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In today's competitive market subject to various uncertainties, supply chain flexibility (SCF) arose as a potential weapon to enhance the firm's performance. This paper model the effect of SCF on automobile industry performance during sales promotional schemes (SPS), which has turned out to be one of the most important marketing tools.

In view of the literature and the expert opinion taken from an automobile OEM, the SCFs and performance measures pertaining to the SPS environment have been identified. For the purpose of ranking the SCFs with respect to the performance measures, the Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP) has been applied using the direct contact method as a means for establishing the contextual relationships between SCFs and performance measures and to draw the interpreting reasons behind them.

The findings of this study along with the validity and stability of the results assessed through the system graphs and sensitivity analysis demonstrate that flexibility at the procurement end followed by the organizational end has the highest impact on the performance of the company during SPS.

Analysis of SCFs in regard to performance measures during SPS helps improve supply chain performance and offer valuable insights to the practicing managers in decision-making. This study augments the flexibility literature, by clubbing the two independent research streams, SCF and SPS.

States that, owing to major change in the field of marketing in the past 20 years, there has been an increase in the use of sales promotion. Proposes that managers in local authorities, who are responsible for the marketing of recreation and leisure services should understand the role that astute use of sales promotion can play in their marketing campaigns. Examines the meaning of sales promotion and gives a list of commonly used promotions given by local government. Reveals that careful planning, execution and evaluation of sales promotion can make it a useful tool for the recreation and leisure service manager.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Ethical Positioning Index (EPI), an innovative ranking scale based on the ethical issues in brand positioning. This paper is based on the core idea that ethics can be used as a product differentiator and can create a strategic advantage.

Five basic elements of brand positioning, brand identity, brand image, brand personality, brand awareness, and brand communication, are blended with the three basic elements of ethics; beliefs, values, and symbols and customs. The EPI emerges from the established ethical brand positioning framework and the analysis from the conducted survey which was composed of brand positioning and ethics questions.

Consumer driven weights have been obtained and a mathematical model has been proposed to evaluate the total score and finally the ranking of the brands.

The EPI parameters' weight will vary owing to the non‐existence of universal ethics and hence subsequently every cohort will have its own weight.

EPI will be an important tool from the managerial point of view as it serves as a step‐by‐step guide to compare the position of the brand in an integrated and ethical manner.

The EPI will bring a change in the ideology of the brands, making them employ more ethical perspectives in their branding, which will be highly welcomed by consumers and society.

The role of ethics in brand positioning has been studied and blended to generate a novel‐ranking scale (EPI).

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

A literature review conducted for this study showed that although different aspects of supply chain flexibility have been studied, research on the factors affecting supplier flexibility and the impact of supplier flexibility on supplier performance are conspicuously absent. The present study aims to fill in this gap in the literature.

A quantitative research design was adopted. Data were collected from 119 manufacturing companies operating in Turkey and analyzed by structural equation modeling.

The findings show that supplier flexibility is associated with environmental uncertainty, relationships with the buyer and the quality of information shared between the buyer and the supplier, but not with the level of information shared between the buyer and the supplier. The findings also indicate that supplier flexibility affects supplier performance.

The generalizability of the findings can be considered as a limitation. In the future, sector-based larger-scale studies are desirable. Also, data can be collected from both the main business and suppliers and findings may be compared.

The findings of this study help decision-makers to make more informed decisions about information exchange, supplier relationships and environmental uncertainties depending on the degree of flexibility that they request from their suppliers.

A literature review for this study indicated that there is a lack of research on the factors affecting supplier flexibility. Therefore, this research is expected to make an original contribution to the literature.

The aim of this paper is to investigate an optimal promotional strategy of intra-category cross-selling on culinary products for the fiercely competitive, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry.

A linear regression model and a Markov switching autoregressive model is used, that incorporates a retailing demand process to capture a nonlinear structure among promotional budget allocation, and evaluate promotional performance, and optimal promotional frequency within a given time span. Three product categories are applied with 39 months of time-series data from a multinational packaged food company in Taiwan.

The result shows that most previous decisions on promotional budget allocation are non-optimal – most promotional investments were either extended too long or allocated too low in stimulating sales.

This study suggests implications for the brand or category manager in removing such non-optimal promotional policies.

Previous promotional investment is evaluated by comparing the changes in promotional budget allocation. Markov's switching feedback rules are then applied to determine the proper length of equilibrium state with and/or without promotion. Finally, effective decision rules on magnitude, duration, and frequency of intra-category promotional strategy are induced.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

The exponential growth of organised retail has led to competition among mall retailers with the use of promotions to increase traffic to the stores. The footfall in the malls is dependent on the sales generated by various retail stores located in the malls. The current research analyses the role of promotions used by the retailers located in Indian malls in improving consumers’ commitment towards the mall. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of culture, personality traits like value consciousness, price consciousness and coupon proneness, and promotions used by retailers in malls on consumers’ commitment towards the malls.

Eight malls from six cities were selected by popularity and footfall. Mall-intercept technique along with systematic sampling was used to collect data from 453 mall shoppers using a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

Retailer promotions were categorised under discounts, promotional offers and loyalty cards. The findings suggest that cultural values of long-term orientation and masculinity have an impact on consumers’ perceptions towards discounts, promotional offers and loyalty programmes. Different promotional strategies had varied responses from consumers.

Mall retailers can use the findings to design promotions according to the cultural values of masculinity and long-term orientation. Loyalty programmes can symbolise status and long-term relationship with retailer. Commitment towards retailers and consequently malls could be enhanced through discounts and promotional offers. Different promotional strategies can be used to target price-conscious consumers and increase footfall in the stores. The linkages between cultural dimensions and promotional techniques would be helpful in targeting different consumer groups by designing promotions which are in line with cultural values.

The research extends the existing literature on mall retailing by analysing the importance of cultural dimensions on sales promotions strategies used by retailers in malls. The study establishes that perceptions towards retailer promotions differ across cultures. Different promotions offered by retailers generate varied response from consumers across different cultures which would influence their commitment towards malls.

To analyze the impact of temporary retail price discount on a consumer goods product category using semiparametric regression and considering different promotional price discount characteristics as well as brand characteristics.

A semiparametric regression model using Support Vector Machines, which aim to evaluate retailers' decisions about temporary price discounts, has been developed. The model is derived from the analysis of historical sales data, which provide precise evaluation of previous temporary price discounts periods. The model is also consistent with ample empirical evidence showing that historical retail sales data can be used to evaluate the impact of past promotions.

Provides an estimation of the shape of the deal effect curve, indicating which temporary price discounts are more effective to increase sales and showing the existence of different threshold and saturation levels. Confirms that promotional price discounts accelerate sales especially during week ends. Evidences that promoting high‐priced (high‐quality) brands has a stronger impact on sales of low‐priced (low‐quality) brands than the reverse and that cross‐price effects are stronger on the sales of brands with similar prices. Suggests the convenience of the use of the proposed semiparametric methodology to the study of the promotional effects considered.

It is not possible to generalize the modelled shapes of the deal effect curves. There is no information available on feature advertising nor displays. It is important to determine the generalizability of these results to the study of additional promotional effects. It would also be interesting to assume that the retailer's deal policy is exogenous.

Provides a relevant tool to assess the set of price promotional periods by the grocery retailer. With a more precise and accurate knowledge about the performance of past temporary price cuts, retailers can implement more effective promotional periods.

The paper aims to identify, prioritize and rank lean practices in the context of an Indian automotive component manufacturing organization using interpretive ranking process (IRP) and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approaches.

Lean practices are identified from the literature. Then, two hierarchical models were are developed using two distinct modeling approaches – ISM and IRP with expert opinions from an Indian automotive component manufacturing organization to analyze the contextual relationships among the various lean practices and to prioritize and rank them with respect to performance dimensions.

In the study, the hierarchical structural models are developed using ISM and IRP approaches for an Indian automotive component manufacturing organization. In ISM-based modeling, lean practices can be categorized into five levels. Top priority should be given to the motivators followed by value chain, system/technology and organization centric practices. IRP model shows the dominance relationship among the various lean practices with respect to performance dimensions.

The models are constructed from the organizational standpoint to evaluate their impact to the implementation of lean manufacturing. The study leverages the organizations to prioritize limited resources as per the hierarchy. Managers get the inter-linkages and ranking of various lean practices, which leads to a better perspective for the effective implementation of lean. The structural models also assist management to assign proper roles to employees/departments for effective lean implementation.

There is hardly any structural model of lean practices in the literature for clustering, prioritizing and ranking of lean practices. The study fills this gap and develops the hierarchical models of lean practices through IRP and ISM approaches for an Indian automotive component manufacturing organization. The results from both approaches are compared for illustrating the benefits of one over the other.