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Strategy scholars have argued that microlevel behavioral decisions by firms play a disproportionate role in making a firm nimble. Central to this issue is the interplay among several factors, such as actions by individual actors, firm-level decisions and broader changes in the economic environment that lead to a firm being successful in a competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical exploration of microfoundations research and subject the idea to empirical analysis using the constructs of customer orientation, competitor orientation and technology orientation as microfoundations of strategy.

Data collected through a key informant survey of executives were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

The results of the study suggest that the microfoundations of strategy are located more in a firm’s customer and competitor focus, rather than a technological orientation. The findings also suggest that that customer orientation is a significant component of firm-level strategy and needs to be incorporated into decision-making in firms.

This study provides a framework that integrates the structural determinants of firm performance with microfoundations theory to refine our understanding of market knowledge capability.

With increasing competition in the global marketplace, a prime and basic question for many enterprises is how to construct a global strategy for existing product mixes through standardization or localization, so as to achieve success in regional or local markets. The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer value perceptions of products, to view what variables are important to consumers, and lastly to make comparisons via a cross‐cultural study. Using the same survey method to collect data from Taipei (Taiwan), Seoul (South Korea), Shanghai (China), and Tokyo (Japan), perceived customer values of products were collected together in a List of customer values. The results yielded a wide array of both crosscultural differences and similarities in East Asia.

The aim of this study is to explore possible contingent variables that might explain these twin contradictory effects of marketing channel governance. Franchisors govern their systems to limit opportunism and enhance performance. However, the exact opposite often occurs.

This paper develops an integrative conceptual model of franchisor governance of its franchisees. This model is tested empirically with data collected from 197 Australian franchisees.

Under strong relational norms, goal congruence and outcome monitoring limit franchisee opportunism; compliance enhances franchisee performance, while opportunism reduces it. With weaker norms, outcome monitoring facilitates compliance, and goal congruence boosts franchisee performance, as does franchisee opportunism. However, norms fail to mitigate behavioral monitoring’s negative impact on opportunism.

This research confirms the positive and negative effects of franchisor governance. It also shows that norms can reverse the positive link between franchisee opportunism and performance. It additionally illustrates how goal congruence and compliance can limit opportunism and boost performance. Future research should refine this study’s measures, incorporate additional constructs into the conceptual model and test the generalizability of these findings in lesser-developed economies.

This research shows that monitoring has both positive and negative effects on franchisee opportunism and performance. To avoid monitoring’s adverse effects, franchisors are advised to enhance goal congruence, boost franchisee compliance and develop strong relational norms.

This paper shows that goal congruence, as well as franchisor outcome monitoring, can mitigate the negative effects of franchisor behavioral monitoring on franchisee opportunism, as do relational norms.

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:1. Analyze the pricing strategy followed by Netflix in India;2. Examine the challenges faced by media companies, including over-the-top (OTT) service providers, in developing content for target consumers in emerging markets; and3. Evaluate the dynamics of the Indian OTT industry and understand the effect of external and internal factors on the growth of Netflix in India.

This case discusses the dilemma faced by Netflix in India regarding pricing and content. Netflix was accused of hurting the religious and political sentiments of Indians by broadcasting bold shows such as Sacred Games and A Suitable Boy. Netflix is caught in a dilemma between its pursuit to achieve its target of achieving 100 million subscribers from India versus continuing its profitable high pricing strategy. Another key dilemma is regarding the streaming of attractive bold content which may occasionally hurt the religious/political sentiments of some Indians or stream only safe content which may be deemed as boring by its young target audience.

Undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Marketing courses in Commerce and Business Management streams can use this case.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Social interaction applications and reference tools are actively used by researchers to share and manage their research publications. Thus, this paper aims to determine the scholarly impact of selected Indian central universities.

This study analyzed 669 articles having both Dimensions citations and Altmetric attention scores published by 35 Indian central universities for 4 subfields of Computer Science using Altmetric Explorer. This paper determined each university’s contribution in the studied subfields of Computer Science and the correlation among Altmetric attention score (aggregated and individual), Dimensions citation, and Mendeley readership counts for all 669 articles and stratified percentile sets of top 25%, and top 50% of the overall number of articles.

The findings showed that Jawaharlal Nehru University had the maximum Altmetric attention score, Banaras Hindu University received the maximum Dimensions citation, and University of Hyderabad (UoH) received the maximum number of Mendeley readers. Each central university was examined individually and then ranked based on their median values of Dimensions citations and Altmetric attention scores. Further, Twitter had the maximum Altmetric coverage, followed by Google+, Patent and Facebook for the retrieved articles. A significant strong positive correlation was observed between the Dimensions citation and Mendeley readership counts for all the three categories.

Both Altmetric attention scores and Dimensions citations can help funding agencies to assess and evaluate the research productivity of these universities, thus, making important decisions such as increasing, decreasing, re-distributing their funds.

The current body of research is focused mostly on relationships between citations and individual Altmetric indicators predominantly. For most of the studies, the citations were retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar database. It was observed that by far, no study had examined the relationship between citations retrieved from Dimensions database, Altmetrics scores (both aggregated and individual) and Mendeley readership counts.

The learning outcomes are as follows:

1. enable students to appreciate how a platform company can navigate through diminishing network effects;

2. enable students to foresee the downside of scaling up a platform business;

3. enable students to appreciate the trade-off between an efficiency-centric and a novelty-centric business model for platform businesses; and

4. enable students to create a platform business model canvas for a company.

The teaching case discusses the dilemma of Akshay Chaturvedi, the founder of Leverage Edu, an artificial intelligence-enabled platform for students seeking admission to foreign universities. It had received nearly US$9.6m in funding until December 2021.

Chaturvedi wanted to make the best use of his funds, but was torn between turning Leverage Edu into an “efficient platform” and transforming it into a “novelty-centric platform”. The teaching note attempts to resolve Chaturvedi’s dilemma by analyzing competitors using the platform canvas model and determining how Chaturvedi could create and use network effects to Leverage Edu’s advantage. The case is based on secondary data that is freely available in the public domain.

This case is intended for MBA Entrepreneurship students taking a platform business elective. It can also be used in faculty and management development programs under the banner “Technology and Platform Businesses”.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

In 2010, Hero Honda (HH), the largest global two-wheeler manufacturing company (based on unit sales), terminated its 26 year old JV with Honda, effective 2014. In August 2011, HH, rebranded itself as “Hero”, with a nationwide campaign across media; over three months, the campaign was rolled out on 30 TV channels, leading websites, 200 radio stations, and 4, 000 cinema halls. Signages were changed in 4, 500 touchpoints over a weekend. The case documents the market and brand position of HH and its principal competitors, Bajaj and Honda in India, the rationale for ending the JV, the rebranding requirements, and the actions taken. Pedagogically, we evaluate the rebranding effort to sustain, create, and build consumer memories and emotions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted 222 countries across the globe, with millions of people losing their lives. The threat from the virus may be assessed from the fact that most countries across the world have been forced to order partial or complete shutdown of their economies for a period of time to contain the spread of the virus. The fallout of this action manifested in loss of livelihood, migration of the labor force and severe impact on mental health due to the long duration of confinement to homes or residences.

The current study identifies the focus areas of the research conducted on the COVID-19 pandemic. Abstracts of papers on the subject were collated from the SCOPUS database for the period December 2019 to June 2020. The collected sample data (after preprocessing) was analyzed using Topic Modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation.

Based on the research papers published within the mentioned timeframe, the study identifies the 10 most prominent topics that formed the area of interest for the COVID-19 pandemic research.

While similar studies exist, no other work has used topic modeling to comprehensively analyze the COVID-19 literature by considering diverse fields and domains.

The Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) was founded as a Non-profit to support Indian athletes in their quest to win Olympic Gold medals by bridging the gap between the best athletes in India and in the world. The support from OGQ has been instrumental to India in winning its highest number of medals at any summer Olympics. Buoyed by this success, OGQ has set up a target of achieving eight Olympic medals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. With OGQ relying on donations to support the athletes, the challenge is to market the Olympic cause by creating, communicating, and delivering the right offering for its donors.