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This paper aims to examine the strategic issues of risk for independent theatrical film distributors in the Hindi film industry in India.

The study adopted qualitative grounded theory approach to explore contextually relevant strategic issues of risk for independent theatrical film distributors. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with Hindi film distributors helped to gain explorative insights about the risk behaviour of film distributors operating in Mumbai “circuit”.

The findings suggest that risk faced by distributors is a function of product (film content) features, contractual terms, resources such as finance and strength of strategic alliances with the producers. The study develops a business risk model for the film distributors from a series of propositions.

The paper contributes to the literature on motion picture industry by highlighting the importance of distribution risk in the film value chain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how hybrid organisations combine institutional logics to tackle complex social needs.

A multiple case study design was followed, and cases were selected using a two-staged sampling process. Using qualitative analysis, the mechanisms through which logics are selected, prioritised and get integrated in the strategies and practices of these organisations are illustrated.

The study contributes to the literature on hybrid organisations and their ability to address social problems in two important ways. First, the paper reveals through the concept of institutional rationality why market-based organisations emerge to address complex social needs in a complex institutional context. Second, the study demonstrates that there is heterogeneity in how logics are blended externally in their strategies and in how logics are integrated internally within the organisation.

All the cases are selected from India; hence the possibility that the findings are valid only for countries with similar institutional and socio-economic contexts cannot be negated.

The policy implication is that if business organisations should embrace social goals substantively, a regulation in the form of CSR is not enough. Instead, there should be institutional provisions to promote such hybrid organisational forms where alternative logics such as community, profession, etc., are part of the core logics of the organisation.

This study connects the strategic choices of organisations with their institutional logics’ configuration in the Indian context.

Decision aids (DAs) in online retail stores ease consumers' information processing. However, online consumers do not use all decision aids in purchase decision-making. While the literature has documented the effects of individual decision aids or two decision aids at a time, no study has compared the efficacy of multiple decision aids simultaneously. Also, very few studies have looked at the use of decision aids for consumers with maximizing and satisficing tendencies. Hence, this study aims to understand the preferences of maximizers and satisficers towards online decision aids during the choice-making process.

This is an observational study with 60 individuals who were asked to purchase either a search-based or an experience-based product online. Participants' browsing actions and verbalizations during online shopping, were recorded and analysed using NVivo, and later the use of decision aids was mapped along their choice process.

Consumer's preference of decision aids varies across the two stages of the choice process (that is, consideration set formation and evaluation & choice). In their choice formation, maximizers use different decision aids in both stages, that is, filter tool and in-website search tool for search products, and collaborative filtering-based recommender systems and eWOM for experience products. Satisficers used more decision aids as compared to maximizers across the two stages for both product types.

This study is an exploratory attempt to understand how consumers use multiple decision aids present on e-commerce websites.

Collaborative filtering based recommender systems (CF–RS) are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preference similarity. Recommendations by CF–RS merely provide suggestions as “people who bought this also bought this” while, consumers are unaware about the source of these recommendations. By amalgamating CF–RS with consumers' social network information, e-commerce sites can offer recommendation from social networks of consumers. These social network embedded systems are known as social recommender systems (SRS). The extant literature has researched on the algorithms and implementation of these systems; however, SRS have not been understood from consumers' psychological perspective. This study aims to qualitatively explore consumers' motives to accept SRS in e-commerce websites.

This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of frequent online shoppers. SRS are currently not very widespread in the Indian e-commerce space; hence, a vignette was shown to respondents before they responded to the questions. Inductive qualitative content analysis method was used to analyse these interviews.

Three main themes (social-gratification, self-gratification and information-gratification) emerged from the analysis. Out of these, social-gratification acts as an enabler, while self-gratification along with some elements of information-gratification act as inhibitors towards acceptance of social recommendations. Based on these gratifications, we present a conceptual model on consumer's acceptance of social recommendations.

This study is an initial attempt to qualitatively understand consumers' attitudes and acceptance of social recommendations on e-commerce websites, which in itself is a fairly new phenomenon.

Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.

The purpose of this paper is to present different naming, packaging, and pricing strategies adopted by private label (PL) retailers in India. This study also aims to identify preferred private label brand (PLB) categories, factors influencing their selection, and the importance of cues in evaluation of PLBs. The overall purpose is to identify important areas for future research of PLBs in the wake of organized retail growth in an emerging economy (India is the context here).

This study is based on in-store observations of major Indian retail chains, longitudinal analyses of customers’ shopping bills, qualitative analyses of consumer interviews, and focus group discussions.

The results indicate that retailers primarily adopt “Sub-branding” (using the store name along with a separate brand name) and “House of Brands” (using a separate brand name only) strategies to sell PLBs in the Indian market. Groceries, food and beverages, and apparel are the preferred categories in PLB. Price, quality, and convenience are the major factors influencing PLB. Taste, ingredients, packaging, price, brand name, and store name are the main factors that are used to evaluate PLBs.

Due to the qualitative analyses and interpretation, there are limitations to this study which need to be empirically validated.

This research has implications for organized retailers in understanding the various strategies used for PLBs in India.

This study is a novel study for documenting the PLB strategies adopted by organized retailers in India. It also uses a longitudinal exploratory approach to further understanding the consumption of PLBs in India.