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The role of supply chain members is often relegated to an ancillary role in brand building. Do distributors serve only as a conduit for movement of products confined to the business-to-business (B2B) market or do they possess the capability to transcend boundaries and help build the brand of the products that they distribute? Using a case study methodology, an exploration has been carried out on the success journey of Al Seer Group, one of the biggest and oldest Fast Moving Consumer Goods distributors in the United Arab Emirates, driven by the vision to be a brand-building partner. The organization is propelled by a robust people strategy, a process-based operational framework, a data-driven culture and a strategic reorientation that helped them to introduce the brand-building perspective to their stakeholders. This study encourages further research interest on employee retention strategies focused on the Millennial and Gen Z workforce, challenges of data-driven organizations in implementation of emerging technologies, the role of C-suite executives in organizational strategic orientation, and the brand-building perspective of B2B distributors.

Increasing digitalization and the advent of Industry 4.0 were scrutinized on how these may influence SDG attainment in different levels. The digitalization of the business and operational models emerged as the newer source of attaining competitive advantage in the pre-COVID-19 context. The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly added more complexities to the already prevailing VUCA context of sustaining the business and development agenda irrespective of their geographic or institutional affiliations. Businesses in different industries, particularly in the developing countries, had lower or no preparedness in most cases in dealing with such uncertainties arising from the pandemic. Business firms and governments started to revise and digitalize their business models at the enterprise and institutional levels. To be very precise, MNCs in the fast-moving consumer goods industry in Bangladesh restructured their business model, at least the supply chain part, through direct and indirect digitalization of their business models, partly developing cooperation with existing e-commerce platforms. Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous focused corporate leadership and strategy helped in halting drastic slipping on the SDG millstones for Bangladesh. Despite the prevalent COVID-19 context, Bangladesh graduated to the club of the developing countries by retaining eligibility position on the gross national income index, human assets index, and economic vulnerability index. This chapter attempts to establish theoretical structuration of the links between digitalization and transformation of the business models and handling the SDG challenges.

This chapter focuses on the healthy lifestyle desideratum stretching out of the public policy realm to become a business interest in established and emerging economies. It is argued that retailers, through their marketing and social responsibility strategies, evolve into promoters of a healthy lifestyle at both social and individual levels. The selected examples from Poland illustrate how food retailers, particularly fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers, respond to the healthy lifestyle desideratum within an emerging economy.

A qualitative approach is taken. The role and potential activities of retailers to promote a healthy lifestyle are identified by theoretical studies. Then, retailers’ involvement in developing the ‘health and wellness’ market segment as a market opportunity is justified by analyses of competitive trends in Polish retailing. The marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of leading Polish retailers (representatives of different organisational forms) contributing to the development of a healthy lifestyle are presented. Data are drawn from companies’ web pages, interviews, magazines and research agencies.

Recent experience in Poland confirms the finding from previous research that the retail sector in emerging economies is rapidly progressing towards catching up with well-established practices in developed countries. On the demand side, this process is fostered by the rise of middle-class consumers, while on the supply side, the key driver is the fierce competition among international chains and domestic distributors.

Examples drawn from Polish retailing represent good business practices, the relevance of which stretches beyond their local context and renders these business practices shareable.

Awareness is raised of the importance of progressing towards a healthy lifestyle; pragmatic advice is provided on how retailers from an emerging economy can enable changes in consumers’ behaviour.

The business focus on healthy lifestyle development fills a knowledge gap since health science perspectives still prevail in mainstream research on the topic.

The study provides medium-term estimates of recovery paths for Indian economy using a dynamic factor (DF)-based approach that employs data on high-frequency indicators à la Bhadury, Ghosh, and Kumar (2020). The DFs are used to analyze the post-pandemic recovery and convergence with its pre-COVID-19 trend for India between March 2021 and March 2022. A broad sectoral assessment of the impact of COVID-19 is also conducted. In addition, forward-looking measures based on stock returns are used to analyze the transmission of additional banking sector risks to the real sectors by constructing daily delta conditional value-at-risk (CoVaR) estimates. Our estimates based on the DFs suggest that the aggregate economic activities may catch up to the estimated pre-COVID trend by March 2021 predominantly driven by the growth in services sector. The industrial sector and consumer goods sector continue to show moderate signs of recovery. Our CoVaR estimates corroborate these findings. Banking sector transmission risk is among the lowest for services such as healthcare and information technology (IT), for both the lockdown period between March 25 and June 8, 2020, and for the latter months. The transmission risk continues to remain high for metal, oil and gas, and capital goods sector. Broadly, the evidence on forward-looking banking sector risk transmission for major sectors is in alignment with our finding on their recovery based on DF models, after easing of COVID-19 lockdown.

Market research and insight generation is the art of unifying relevant pieces of information when formulating the solution to a puzzle. The present chapter contributes to the market research industry and the literature on research methods by providing a detailed snapshot of the current state of the industry in Turkey, as an emerging market, together with the future outlook. The comprehensive review in convergence with expert precepts elucidates the transformation of the industry. In the last decade, the world has witnessed a digital revolution that has affected the way in which research is conducted, and the identity of the storyteller. The consumer is the principal actor, and researchers assume the roles of co-creators and curators who are responsible for combining different forms of data. The new roles have changed the perception of the term market research and have generated new labels to denote business in the digital era. From the study, conclusions can also be drawn regarding the impact of technology and new methods upon research designs. New technologies are inspirational; they raise the industry to a higher level and allow researchers spend their time, energy and resources on the interpretation of data rather than on the gathering process. Consequently, the role of the researcher is to understand people, and hence the eternal principles of marketing research remain valid even in this new era. Professionals are expected to be courageous in their decisions and to be agile leaders who will be active participants in the transformation process of the discipline.

Since 2016, organized retailers in Colombia have struggled against a new retail format: Hard-discount stores. This sales channel fulfills essential shopping basket products with consistent low prices. To be competitive and preserve their market position, organized retailers must improve their processes and their pricing decisions. Promotions and discounts have been considered as an effective alternative to compete. This study analyzes the impact of joint prices decisions over the individual and global financial key performance indicators when a collaborative strategy is adopted. Our case study comprises a supermarket chain Colombian retailer and a consumer packaged-goods manufacturer to analyze its supply chain performance. The analysis considers different product categories (food, personal care, and cosmetics) and country regions. The results highlight that benefits are unequally distributed along different echelons and supply chain performance is affected when pricing decisions are made independently.

This paper argues that corporate efforts to serve subsistence economies must be integrated rather than disparate. Focusing on the efforts of Unilever's Indian subsidiary, the paper draws out four key lessons for businesses in low-income regions – availability, branding, convergence, and development. Four Unilever case studies are used to demonstrate how Unilever built on existing strengths, integrating diverse interventions to create Shakti, a unique pro-poor business model. The paper then analyzes the impact of the business intervention on the poor, calling for a wider convergence and cooperation between the private and the development sectors.

What core strategic capabilities should multinational and domestic firms possess to create competitive organization in Russia? In this chapter, we try to answer this question with our pilot case study of six firms operating in the Russian high-tech, low-tech, and services markets – four global companies and two Russian firms. Our research shows that customer orientation is the crucial strategic capability, highlighted by all of the firms involved in the research. For multinational and high-tech players, this is followed by research and development, mentioned by two-thirds of the respondents. Moreover, the four multinational companies leverage their strategic capabilities of cross-cultural management and general sales capabilities as keys for their success in Russia. Russian firms emphasize importance of entrepreneurship, understanding local customer needs, and an engaged team as strategic capabilities that particularly differentiate them from the multinational players in the Russian market.