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Marketing Management, Marketing Strategy and Marketing Communication.

The case is targeted at students of post-graduation and under-graduation programs in Business Administration, specializing in Marketing Management or Marketing Strategy.

Mukesh Ambani’s announcement about the launching of Reliance Jio at the 41st Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in June 2015 sent shock waves in the telecom industry. Everyone, including the customers, competitors and the entire telecom industry, was excited to know whether Reliance Jio would be able to make a dent or fizzle out like a weak firecracker. Was it time for the top players to be worried and pull their socks up or will it be an inconsequential ripple in the ocean? Mukesh Ambani saw the telecom sector from a new viewpoint and proposed a complete set of solution in the form of Reliance Jio SIM card that addressed the different needs of customers through various applications. This has spread rumors of a merger between Idea and Vodafone in India, which can have a huge impact on Reliance Jio and the telecom sector in general. The profitability indicator that was earlier determined as the average revenue per user (ARPU) will continue to dominate. The companies will be scrambling to find different ways to increase the ARPU to maximize the returns. This would also lead to a downsize in the cost in such a way that their operations do not suffer and profitability is also not negatively affected.

To better understand the entry strategy of firms in highly volatile business situations. To know about the competitors and their contribution to the operational and strategic changes of a new entrant. To understand the proceedings associated with marketing communication for establishing a product in a highly competitive market. To know about the impact of joining hands with the competitors on a new entrant.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The past decade has witnessed the growing importance of partnerships by small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Yet, despite the popularity and presumed strategic importance of partnerships, partnerships by SMEs often fail and many SMEs turn to self‐reliance operation modes. This study explores industry and firm factors which affect SMEs's choices between partnerships and self‐reliance operation modes. Identification of these factors has important managerial implications for SMEs in their fights to overcome resource and competence limitations.

The authors collected data from 68 sample firms and ran regression models to test the propositions.

SMEs in technology industries should form partnerships. SMEs that are seeking foreign markets should form partnerships to pool their resources and manage diversities, whereas SMEs that focus on their home markets should use self‐reliance operation modes. International expansion requires substantial resources, including country‐specific knowledge. SMEs may not have sufficient resources to overcome market entry barriers and may have to seek resources from external sources. Partnerships are not appropriate for SMEs that focus on market niches. Age places severe constraints on whether an SME should form a partnership or remain self‐reliant. Young SMEs may rely on partnerships to outsource while established SMEs may be uninterested in partnerships. Finally, SMEs that enjoy first mover advantages should not rely too much on partnerships for external resources. In contrast, SMEs that do not enjoy first mover advantages can take partnerships as an important source of external resources.

The findings of this study make important contributions to the existing strategy literature. The study identifies contextual impacts that affect SMEs' choices between partnerships and self‐reliance modes and thus explain why partnerships work for some SMEs but not others. The findings of the study also provide managers with practical guidance as to how to make strategic decisions on partnerships

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting the relative variability in farm and off‐farm income for Canadian farm operators.

Variability of farm and off‐farm income is analyzed using a dataset of 17,000 farm operators from 2001 to 2006. Relative ranking of the coefficients of variation (CV) for farm and off‐farm income are compared across farm types and are regressed against factors conditioning the variations.

Greater reliance on farm income results in lower (greater) relative variability in farm (off‐farm) income. Larger commercial operations experience larger farm income volatility because they are less risk averse or they can manage more risk. Diversification and off‐farm employment appear to be risk management strategies for commercial operations.

Government payments have a small, positive effect on farm and off‐farm income variability, indicating this support leads farmers to take on more risky activities and/or reduce the use of self‐insurance activities. Results could also be due to the lag between the time of the income reduction and the time in which the aid is received. Further research is necessary to decipher the effects of government support on farm decisions.

The results on relative variation in the farm and off‐farm income across farm type raises questions about whether government programs should target specific operations.

While income variation remains a focus of public policy, factors affecting its variability are not well‐understood. Studies have examined the level of farm income and the decision to participate in off‐farm employment but none has examined the variance in both income sources.

The case is written using secondary data sources (namely, research documents, press information, journal articles and published interviews). Publicly declared company information has further been leveraged to augment case facts. All information sources have been duly acknowledged in the reference section.

The case is written in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the Indian retail industry, revolving around scenarios in which a multinational retailer has to decide on its long- and short-term strategy in such an economic crisis. The case story has been developed around Marks and Spencer’s retail venture in the Indian market. With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting business at various levels, with countries moving to lock down and economies shrinking to recessionary levels, one of the worst affected sectors is retail. The teaching case builds upon Mark and Spencer’s initial decision of not entering and extending its food/grocery business in India. While it remained a dominant player in Indian fashion retail for almost two decades, it needs to re-think its decision of entering food retail owing to a pandemic situation affecting its offline sales/store footfall and increasing competition from global fashion brands such as Zara and H&M that had flooded the Indian fashion retail sector. The case provides a context for students to perform environmental factor and competitor analysis for a sector, with special focus on decision making in a changing crisis scenario.

This case could be used in undergraduate and MBA classroom programme, across subjects such as retail management, marketing management, international business, international business environment and strategic business management. This case fits while discussing topics such as business environmental factors, competitor analysis, decision-making under crisis, market entry decision, omnichannel retail strategy, consumer behaviour and brand management.

During the COVID-19 pandemic micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses were hit hard. This was specially so in the restaurant business where physical lockdown and social distancing norms were challenging. Thus, small business performance was a concern (Akpan, Udoh, & Adebisi, 2020). This case study addressed this theoretical aspect. Zhang, Gerlowski, & Acs (2021) had highlighted the challenges of business continuance and enterprise sustenance, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study provided insights regarding how these aspects of business continuance and enterprise sustenance were addressed by “Café Tato”. Bhattacharyya and Thakre (2021) had deliberated regarding how firms through strategic initiatives and tactical responses were required to manage COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdown. Café Tato case study was in line with these recommendations for firms. Barbieri et al. (2020) and Reardon et al. (2021) had outlined steps regarding maintaining business operations reliance given a business crisis situation like during the COVID-19 pandemic. Café Tato case study described this. Café Tato case study accommodated perspectives regarding business crisis situation, business continuance, enterprise sustenance, operations reliance, organizational strategic versus tactical initiatives and finally small business performance.

The teaching case study was written based upon primary data collected from the owners of Café Tato. Furthermore, secondary data was used for building the case.

Café Tato was the most popular and the oldest tea cafés in Goa, India. It had a presence in Panjim and Margaon in Goa. On 24 March 2020 India went into an economic and physical lockdown because of COVID-19 pandemic related crisis. One week down the line on 31 March 2020, Mr Pranav Dhuri (hereby referred as Pranav), one of the owners of Café Tato, was contemplating how to ensure business continuance once there was semi-normalcy restored. What would the initiatives that need to be undertaken was critical for success of Tato the legendary café in Goa was playing in the mind of Pranav.

This teaching case study could be used in the class for strategy planning and implementation in the course of strategic management. This case study could apply for teaching both bachelor’s and master’s students of business management. The case could also be taught to management students for helping them understand how small business firms, while confronting challenges of COVID-19, planned and implemented strategies in the course of strategic management. This study helped strategic management students understand the importance of organization culture in any business as it directly influenced the profitability and sustenance of business. The Dhuri family had all along laid stress on keeping the culture alive by taking various steps at critical times in improvising and maintaining the standards. The study also helped to understand the importance of good leadership and its direct impact on the employees in a crisis situation (COVID-19) work environment and ensure business sustenance.

The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on strategy implementation with a view to highlight the pitfalls and use these to build a new framework that could be more relevant to the conditions existing in the Indian context.

This paper provides a review of strategy implementation frameworks available both in strategy literature and in strategy texts to identify the main pitfalls in effective strategy implementation and then proceeds to propose a framework that could be more suitable to the Indian context. This proposed framework is then applied and described in the context of a case study of the Reliance group of companies of India.

The proposed strategy implementation framework covers many of the aspects hitherto neglected in the frameworks suggested by researchers and authors more attuned to the Western context. Two of the major issues in strategy implementation not covered in the existing framework are of procedural and project implementation that may be considered as relevant in the Indian context.

The proposed framework is demonstrated in the case of only one Indian company. The efficacy of the framework need to be further investigated.

Application of the proposed framework is likely to result in a more comprehensive coverage of the vital issues in strategy implementation that are expected to do away with the pitfalls that are commonly experienced in the process of strategy implementation.

The paper proposes a new framework of strategy implementation based on the unique requirements of the Indian context.

The proposed use of unlatched, reverse swing flappy doors is becoming widespread in the design of residential common corridor smoke control systems. This article explores the conceptual arguments for and against the use of these systems.

This article relies on industry experience, with reference to relevant building design practices, standards and research literature, to categorise arguments. These are collated into four common areas of concern relating to compartmentation, reliability, depressurisation and modelling practices. A final comparison is made between different common corridor smoke control system types for these four areas.

The article highlights several concerns around the use of flappy door systems, including the enforced breaches in stair compartmentation, uncertainties around system reliability, the reliance on door closers as a single point of failure, the impact of day-to-day building use on the system performance and the false confidence that modelling assessments can provide in demonstrating adequacy. The article concludes in suggesting that alternative smoke control options be considered in place of flappy door systems.

Discussion on the use of flappy door smoke control systems has been ongoing within the fire engineering community for several years, but there is limited public literature available on the topic. By collating the common arguments relating to these systems into a single article, a better understanding of their benefits and pitfalls has been provided for consideration by building design and construction professionals.

This study aims to explore how certain adoption barriers of additive manufacturing (AM) technology may lead to supply chain (SC) vulnerabilities, which in turn would deteriorate supply chain resilience (SCR).

A case study of a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that uses AM technology to directly produce end-use metal parts for different industries was performed. Primary data were collected using the in-depth interview method, which was complemented by secondary data from internal and publicly available sources. The findings were compared with the existing literature to triangulate the results.

The findings indicate that certain AM adoption barriers make the SC vulnerable to reliance on specialty sources, supplier capacity, production capacity, utilization of restricted materials, importance of product purity, raw material availability, unpredictability in customer demand, reliability of equipment, unforeseen technology failures, reliance on information flow, industrial espionage, and utilities availability.

The SCR outcomes of the identified SC vulnerabilities and their interrelated AM adoption barriers are proposed in this study.

Drawing on the case study findings and the existing literature, several practices are put forward in a framework that supply chain management (SCM) may use to mitigate the identified SC vulnerabilities caused by the AM adoption barriers.

This is the first study to empirically examine and identify the SC vulnerabilities that are caused by the adoption barriers of AM technology.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as playing a pivotal role in the economic growth and technological progress of many countries, yet there is a dearth of research that examines the operational performance and strategies of these smaller enterprises, especially in the Asian context. Of particular interest is the operational posture in terms of the key operations priorities adopted by successful SMEs in carving out their own competitive niches. This study is the first to develop a taxonomy of operations strategies based on the operational performance of high performing SMEs in Singapore. As Singapore is one of the most competitive countries in the world and a highly successful newly industrializing nation in Asia, the use of Singapore data provides benchmarking and best practice information for international business communities and newly industrializing countries. Three strategic clusters were identified. Analysis showed significant differences in the operational posture, financial performance and the kinds of improvement programs undertaken by the three strategic clusters. The strategic role of operations in terms of its contribution to corporate strategic formulation and financial profitability was also investigated. Managerial implications of our findings are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, provide a systematic review of the drivers of retail on-shelf availability (OSA) that have been scrutinized in the literature; second, identify areas where further scrutiny is needed; and third, critically reflect on current conceptualizations of OSA and suggest alternative perspectives that may help guide future investigations.

A systematic approach is adopted wherein nine leading journals in logistics, supply chain management, operations management, and retailing are systematically scanned for articles discussing OSA drivers. The respective journals’ websites are used as the primary platform for scanning, with Google Scholar serving as a secondary platform for completeness. Journal articles are carefully read and their respective relevance assessed. A final set of 73 articles is retained and thoroughly reviewed for the purpose of this research. The systematic nature of the review minimizes researcher bias, ensures reasonable completeness, maximizes reliability, and enables replicability.

Five categories of drivers of OSA are identified. The first four – i.e., operational, behavioral, managerial, and coordination drivers – stem from failures at the planning or execution stages of retail operations. The fifth category – systemic drivers – encompasses contingency factors that amplify the effect of supply chain failures on OSA. The review also indicates that most non-systemic OOS could be traced back to incentive misalignments within and across supply chain partners.

This research consolidates past findings on the drivers of OSA and provides valuable insights as to areas where further research may be needed. It also offers forward-looking perspectives that could help advance research on the drivers of OSA. For example, the authors invite the research community to revisit the pervasive underlying assumption that OSA is an absolute imperative and question the unidirectional relationship that higher OSA is necessarily better. The authors initiate an open dialogue to approach OSA as a service-level parameter, rather than a maximizable outcome, as indicated by inventory theory.