based dining out service Zomato Gold (ZG) had 6,500 restaurants partners and a total of 1.1 million subscribers in India as of August 2019. As part of the campaign, around 2,500 restaurants logged out from the ZG service. FullArticle...

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This case describes how Dabur India (Dabur) repositioned one of its popular brands, Dabur Chyawanprash, over the years. It is not only one of Dabur's renowned brands but is also a leader in the branded Chyawanprash market. Over a period of time, the brand started facing competition not only from other branded chyawanprash but also from related categories such as health drinks. Children did not find Chyawanprash as appealing as health food drinks like Horlicks, Bournvita, Complan, etc. Chyawanprash looked dated due to the changes in the modern lifestyle. Consumers had the perception that chyawanprash should be consumed when someone is not feeling healthy. Even though Dabur Chyawanprash was a market leader, its growth rate started declining. To overcome this, the company went in for a major repositioning exercise of its popular brand. FullArticle...

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The case talks about the efforts of India-based restaurant technology company Dineout Services Pvt. Ltd. (Dineout) to provide innovative technology solutions in the restaurant industry. Dineout's initiative to enhance its product profile by acquiring other companies with technical know-how is described. The case also explains how the rising prospects of the Indian restaurant industry were expected to create a strong future for Dineout. However, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically altered the restaurant industry, plunging it into losses. Responding to the changed environment, Dineout came out with a slew of new technology offerings. It remains to be seen if Dineout's re-imagining of restaurant technology would work out in its favor. FullArticle...

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IKEA's strong and determined entry into the Indian market is a marker of India's success with its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy on single brand retailing. The slow, steady and cautious approach in relaxing the FDI norms eventually led to a take-off point, whereby not only IKEA, but many other multinational retail companies would find it attractive to enter the Indian market. This would in turn bring in multiple benefits to the local economy by way of better back-end infrastructure and modern technology in manufacturing and retailing. This would also boost domestic manufacturing (thus furthering the Make-in-India cause) and create employment as well, apart from triggering several secondary and tertiary benefits. FullArticle...

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The case describes how 'Kirkland Signature,' the private label brand of Costco Wholesale Corporation (Costco), a US-based membership warehouse club, became the leading private label accounting for nearly 30% of all the private-label grocery business in the US, and how it enabled Costco, in the process, to emerge as the leading retailer in the US. Kirkland Signature, introduced in 1995, contributed to over a quarter of Costco's net sales of US$152.7 bn in 2019 and nearly 26.2% of the company's overall net sales in 2018. The case ends with a note on the future plans of Costco for the 'Kirkland Signature' product range as well as the need for it to further innovate and differentiate itself owing to the rising competition in the private label space from other retailers like Walmart and Target. FullArticle...

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This case describes the journey of Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd. (KM) to becoming China's biggest public company by market capitalization and to its key product Moutai becoming the world's top liquor brand. Though Moutai had always been renowned, the dramatic rise in its popularity in recent years was due to the marketing and branding strategies undertaken by KM from the 2000s. The case then touches upon the challenges that KM faced - supply shortages, counterfeits, and corruption scandals in its management ranks - that had the potential to adversely impact its carefully crafted brand image. In the present scenario, KM's Chairman Gao Weidong was confronted with the dilemma of growing the company keeping in mind KM's Moutai production limitations. He also had to think about ways to protect the brand image of Moutai and prevent it from being associated with bribery and corruption. FullArticle...

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The case discusses the success story of Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus in India, the world's second-largest smartphone market. OnePlus came to India in late December 2014 and in just four years emerged as the number one smartphone brand in the Indian premium smartphone segment. With the launch of its first flagship smart TV - the OnePlus TV - exclusively in India in September 2019, the company planned to develop a strong ecosystem of products in order to strengthen its premium-only brand proposition in the country. Despite its phenomenal success in India, OnePlus had several challenges ahead. These included fierce competition, issues relating to scaling offline, price-sensitive Indian consumers, low smartphone penetration, and an economic slowdown. Moreover, as OnePlus phones were getting expensive, the company faced the risk of losing price-conscious customers. As India continued to be a critical market for OnePlus, the challenges before OnePlus India were to increase adoption of OnePlus devices in the country, expand offline, crush competition, and continue to rule the premium Indian smartphone segment. FullArticle...

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The case study discusses the different digital initiatives undertaken by Tata AIA Life Insurance Company Limited (Tata AIA Life) and their impact on its business operations. The initiatives included equipping sales agents with smartphones and tablets, providing user-friendly mobile applications to customers that enabled them to access and download information and upload documents from their smartphones, implementing the Video Post Sales Calling (PSC) procedure to prevent mis-selling by agents, and deploying predictive tools to identify high-risk policies. Tata AIA Life adopted different digital technologies to simplify various post-sales services and processes such as customer service operations, redressal of customer grievances through the adoption and improvement of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric, timely payment of insurance premiums, as well as cross-selling and up-selling. The company plans to digitize more internal business operations such as data management platforms as well as external business operations such as electronic standing instructions. FullArticle...

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The case describes the various strategies undertaken by UNIBIC Foods India Pvt. Ltd. (Unibic) to create and consolidate its position in the highly competitive Indian biscuit industry. The case takes an in-depth look into the early history of the company and the differentiation strategy it used to make a market impact in the niche cookie segment. Later, it discusses in detail Unibic's marketing mix and media mix strategy. Information about Unibic's product development strategy, retail strategy, and advertising strategy is provided. The efforts of the company to grow beyond FullArticle...

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The case study is about the success of the Indian dairy cooperative society Amul during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. While several businesses including small vendors, ice-cream manufacturers, hotels, and restaurants stopped procuring milk from farmers during the lockdown, Amul collected an additional 3.5 million liters of milk daily from the farmers and paid them well. The company ensured an uninterrupted supply of milk and milk products across the country during the lockdown. It decided to double its marketing spend on advertising and branding. Amul revisited its marketing strategy, focusing on both the traditional and digital advertising space. It said the lockdown had not affected it and it went ahead with reinventing its distribution network and launching a range of immunity boosting products such as turmeric, tulsi (basil), and ginger milk. The dairy giant said its brand reputation, resilience, prompt action during the crisis, and ability to adapt to the situation would enable it to overcome any future challenges too. FullArticle...

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