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Marketing management, services marketing, customer relationship management and strategic marketing management.

This case can be taught effectively to MBA/MS students.

Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) commenced operations in India in 1996 and launched its first car in India – the Hyundai Santro – in 1998. Since then, there has been no looking back for the company. Its domestic and export sales figures have risen manifold each year and the car maker has gone on to become the second largest manufacturer in the Indian car market with a market share of 18.10 percent as of 2010-2011. By 2009-2010, most of the major international car makers were setting up production facilities in India. The market was set to become highly competitive and it became imperative for manufacturers like Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) and HMIL to retain their customers in order to maintain their market share. Nalin Kapoor, General Manager (Sales & Marketing) was contemplating the marketing strategies he could use to counter the stiff competition. Customer retention was one of the major problems in the automobile industry as the purchase time span varied between three and five years and the cost of brand switching was nil. HMIL had been pursuing customer relationship management activities but its customer retention ratio was declining. Kapoor and his team decided to study the loyalty programs of some companies in the automobile industry to ascertain whether launching a loyalty card could solve their problem of retention. The marketing strategy department with the help of a management intern extensively studied the existing loyalty program of Hero Honda, MSIL, and Ford to identify how those programs were designed and promoted to the customer. The reports also indicated the shortcomings of each program and the features which were highly accepted by the customer. The loyalty program also had cost implications as there was a need for a strong technical support team to run it successfully. With the reports in hand, Kapoor was in a dilemma on whether launching a loyalty card would be feasible or not. If yes, then how should it be structured to motivate the customers to stay loyal to the company? Also, how could the cost in terms of promotion, training, and technical support be justified? If not a loyalty program, then what marketing strategies should the company pursue to retain customers effectively? The problem demanded immediate attention and action and Kapoor was well aware of the implications that a delay in decision making would have for the market share of the company in the growing and dynamic automobile industry in India.

These include: the concept of customer relationship management; relationship marketing; customer retention; customer loyalty; customer profitability segments; relationship bonds; and designing loyalty programs.

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This paper aims to build upon the various studies conducted on the ecosystem and expands the understanding of the ecosystem of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India. The discussions in this essay entail a literature review that analyzes the discourse on the ecosystem of MFIs, and based on this an attempt has been made to conceptually design a model for the ecosystem of MFIs in India.

The authors design the “Indian microfinance ecosystem model” based on the actors in the broader financial ecosystem (Bloom and Dees, 2008; Ledgerwood and Gibson, 2013) and the capital infrastructure and the context-setting factors of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem (Dees et al., 2008) that best describes the Indian MFI scenarios.

The ecosystem of MFIs in India is found to be very complicated. The interactions among numerous actors – who are core product or service providers, facilitators, client, beneficiaries, resource providers, competitors, complementary organizations, regulators, opponents and influential bystanders. The authors also observed that the capital infrastructure and context-setting factors such as policy, politics, media, economic and social conditions are equally crucial for the MFIs to survive and flourish. Moreover, the ecosystem is also dynamic and could change with the environmental conditions and entry of new entrants into the ecosystem.

Understanding the ecosystem of MFIs from the strategic perspective would also be of interest to stakeholders such as donors, investors, banks, government and so on. For MFIs, knowing their place in the ecosystem is an essential step in determining their strategy.

Understanding the elements of the ecosystem would help MFIs to assess whether they have achieved the minimum critical environmental conditions in the ecosystem for their business model to succeed.

Better understanding of the ecosystem will help create social benefits through better service delivery to the low-income population.

Expands the existing business ecosystem literature by extending it to the social policy, social entrepreneurship and more specifically to the microfinance sector. Fills a void in ecosystem literature by designing a comprehensive ecosystem model of MFIs in India. Understanding the ecosystem would help market system actors and facilitators to understand what they have to do to achieve their objectives of participating in the ecosystem. Knowing their place in the ecosystem is an essential step in determining what they should do and how they should do it. In addition to MFIs, it could have important implications for policymakers, particularly the government, that are trying to achieve financial inclusion.

Services marketing.

This case can be taught effectively to MBA/MS students. The case provides students with an opportunity to closely examine various marketing activities and to understand how problems associated with intangible services can be dealt with by using effective integrated marketing communications.

On March 1, 2011, JustEat, the world's largest and premium online food ordering and table reservation portal, acquired a 60 per cent stake in India's premium online food ordering and table reservation portal – Hungryzone. Following this, Hungryzone was rebranded as www.justeat.in. Ritesh Kumar Dwivedy Founder and CEO of Hungryzone and now the CEO of www.justeat.in, soon faced some challenges that cropped up as a result of this new development. Rebranding and the scalability of operations with the existing resources were the major causes of concern. To overcome these problems, www.justeat.in undertook several marketing initiatives and in the process implemented innovative ideas like JustConnect Terminal; introduction of the global JustEast mascots Belly and Brain to replace the existing mascot Aloo Patel of Hungryzone; and various innovative promotional activities to promote www.justeat.in. The case highlights the issues and challenges faced by the management. Finally some significant challenges yet to be resolved are posed. What should be done to deal with the problem of poaching of customers by partnering restaurants? How should www.justeat.in ensure that the partnering restaurants do not perceive it as their competitor in spite of the fact that registering with www.justeat.in helps increase their revenues by 10-15 perx cent? How should www.justeat.in convince popular restaurant chains to register with it keeping in mind the fact that they are already facing excess demand situations?

The case is designed to enable students to understand: the concepts associated with delivering services through electronic channels; communications and the services marketing triangle; key serxvice communication challenges; the integrated services marketing communication mix; strategies to match service promises with delivery; and the services branding model.

Teaching notes are available; please consult your librarian for access.