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After completion of the case study, the students will be able to define and compute equivalent units of production, apply management accounting procedures for manufacturing businesses (Furqani Sugar Mills), calculate product cost and track product cost flows and prepare process cost summary using the weighted average method. By studying this case, learners will gain insights into the challenges and financial complexities faced by a sugar mill and how strategic decisions and economic analysis can impact the sustainability and profitability of such businesses.

This case study explained the problem Mr Zoraiz, chief financial officer (CFO) of Furqani Sugar Mill, was facing. The problems started in the month of November 2020. Mill’s owner Mr Jabbar asked him for suggestions that employees should not be laid off. So he was analysing and estimating the cost of production when increasing production. He was focusing on cost reduction in process or increasing production, and utilization of resources efficiently and effectively. This case study focused on the market segment of the sugar industry for process costing. Furqani Sugar Mill, founded in 1992 in Pakistan (Company Document), had a noble mission to improve the lives of local peasants by producing sugar and molasses. Pakistan heavily relied on agribusiness, particularly sugar production, which contributed significantly to manufacturing. However, Furqani Sugar Mill faced a dire situation despite its vital role. During the sugarcane season, it struggled due to a shortage of raw materials, primarily sugarcane. Zoraiz, the CFO, grappled with running the mill below total capacity in recent years due to two significant issues: government-fixed sugar prices and limited sugarcane supply from local farmers. The high cost of sugarcane hindered Zoraiz’s desire to operate at total capacity. Zoraiz, Furqani’s CFO, must decide what he can do so that the mill can operate at its total capacity. The future of Furqani Sugar Mill hung in the balance as Zoraiz navigated complex financial decisions while striving to uphold the mill’s legacy and commitment to the local community.

This case study is suitable for teaching in several modules, notably managerial accounting and control systems, management accounting decision-making and cost and management accounting. Specifically, it covers performance management and process costing in management accounts. It is appropriate for teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and finance.

After completion of this case study, students will be able to understand about characteristics of urban poor in the city of Mumbai which will aid in understanding about other emerging markets as well, to apply Health Belief Model to help students analyse behaviour change model, to apply social marketing strategies to popularize a social marketing cause, to learn about non-traditional intermediaries and apply to promote a social marketing cause, to apply Ansoff matrix and evaluate various strategies for growth and to analyse various challenges faced by social entrepreneurs and enable learners to arrive at solutions (applicable for social entrepreneurs and marketing executives).

This case study looked at a Mumbai-based organization, Medow Brite Enterprises, which sold sanitary napkins under the brand FeelOn to women particularly from urban poor background. The protagonist Mrs Ameeta Neel Ramesh was at the helm of the organization and was stuck with a dilemma – whether to enter rural markets or focus on selling incinerators and aid in disposing used sanitary napkins which was adding to the volume of non-biodegradable waste in the city. In 2019, Neel Ramesh made her first investment in Medow Brite. The organization had seen turbulent times during COVID-19 outbreak. However, Neel Ramesh with her astute strategy, helped the company get back on its feet. Medow Brite instead of manufacturing started procuring quality sanitary napkins from specific vendors. In contrast to many other sanitary napkins available in the market, FeelOn had cotton sanitary napkin variant without presence of plastic in the pads. Neel Ramesh had taken a different route for sale of her sanitary napkin, she conducted awareness sessions with the help of non-governmental organizations in various locations of Mumbai as well as Maharashtra. Post these sessions she sold her sanitary napkins among the attendees of the awareness sessions.

The case study can be included in marketing management course, consumer behaviour as well as social marketing courses in both undergraduate level and postgraduate level. In addition, the case study is also suitable for social entrepreneurs and marketing executives to discuss about non-traditional sales and marketing approaches, identifying unique segments and understanding behaviour change theories.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

To predict the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate accurately and provide proper guidance to investors, a method called MFTBGAM is proposed in this study. This method integrates textual and numerical information using TCN-BiGRU–Attention.

The Word2Vec model is initially employed to process the gathered textual data concerning battery-grade lithium carbonate. Subsequently, a dual-channel text-numerical extraction model, integrating TCN and BiGRU, is constructed to extract textual and numerical features separately. Following this, the attention mechanism is applied to extract fusion features from the textual and numerical data. Finally, the market price prediction results for battery-grade lithium carbonate are calculated and outputted using the fully connected layer.

Experiments in this study are carried out using datasets consisting of news and investor commentary. The findings reveal that the MFTBGAM model exhibits superior performance compared to alternative models, showing its efficacy in precisely forecasting the future market price of battery-grade lithium carbonate.

The dataset analyzed in this study spans from 2020 to 2023, and thus, the forecast results are specifically relevant to this timeframe. Altering the sample data would necessitate repetition of the experimental process, resulting in different outcomes. Furthermore, recognizing that raw data might include noise and irrelevant information, future endeavors will explore efficient data preprocessing techniques to mitigate such issues, thereby enhancing the model’s predictive capabilities in long-term forecasting tasks.

The price prediction model serves as a valuable tool for investors in the battery-grade lithium carbonate industry, facilitating informed investment decisions. By using the results of price prediction, investors can discern opportune moments for investment. Moreover, this study utilizes two distinct types of text information – news and investor comments – as independent sources of textual data input. This approach provides investors with a more precise and comprehensive understanding of market dynamics.

We propose a novel price prediction method based on TCN-BiGRU Attention for “text-numerical” information fusion. We separately use two types of textual information, news and investor comments, for prediction to enhance the model's effectiveness and generalization ability. Additionally, we utilize news datasets including both titles and content to improve the accuracy of battery-grade lithium carbonate market price predictions.

Art-infusion has become a common practice among brands across the globe. This is because marketers leverage the uniqueness and prestige of arts to earn superior profits. Hence, this research aims to understand and measure consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for art-infused products.

A questionnaire was designed based on conjoint analysis and was responded to by 470 respondents from India. The estimation of preference functions in conjoint analysis was intended to use orthogonal arrays to measure WTP.

The study reveals consumers' utility and WTP for different art-infused products. The results indicated that consumers have the highest WTP for products that have artwork dominated by the visual elements of colour, shapes and space.

The paper presents valuable findings for marketers to develop their product design and earn superior profits.

This is the first study in the domain of the art infusion phenomenon that measures WTP for non-luxury art-infused products. Also, this is the first study to measure WTP for different kinds of art forms.

Advances in digital technologies and the growing number of touch points have had a significant impact on the shopping behaviour of omnichannel customers. Several research papers have explored different facets of omnichannel, but only a few have thoroughly explored the literature on showrooming and webrooming simultaneously. This paper aims to identify the key groups of antecedents influencing customer buying behaviour in omnichannel, under the influence of digital technologies, with a particular focus on showrooming and webrooming.

Our study conducted a systematic literature review to identify the factors influencing customers’ buying behaviour in omnichannel, which have been the subject of academic discussion over the last decade. We finalized 149 articles for the thematic analysis and identified three groups of antecedents: channel-related, product-related and consumer-related with their subgroups.

Under channel-related antecedents, cost and perceived benefits, search convenience, need for interaction and situational circumstances have been identified as major attributes. The expressiveness of the product, product demonstration and search and experienced products have been identified under product-related antecedents, followed by price consciousness, past experiences, perceived risks and shopping motivations as leading attributes under consumer-related antecedents. The study revealed the multifaceted influence of digital technologies on omnichannel buying behaviour. Digital technologies are shaping the antecedents related to channels, products and consumers. Digital technologies simultaneously mediate between antecedents and the selection of a specific path within an omnichannel environment. Showrooming and webrooming should no longer be seen as general concepts. The rise of digital technologies has led to the development of new consumer journey patterns and the blurring of distinctions between showrooming and webrooming. A conceptual framework has been proposed to understand consumers' omnichannel behaviour, having considered the identified antecedents and the role of digital technologies.

This study advances the academic understanding of consumer behaviour in omnichannel under the influence of digital technologies and provides important implications for omnichannel management. With the advancement of digital technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality, retailers should implement channel integration strategies to bridge the gap between online and offline channels, providing a memorable shopping experience for omnichannel customers.

This study is unique because it identifies and analyses the antecedents of consumer behaviour in omnichannel settings under the influence of digital technologies. It also uncovers new potential combinations of showrooming and webrooming patterns. The proposed framework can help retailers in their future planning of omnichannel strategies.

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between building regulations, urban planning, and perceptions of housing affordability and prices in Prishtina, Kosovo.

A self-report survey with 1,000 respondents, selected through stratified probability sampling, provided the necessary data. Principal component analysis was applied to the questionnaire's internal structure, while regression analysis helped uncover housing affordability and housing prices perception predictors.

The study found that building regulation standards and zoning/land-use regulations reveal positive relationships with housing prices and housing affordability perception. Among these components, building regulations and standards show a stronger connection with housing affordability and price perception in comparison to urban planning and development.

By investigating the relationship between building regulations, urban planning, and housing affordability and price perception in Prishtina, the present research makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature. The findings of this research hold significant implications for policymakers, urban planners, and developers, highlighting the relevance of adopting a well-balanced approach to building regulations and urban planning in order to uphold and maintain housing affordability and understand housing price dynamics.

The novelty of this research originates from the investigation of these relationships within a rapidly urbanizing city context, contributing to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics between regulatory policies and outcomes in the housing market. Further research should examine additional dimensions and employ longitudinal designs to gain a deeper understanding of the components predicting housing affordability and price perception in Prishtina and similar urban contexts.

This study aims to analyse the effect of competition on retail fuel prices in a small European Union (EU) country with high market concentration.

The researchers use a panel data set to estimate a fuel price equation that includes supply and demand factors as well as time-fixed effects.

The study finds that more competitors in the local market decrease prices, whereas the high market share of oligopoly brands does not condition this effect. Additionally, independent brands set lower prices than wholesalers, and gas stations located near the borders of almost all neighbouring countries are associated with higher prices.

The study suggests that Slovenia’s retail fuel market maintains competitive pricing despite high oligopolistic shares because of historical regulatory influences that shaped firm behaviour and pricing strategies, along with geographical and economic factors such as Slovenia’s role as a transit country. External competitive pressures from neighbouring countries and high levels of traffic, combined with the remnants of regulatory structures, help prevent market abuses and keep fuel prices lower than in other EU countries.

It also indicates that policy should encourage fiercer competition in the local market by increasing the density of gas stations, especially from independent brands.

These findings may be associated with specific country characteristics. This paper introduces unique findings that shed light on the impact of a small market on competition, with a particular focus on highlighting the effect of oligopolistic brands.

In modern societies, consumer well-being is dependent on choices regarding complex services, such as investments, health care, insurance and lending. However, evaluating costs of such services is often difficult for consumers due to a combination of limited cognitive resources and complexity of the service. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine to what extent three specific consequences of complexity influence consumer tendencies to make mistakes when evaluating the costs (or price) of complex services.

Three studies were conducted (survey: n = 153, experiment: n = 332 and conjoint analysis: n = 225), all focusing on how consumers evaluate costs in the complex mutual fund setting.

The authors find that consumers struggle with estimating and using cost information in decision-making in the complex services setting. Consumers of complex services frequently underestimate the costs over the long-term, may see costs as a signal of service quality and are susceptible to influence from presentation formats when evaluating costs.

The study investigates mutual funds, which is one example of a complex service. In order to get a full picture of how consumers deal with costs in complex setting, future research needs to expand this focus to other types of complex services.

The results have implications for both marketers of complex services and policymakers. For marketers, this paper highlights that competing with a low-cost strategy may be difficult in the complex services setting as consumers may lack the ability to actually evaluate what they pay over the long term. For policymakers, increased simplification of prices may be an attractive option. However, it is important that this simplification is done in a way that increases the possibility to compare prices.

As complexity influences several aspects of decision-making, an understanding of how consumers evaluate costs in complex settings is dependent on taking a multidimensional research approach. This paper makes a novel contribution to the literature on pricing by showing that consumers struggle with multiple aspects when evaluating costs in complex contexts. Understanding these effects is important to policy, as well as to research on the cognitive value of simplicity that is currently gaining traction in marketing research.

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

This study examines the impact of outcome uncertainty on the National Football League (NFL) secondary ticket market prices. As a demand-driven market, it is essential to comprehend how resellers respond to outcome uncertainty, one of the consumer demand factors in sports.

Using real-time ticket prices and money lines as a proxy of the probabilities of winning, this study employs a regression analysis and examines 33,554 price observations from the NFL’s secondary ticket market partner, StubHub.

The result shows a positive relationship between outcome uncertainty and secondary market ticket prices, indicating that resellers adjust the prices in response to the level of outcome uncertainty and put more value on games with greater uncertainty. This finding confirms the demand-driven nature of the secondary ticket market, as outcome uncertainty is one of the demand factors in sports.

This study links the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis with secondary ticket market pricing and fills a gap in the literature by providing an important perspective on games with uncertainty in the secondary ticket market. Outcome uncertainty has limited understanding in relation to secondary ticket market pricing despite its relationship with consumer demand. The positive relationship between outcome uncertainty and the ticket prices, grounded in real-time price data and win probability from sport betting markets, enhances our understanding of price determinations in the secondary ticket market.