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The case study aims to provide students with an understanding of the challenges businesses face expanding into the home market after having an international presence through exports. It also throws light on operations in an emerging market economy – both rural and urban. The key objectives are to understand the leather footwear business operation in India, understand the challenges of expanding business in India, analyse strategies adopted to sustain and compete in India and identify the possible distribution strategies for the leather footwear business in India.

The case study focuses on Tata International Limited’s (TIL) leather and leather products business in India. The leather and leather products division was present in India since 1973 (Anand, 2020) and exported to more than 35 countries across the world (Anand, 2020). TIL did not want to miss the opportunity available in India and planned to expand its leather footwear business in the country. The company opened retail outlets in major Indian cities and an experience store in Dewas (Madhya Pradesh) in 2019. It aimed for a domestic presence along with the existing export business. However, the biggest challenge that was in front of V. Muthukumaran, head of leather products division at TIL, was how to go ahead with the idea of domestic expansion (Anand, 2020). Should the company expand the market through sister companies (Westside and Tata CliQ) in India? How and in what way should TIL plan for going through Westside and Tata CLiQ? Should Muthukumaran think of either the brick-and-mortar route or the online route or both?

This case study is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate early-stage programmes. This case study is primarily designed for use in Master of Business Administration and/or Bachelor of Business Administration programmes. The case study is ideal for courses on understanding the expansion in the domestic market, strategy, retail and international marketing. The teaching note discusses theoretical frameworks such as external environment analysis and SWOT analysis to devise distribution strategies. The case study mapped the distribution channel and decision alternatives for the company.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

After completing the case, students should be able to understand: the importance and uniqueness of the individual market and developing a suitable marketing strategy. The concept of value creation and learn the importance of developing the right value proposition to compete and succeed in a market. The target audience and how to create the right marketing mix. Competition in a digital landscape and the importance of developing an appropriate strategy to counter its rivals and position the brand effectively.

During his visit to India in December 2019, Netflix’s founder and chief executive officer Reed Hastings talked about a series of steps the company had taken in the recent past to successfully face stiff competition and move towards achieving its stated target of 100 million viewers. These steps involved significant changes in their marketing mix such as reworking their pricing, developing a rich portfolio of Indian content and building various partnerships. Since Netflix’s launch in India (December 2016), it faced fierce competition from players such as Hotstar and Amazon Prime, both of whom had developed a rich portfolio of Indian content and adopted a very aggressive pricing strategy thus, making these changes essential. At the time of their launch, Netflix had set a very ambitious target of gaining 100 million viewers within five years (by 2021) while adopting a premium pricing strategy and positioning themselves uniquely based on their international content. They quickly learned that they would have to reevaluate their approach if they wanted to achieve their target on time. The changes announced by Hastings were an effort in that direction. The moot question was whether these steps would help Netflix India reach its goal. This challenge was further compounded by an almost 40% hike in data tariffs by three major wireless carriers considering most Indians watched over-the-top media content on their mobile phones.

The case is designed for undergraduates, as well as for fundamental marketing courses in the Master of Business Administration and other graduate level programmes. It can be taught in the Principles of Marketing, Marketing Strategy and International Marketing courses. It is ideal for topics such as understanding the operation of a digital business in a new market, customer value creation and value drivers, brand and brand positioning, product promotion, strategies for business growth and expansion, fighting competition in a digital landscape.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of collective self esteem, age, income, marital status, and education of Indian women in predicting their fashion clothing involvement.

Data were collected by contacting women in their offices, colleges, and malls in five different cities of India (n=397). The self‐administered questionnaire contained items from collective self esteem and fashion clothing involvement scale.

Fashion clothing involvement of Indian women is influenced by age, importance to identity, and public esteem.

There is a large representation of the younger consumer group in the sample. This makes the study findings relevant for targeting young population groups. Distinction has not been made in the sample according to student, working women, and housewives. Further research can be undertaken to understand if women's fashion clothing involvement varies according to their working and non‐working status.

The findings can prove helpful to international and national apparel manufacturers and brands in planning branding and marketing strategies to promote fashion clothing among Indian women.

This is the first study to understand the fashion clothing involvement of Indian women with respect to collective self esteem.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the research paradigm focusing on behaviorally-based first-mover advantages (FMA) by applying the widely-accepted Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and offers insights into differences between a mature market (USA) and an emerging market (EM) (India) regarding how intentions to purchase the pioneer are formed.

Utilizing samples of 208 USA and 194 Indian consumers, hypotheses examining the underlying beliefs, attitudes, social norms and purchasing intentions regarding pioneer brands are developed and tested using structural equation modeling.

Insights from the study suggest the TRA provides a means for assessing behaviorally-based FMAs across cultures, even as manifestations of purchase intentions differ significantly. According to the TRA and findings of this study, intentions are a function of overall attitudes and social norms. In the USA, individual attitudes were found to play a more significant role than social norms in formulating purchase intention. In India, social norms played a more dominant role in intention formation.

The study represents one of the first empirical attempts to shed light on the extent of behaviorally-based FMAs in an EM and how manifestations of intention to purchase the pioneer differ from mature markets. The study expands the behavioral paradigm of analysis to include one of the most sought-after EMs today (India) and provides one of the first empirical studies to utilize the TRA in addressing behaviorally-based FMAs.

Drawing from the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, this paper aims to identify unique job demands, job resources and personal resources in the context of Indian women flexpatriates (IWFs) and understand how they manage to perform in their short-term international assignments (SIAs).

This study takes a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews of 15 IWFs.

Thematic analysis reveals dual-role workload, emotional demands and diluted importance of the assignments as job demands; opportunity for professional growth, social support and combination of work and leisure as job resources, and building up of self-esteem and self-efficacy as personal resources. Also, the unique Indian family structure, Indian women's desire to have “me-time” and zeal to strengthen their identity emerge as differentiating factors for IWFs that enhance their performance.

IWFs are enthusiastic to take up SIAs as it gives them opportunity to enhance their career and strengthen their identity. In addition to their willingness to travel, advance planning of SIAs and profiling of women based on marital status, family type and children can be done for selection.

Despite hailing from paternalistic and male-dominating society and facing familial challenges, IWFs find SIAs liberating, which gives them an opportunity to spend some “me-time,” strengthen their identity and enhance their professional growth.

This is the first qualitative study contextualizing flexpatriation with gender and region by studying Indian women professionals.

Laser land leveling (LLL) is a climate-smart technology that improves water use efficiency and reduces risk in crop cultivation due to weather variability. Hence, this technology is useful for cultivating water-intensive crops in a sustainable way. Given this background, the state government of Karnataka initiated to promote LLL in drought-prone districts and selected Raichur district for implementation. Moreover, farmers in this district had observed drought situation during monsoon paddy growing season in 2018. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the importance of LLL technology for paddy cultivation under drought conditions.

A primary survey with 604 farmer households had been conducted in Raichur in 2018. Among them, 50% are adopters of LLL who have been selected purposively and rest 50% are non-adopters who have grown paddy in the adjacent or nearest plot of the laser-leveled plot. The adoption and causal impact of LLL has been estimated using propensity score matching, coarsened exact matching and endogenous switching regression methods.

The result reveals a positive and significant impact of LLL on paddy yield and net returns to the farmers. The results indicate an increment of 12 and 16% in rice yield and net income, respectively, for LLL adopters in comparison to the non-adopters of LLL.

The major limitation of the study is that it does not adopt the method of experimental study due to certain limitations; hence, the authors employed a quasi-experimental method to look at the possible impact of adoption of LL.

There have been various agronomic studies focusing on the ex-ante assessment of the LLL. This study is an ex-post assessment of the technology on the crop yield and farmers' income in a dry semi-arid region of India, which, according to the authors, is the first in this approach.