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The most awaited Summer Marketing Conference of the year was held at IIM Indore on July 27-29, 2017. The conference was organized by the Institute in collaboration with North American Society for Marketing Education in India (NASMEI). The theme of the conference was to focus on identifying ways of enriching customer values through unique product offerings supported by strong branding. The conference witnessed more than 300 paper presentations, keynote addresses and workshops and provided a platform to the research scholars to interact with the brilliant minds from various fields.
The inauguration of the conference took place with the lamp lighting ceremony by Mr. Stefan Haves, Cirque Director; Professor Philip Charles Zerrillo, Professor of Marketing (Practice), Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University and Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore. Professor Krishnan in his welcome address spoke about the various topics to be discussed during the conference and appreciated the efforts put by the organizing committee for conducting the conference so effectively.
This was followed by a talk on ‘Importance of Customer Value in Contemporary Research’ by Professor Zerrillo. He began his talk discussing about what marketing is and what role it plays in the today’s scenario. Mr. Stefan Haves, renowned for movies like Stalled (2000), Punch Drunk (1998) and A Thrilling Ride Through Kooza (2007) then enthralled the gathering by sharing his experiences. Engaging the audience, he said that everyone today prefers to sit and be a spectator, while one should always try to be a participant.
The second day of the conference began with a talk by Ms. Rama Bijapurkar, Indian Management and Marketing Research Consultant. She spoke on the topic—‘Customer Value- What the Industry Needs’. She shared insights about how the changing consumer market is affecting the marketing strategy of the industries.
This was followed by a talk by Professor Raji Srinivasan, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin. She spoke on the topic—‘Creating Value by Managing Customers (Not Products)’.
Professor Manoj Agarwal, School of Management, Binghamton University then addressed the audience on the topic—‘The Value of Customer Value to the Firm’. He noted that it’s time to link the marketing with metrics and develop correlation between CLV and firm value.
This was followed by a talk by Professor P. Venugopal, XLRI, Jamshedpur. He discussed on the topic—‘Incorporating Sustainability in the Realm of Marketing’. He said that amount of resources we are consuming today are driven by social norms and well-being is decided by the amount of things we buy and accumulate; and display the goods and services we can afford.
Professor Moutusy Maity, Faculty, IIM Lucknow spoke on the topic—‘Consumer Decision Making in a Multi-Channel World’ Discussing about the role of channels in customer decision making, she noted that a channel can be offline or online, but we tend to ignore many offline channels these days.
Professor A.K. Jain, Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad spoke on the topic—‘A Course for Bringing the Customer into the Board Room’. He emphasized on the role of customer on shaping the business strategy.
Professor S. Ramesh Kumar, Faculty, IIM Bangalore then spoke on the topic—‘Consumer Behavior in the Digital Age’. He emphasized on the need to blend digitalization with culture.
Next talk was by Dr. Sanjeev Varshney, Faculty, XLRI Jamshedpur. He spoke on the topic—‘Consumer Behavior Research Trends and its Application to Product & Service Marketing’. He focused on doing relevant research which has managerial implications.
The last two keynote addresses for the second day were by Professor Rajesh Aithal, Faculty, IIM Lucknow and Professor Prafulla Agnihotri, Faculty, IIM Calcutta. Professor Aithal spoke on the topic—‘Informal Markets and Customer Value’. Professor Agnihotri spoke on the topic—‘Disruptive Marketing’.
The third day witnessed technical sessions, along with various keynote addresses. Professor Prashant Mishra, IIM Calcutta spoke on the topic—‘Marketing Discipline at Cross Roads: Challenge and Prospects’. This was followed by a talk by Professor Rajeev Kumra, IIM Lucknow, which revolved around the topic—‘Bottom of Pyramid: Setting a Research Agenda’. Mr. Atul Bengeri, Regional Manager at Dell EMC also addressed the audience. He spoke on the topic—‘Creating Citizen Value’. He spoke about evolution of cities and how the concept of smart cities developed. Professor Ramendra Singh, Professor, IIM Calcutta discussed on the topic—‘Customer Value at the Bottom of Pyramid’. Discussing about the BOP, he noted where value co-creation at BOP went wrong, what value creation is and what are the positioning challenges faced by BOP in value co-creation. The last talks were by Ms. Shweta Shrivastava, AVP Marketing, The Kraft Heinz Company who delivered a talk on the topic—‘Creating Customer Value’ and Mr. Abhishek Verma, Director (Innovation Practice), Nielsen; who spoke on the topic—‘Measuring Customer Value Through Research’.
Workshops:
The conference witnessed three workshops as well. The first workshop of the conference focused on teaching and research, on the topic—Teaching with Cases conducted by Professor Philip Charles Zerrillo, Singapore Management University. He used a case to enhance the participants’ skills to think logically and learn how to dissect and then solve the problems. The second workshop was on the topic—Perspective on Research and Publishing, conducted by Professor Raji Srinivasan, McCombs School of Business, Texas University, USA and Professor Manoj Agarwal, Binghamton University, USA. The speakers spoke at length about perspectives in research and publications. The third workshop was also conducted by Professor Raji Srinivasan and Professor Manoj Agarwal on the topic—Networking with NASMEI. This workshop was aimed at nurturing selected research proposals from top scholars across the country and world and take them to the next level.
Awards:
Best Paper Awards:
Doctoral Category-
Users Information Privacy Concerns and Privacy Protection Behaviours in Social Networks: Evidence from India—by Kishalay Adhikari and Rajeev Kumar Panda (Rs. 25,000/-)
Overall-
- Does Counterfeiting Overrule the Marketplace?—Consumption Practices and Social Consequences: Exclusion and Inclusion—by Ajitha Soundararaj and Vj Sivakumar (Rs. 25,000/-)
- Retail Therapy Shoppers Segments: Exploring the Differences in Personality, Shopping Orientation and Impulse Buying Tendency—by Jasveen Kaur and Chandandeep Kaur (Rs.15,000/-)
- Technology Readiness Towards Banking Self Service Technologies in India—by Aditi Naidu and Romi Sainy (Rs. 10,000/-)
Teaching With Cases Awards were won by Varsha Jain and Brijesh S, who received award of Rs. 7,000/- each. The Best Proposal Award was won by Ranjitha G.P. from IIM Kozhikode, who received a prize of Rs. 15,000/-. Two awards under the category Research Perspective were also declared. These were won by C. Senthil Nathan from SRM University and Rohit Vishal Kumar from IMI Bhubaneshwar. Both won award of Rs. 5,000/-.
The valedictory session took place in the evening where participants shared their experience during the conference. The session had Professor Sharad Sarin, XLRI Jamshedpur, Professor Ashutosh Dixit, Cleveland State University, USA as the guests. They noted how the conference would help the participants enhance their knowledge in the field of marketing. They appreciated the efforts put by the Institute in organizing such a huge event.