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Marketing.

Advanced undergraduate students, MBA students, and business executives interested in enhancing their knowledge and skills of consumer behavior analysis, and marketing strategy and execution in a developing country market.

Tata Motors Chairman, Ratan Tata, noticed that Indian families with three and four family members often commuted on a two-wheel scooter or motorbike. He had a vision to make a safe family transport for the Indian masses, a four-wheel vehicle made from scooter parts. His engineers took about five years (2003-2008) to develop the product. On January 10, 2008, Tata Motors publicly announced the Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi at the target price of Rs 100,0000 ($2,500), unarguably the world’s cheapest car. Deliveries of the Nano began in June 2009. The initial target market for the Tata Nano was comprised of individuals and families who relied on a two-wheeler for transport. The value proposition was a safe, affordable, and attractive car. Initial reactions from industry analysts, dealers, and consumers were overwhelmingly positive.

In February 2010, Carl-Peter Forster (born in the UK and raised in Germany) was appointed Group CEO of Tata Motors. Monthly sales kept increasing until a high of 9,000 units in July 2010, then there were consistent declines for the next four months to just 509 units in November. In December 2010, ten months after being on the job, Carl-Peter Foster had to turn around the sales performance of Tata Nano.

Get students to appreciate the importance of understanding consumer behavior in the design and execution of marketing strategy.

Get students to understand the concept of value and how it is important at any price level, especially in comparing and contrasting consumer behavior across developed and developing country markets.

Get students to understand how marketing strategy is designed (target market selection and positioning) and executed after understanding consumer behavior.

Get students to understand how the marketing programs (marketing-mix) reinforce product positioning.

Teaching notes.

Co-marketing strategies play an important role in enabling firms to improve their competitive position. However, despite its increasing implementation, it remains a topic that is largely not researched. The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing contributions to the field of co-marketing research and the different perspectives scholars have adopted in analyzing the topic.

A literature review has been developed, as its lack seems to be a major hindrance to the development of related studies. A specific focus has been made on the adopted approaches. Five approaches have been identified, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) has been used to analyze the differences among them.

First, the analysis of the typologies of studies on co-marketing alliances is made. Also, the identified approaches are strategic-based, consumer-based, relational-based, specificity-based and evaluation-based. What emerges from the MDS is that there are two perspectives of analysis of the alliance that characterize them: the inside–outside and the wide–narrow points of view.

Limitations are mostly referred to the methodologies and the level of subjectivity they imply. For example, they are not only the choices made concerning keywords to be used and, consequently, the articles included in the analysis, but also the MDS that offers broad autonomy to the researchers in interpreting the data.

The originality of this research is that it fills an emerged gap concerning a literature review on co-marketing alliances, supporting future research in this field of study. The identification of the approaches underlines what may be lacking, providing interesting insights on possible avenues for future research.

In the Spring of 2000, questionnaires regarding the export assistance needs of all 1012 wineries in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho were mailed. These surveys, one for current exporters and one for non‐exporters, were based upon over 25 in‐depth interviews with wine industry executives as well as public, industry and private sector export service providers. Each questionnaire included a section specifically designed to identify and prioritize the assistance needs of exporting and non‐exporting wineries. The 24% return rate enhances the validity of the survey results. The purpose of this research effort is to provide export service intermediaries with an empirical model of the exporting needs of wineries so they can improve the effectiveness of their export assistance programs to enhance the global competitiveness of US wineries. Results suggest that managers in exporting wineries see great value in “advanced” export assistance needs. Managers of non‐exporting wineries place the highest value on more “fundamental” export assistance. Non‐exporters and new exporters place higher value on assistance in finding distributors than experienced exporters. Lastly, venues in which there is an opportunity to network with experienced exporters is seen as a valuable assistance tool by both exporting and non‐exporting wineries.

In the Spring of 2000, questionnaires regarding the export assistance needs of all 1012 wineries in California. Oregon Washington and Idaho were mailed. These surveys one for current exporters and one for non‐exporters were based upon over 25 in‐depth interviews with wine industry executives and export service providers. Each questionnaire included a section specifically designed to identify and prioritise the assistance needs of exporters and non‐exporters. The robust 24% return rate enhances the validity of the survey results. Among current exporters information regarding competitors, consumers and distributors specific export markets represent five of the six most highly valued assistance needs. Assistance in finding distributors and agents are especially important to inexperienced exporters and those dissatisfied with their current export programme. Non‐exporters place priority on training and assistance in understanding the fundamentals of developing a successful winery export programme. Finally, both exporters and non‐exporters give high priority to learning about the export experiences of other wineries which they feel will help improve their own international trade endeavours.

In this article, we discuss four “hot” strategic opportunities for the next three‐five year time frame arising from globalization and technology trends and present frameworks that can help business executives leverage these opportunities.

The methods used include review and synthesis of the academic and popular business literature to identify trends, opportunities and managerial problems, and conceptual analysis and inductive generalization of frameworks as useful tools for managers to deal with those opportunities.

Companies across a wide spectrum of industries have to contemplate and position themselves with respect to the following four strategic opportunities. R&D outsourcing may seem attractive from a cost perspective but appropriate safeguards have to be negotiated so that a company’s intellectual property does not get appropriated. Digital convergence requires firms to think creatively about complementary products and services without straying too far from their core competencies. Identifying customer needs and emerging markets needs new tools and techniques to be embraced for gathering market intelligence. Finally new technologies and business models should stimulate companies to develop policies on digital rights management after balancing stakeholder interests and assessing the threat of disruptive innovations.

This article identifies four current strategic opportunities that global firms should be thinking about if they are not doing so already. It discusses the benefits and challenges of getting into these areas with new technologies, new partners and new business processes. As such this article will be of interest to senior business executives responsible for setting the strategic direction of their company. Careful consideration and exploitation of these strategic opportunities will yield significant payoffs for proactive firms.

Considers two forms of strategic alliances, technological and marketing, and examines how these alliances foster formation and maintenance of intellectual capital. Empirical evidence suggests that on average, strategic alliances do create value for shareholders that is consistent with the creation of intellectual capital. Between the two, technological alliances are potentially more beneficial than marketing alliances, and more likely to create intellectual capital. Empirical evidence is consistent with the notion that the gains from alliances are not shared equally by all the partners. When intellectual capital is created by the smaller or financially weaker partner, the return may be appropriately captured by the owner of such capital through strategic alliances. However, if the intellectual capital is created by the larger or financially stronger firm which moves first in an alliance relationship, the return on this intellectual capital may be subject to opportunistic exploitation by the late moving partner.

This article develops a framework that helps clients and service providers make better decisions about whether and when to outsource, and on the appropriate type of outsourcing arrangement.

The paper is conceptual in nature.

Companies must align the governance of business functions to the underlying needs, resources, and desired outcomes. Simple procurement may suffice for acquiring standard business services such as cafeteria catering. When economies of scale exist and when transfer of explicit, codified knowledge is involved, straight‐forward transactional “lift and shift” IT and BP outsourcing arrangements will yield cost savings and efficiency. When transfer of know‐how is more tacit, and the goal is to add value to the client's customers beyond cost efficiency, longer‐term strategic outsourcing is appropriate. Finally, when there are risks to expropriation of proprietary knowledge and capital invested, transformational outsourcing is best.

The client and service provider need to ensure they do not overcommit resources in the case of transactional outsourcing while being prepared to invest adequately in strategic and transformational outsourcing. The framework helps to answer the question of when transformational outsourcing arrangements are appropriate. It also makes explicit the various risks involved, so that appropriate governance can effectively address the risks.

Many authors have written about the pitfalls of outsourcing including rushing through the initiative and not having a formal governance program. To address these, our framework advocates a comprehensive review of the entire array of possibilities, from in‐house development to simple procurement of services in the open market, as alternatives to outsourcing.

Organizational learning in inter‐firm exchange relationships poses a double‐edged sword. On one hand, inter‐firm learning is a desirable extension of organizational learning, developing a firm’s knowledge base, and providing fresh insights into strategies, markets, and relationships. On the other hand, inter‐firm learning can lead to unintended and undesirable skills transfer, resulting in the potential dilution of competitive advantage. This risk can be exacerbated by disparities in inter‐firm learning, resulting in uneven distribution of benefits and risks in the collaborative relationship. This paper articulates these two different views on inter‐firm learning, and second, develops a framework for the role of governance in regulating knowledge transfer. In particular, appropriate governance mechanisms must be crafted which match the learning intentions of the partners, the type of knowledge sought, and the designed duration for the collaboration, so as to maximize the benefits of learning while minimizing the risks. Implications for strategy and future research are offered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of different information sources on consumer health behavior during pandemics.

We collected survey data from 321 adults in a large western US city during November 2009 by mall and street intercepts. We analyzed their beliefs, attitudes and intentions with regard to adoption of the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine. We developed and tested two alternative models on the role of mass media and personal information sources on the attitude towards the disease and the intention to get vaccinated.

Our study finds that mass media and personal sources of information simultaneously impact perceived threat from disease (attitude) and the intention to get vaccinated during a global pandemic. Personal information sources are more effective than mass media sources in impacting both attitude and intention. While the impact of mass media weakens from the attitude stage to the intention stage, the impact of personal information sources increases from the attitude stage to the intention stage.

The contribution of this paper to health policy makers and marketers is to draw implications on how mass media and personal information sources could be better utilized to counter future global pandemics.

This article aims to propose a continuum of strategic engagement approaches to base‐of‐the‐pyramid (BOP) markets ranging from non‐profit and government aid to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and social entrepreneurship. A framework is presented to identify which approach to serving the BOP market makes the most sense under certain conditions, depending on availability of consumer resources to participate in the initiative, the infrastructure available for the initiative to leverage, and whether the focus of the initiative is to be self‐sustaining over time.

This is a conceptual article based on literature review and synthesis.

Eight different approaches to engage with BOP markets are recommended under different combinations of three underlying conditions: consumer resources, infrastructure availability and self‐sustainability goals.

The paper presents a continuum of strategic engagement approaches to BOP markets.