Marketing Scenarios Research Articles

Decision support system based in AHP method to selection vendors of clinical laboratorys inputs

In a competitive marketing scenario, the purchasing area contributes significantly to the achievement of organizational goals. Its mission is to identify the competitive needs of products and services, becoming responsible for the timely delivery, costs optimization and quality. Within shopping, a correct selection of vendors is important for this to happen. From this perspective, the present study aims to develop a model that assists in the vendors’ selection process. This way, a case study was carried out in a clinical analysis laboratory located in the city of Rio Grande, where the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) was used as an intervention tool. The development process consisted in three stages. The first one aimed at structuring the model, in which the hierarchy of criteria was defined. In the second step, the judgments were carried out and the relative weights for each criterion and subcriterion were calculated. Finally, the third step aimed at applying the model developed in a purchasing process. The model was tested in a selection process that involved the evaluation of three vendors of a laboratorial input, in order to identify which one met the demands of the organization. The result obtained with its use was considered satisfactory, this way, the model was approved by the manager who participated in the structuring process of the AHP hierarchy.

Influence Maximization in Social Network Considering Memory Effect and Social Reinforcement Effect

Social networks have attracted a lot of attention as novel information or advertisement diffusion media for viral marketing. Influence maximization describes the problem of finding a small subset of seed nodes in a social network that could maximize the spread of influence. A lot of algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem. Recently, in order to achieve more realistic viral marketing scenarios, some constrained versions of influence maximization, which consider time constraints, budget constraints and so on, have been proposed. However, none of them considers the memory effect and the social reinforcement effect, which are ubiquitous properties of social networks. In this paper, we define a new constrained version of the influence maximization problem that captures the social reinforcement and memory effects. We first propose a novel propagation model to capture the dynamics of the memory and social reinforcement effects. Then, we modify two baseline algorithms and design a new algorithm to solve the problem under the model. Experiments show that our algorithm achieves the best performance with relatively low time complexity. We also demonstrate that the new version captures some important properties of viral marketing in social networks, such as such as social reinforcements, and could explain some phenomena that cannot be explained by existing influence maximization problem definitions.

A Regret Minimization Approach in Product Portfolio Management with respect to Customers’ Price-sensitivity

In an uncertain and competitive environment, product portfolio management (PPM) becomes more challenging for manufacturers to decide what to make and establish the most beneficial product portfolio. In this paper, a novel approach in PPM is proposed in which the environment uncertainty, competitors’ behavior and customer’s satisfaction are simultaneously considered as the most important criteria in achieving a successful business plan. In terms of uncertainty, the competitors’ product portfolios are assumed as different scenarios with discrete occurrence probabilities. In order to consider various customer preferences, three different market segments are assumed in which the sensitivity of customers towards the products price are considered as high, medium and low and modeled by means of a modified utility functions. The best product portfolio with minimum risk of loss and maximum customer satisfaction is then established by means of a novel regret minimization index. The proposed index aims at finding the best product portfolio which minimizes the total possible loss and regret of the manufacturer, with respect to the other competitors of the market. To better illustrate the practicality of the approach, a numerical example is presented. The results show that the selected products in the suggested portfolio have the highest utility value in all market segments and also they are expected to achieve the highest expected payoff in each possible marketing scenario.

Current Scenario of Social Media Marketing

Social Media marketing has been growing rapidly. Statista (2016) reported that spending social media marketing in the United States totaled approximately $7.52 billion and is expected to increase by almost $10 billion to $ 17.34 billion. Social media marketing has been defined as a form of Internet marketing utilizing social networking sites (SNS) as marketing tools, thereby gaining traffic, brand exposure, and interaction with customers through social media (Dodson, 2016). Most of the companies are increasing the allocation of budget for social media marketing. Marketing mangers understand that consumers trust the content created by the users rather than the firm. Social media marketing has been studied by various researchers since 2000. Specific journals like Journal of Interactive Marketing covering the areas of digital and social media marketing has been launched. Thus, substantial body of research on social media marketing has been published in the marketing journals. Academicians have published review studies on the given subject and covered the topic till 2015. The present article is an attempt to review the current scenario of social media marketing. It should be noted that the purpose is not to provide a comprehensive literature or to cite every article in this domain. The present article offers a macro-level and thematic discussion of social media marketing topics between 2016 and 2018. Thus, our contribution lies in helping the researchers understand the current scenario of social media marketing and developing the new research directions to advance the literature.

Recent advances in pomegranate production in India-a review

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an important fruit crop of arid and semi-arid regions. It has high medicinal and nutritional value and one of the richest sources of antioxidants. It is grown commercially in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. India is the world's largest producer of pomegranate covering 2.22 lakh ha area with an annual production of 26.34 lakh tonnes and productivity of 11.86 tonnes/ha. In spite of this, India exports only 1.79% of its total production. There is a tremendous potential for exports of pomegranate from India. Pomegranate has ability to withstand harsh climate and tolerate heat, drought and moisture deficit situations. The area under pomegranate cultivation in India is increasing at faster rate owing to its high demand, hardy nature, better storage quality and nutritional values. In the present review, efforts have been made to present the current status of pomegranate growing in India and discuss recent technologies adopted for pomegranate fruit production i.e. improved varieties, propagation techniques, planting systems, flower regulation, canopy management, water and nutrient management, quality management, pest and disease management, physiological disorders, grading-packaging marketing and export scenario etc.

An Experimental Approach to Assessing the Effectiveness of Official Sponsor Designations in an Ambush Marketing Scenario

An Experimental Approach to Assessing the Effectiveness of Official Sponsor Designations in an Ambush Marketing Scenario

The Frontlines of Brand Risk

Abstract Whether it be the NFL, Dove, Wells Fargo, VW or countless others–managers need only open a daily newspaper to see how things can go terribly wrong for brands. Decline can be fast and the landing hard. In a contemporary marketplace where ideologies reign and social media guarantees the spread of (mis)information at light speed, a lot of what we think we know about brand marketing needs to be rethought through a risk-management lens. “For me, brand risk is any event, action or condition with the potential to damage a brand’s value, thereby making revenue generation and a company’s market value less than it should or could have been,” Patrick Marrinan, Managing Principal of Marketing Scenario Analytica, states. In his talk with Susan Fournier and Shuba Srinivasan, Patrick illustrates the many facets of a risk that has only begun to be recognized as a serious threat to carefully cultivated brand assets. Here we share what to watch out for and what brands can do to protect against risk.

Active viral marketing: Incorporating continuous active seeding efforts into the diffusion model

Existing viral-marketing network models commonly assume a preliminary phase in which a marketer actively infects a subset of social network’s users, represented by nodes, followed by a passive viral process, in which nodes infect other nodes without external intervention. However, in real-world commercial scenarios, substantial efforts are often invested by companies to promote their products, suggesting that the adoption of products is rarely the consequence of a viral spread alone.Under this observation, this paper proposes a new diffusion model, named Active Viral Marketing, which better fits real-world marketing scenarios, where adoption of products relies on continuous active promotion efforts by the marketer. In the proposed model, the success of a marketing attempt to infect a potential customer (uninfected node), depends on the number of adopting friends (infected neighbors) of this user, assuming a user is more likely to adopt a product if more of his/her friends have already adopted it, while taking into account that social influence diminishes over time due to a memory-loss effect.The paper further proposes a set of heuristics to schedule the marketing attempts. The main idea behind these heuristics is to utilize the information on the dynamic adoption-states of neighbor nodes, in addition to the static social network topology, when choosing the next node to seed. An extensive experimentation demonstrates how the proposed seeding heuristics improve the adoption rate of products by 30%–75% in comparison to existing state-of-the-art methods that mainly rely on the network topology.

Revolutionizing Marketing Through Social Networking Case Study of Indian SME

Information today is travelling with a lightning fast speed. Networking to each corner of globe is a call of the hour for success. Social Media Networking is a buzz word in global marketing scenario. World has felt the presence of Social Media Networking in raising the ROI through various networking sites and tools like blogging etc. Several studies are there for proving role of social networking in enhancing business performance.This study investigates the role of social networking in the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises. The study is primarily exploratory in nature, both primary and secondary data is used in the study. Case study is the method used primarily in the analysis.

Interactive Online Marketing Via Digital Terrestrial Television

Background/Objectives: This paper proposes architecture for the development of interactive online marketing services via Digital Terrestrial Television. It allows reaching customers through their television, from the comfort of their homes. Methods: This job used 4+1 view model based on Unified Modeling Language for explaining the architecture. It describes two aspects that enable the online marketing services: television contents transmission and interactive contents transmission. Findings: For the first, it considers the path that makes the package from the programmers to consumers, to explain conceptually how it behaves during the tour. For the second, it described the transport of the packages by return channel. The interactive package characteristics and the server/client interactivity are too described. Later, a case study shows an online marketing scenario developed on a university television channel. Novelty: The description of interactivity, in a novel way explains how it is possible to do online marketing services taking advantage of the wealth of multimedia content offered by digital television.

Regional parties' web strategies in the age of virtual dialogue and closeness

The website continues to be one of the main axes of the political parties' communicative dimension, even though recent research prioritises analysis of the political uses on social media, especially during electoral campaigns. Setting out from this context and from the premise that regional parties tend to show a greater proximity to the society in which they are inserted, the article develops a specific qualitative and descriptive methodology focusing on the website strategies of five organisations with representatives in the Parliament of the Basque Country, an autonomous community within the Spanish State, where there is a greater interest in political affairs. As the conclusions argue, the analysed websites evidence an evolved political marketing scenario challenged by the tensions between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 political communication styles, along with the lines of a true public and social dialogue, and the current needs of politics in the age of interactivity and social media.

Improving customer satisfaction by increasing the reach: Life Insurance Corporation of India

Subject area Strategic Management and Marketing. Study level/applicability Management students (MBA). Case overview In the present times of global competition and busy schedules of individuals, it is expected that companies provide service with security, sincerity and flexibility keeping pace with changing global scenario of marketing. Service receiver expects competitive and optimum facilities with ease while sitting in any corner of the world at any time of the day. It implies that the service provider should be available at all times/all places for satisfying the needs of the customers. A daunting task ahead of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) was to change its conventional approach and work toward a newer, user-friendly one. The top management, i.e. the Board of Directors, took up the task of identifying a quicker but securer approach to provide optimum facilities to the policyholders. Expected learning outcomes Achieving customer satisfaction through alternate collection channels and retaining market share, role of customer servicing in creating competitive advantage, challenges for a large public sector enterprise – traditional approach or modern approach, role of private companies in development of insurance industry, creating awareness about the product/service through different distribution channels and use of information and telecommunication technologies to reach remote places, are the expected learning outcomes. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing

Organizational capabilities in the digital era: Reframing strategic orientation

The digital era is changing consistently the previous marketing scenarios and actual issues have to be addressed in order to close the capabilities gap created by digital innovations. Different authors call for theoretical and empirical contributions that cope with the issues brought out by the digitalization of marketing channels and the consequent ever increasing volume of digital data. This study develops a theoretical framework and propositions through a reframing and reconceptualization of previous theoretical constructs from managerial and marketing literature. The resulting model offers insights about organizational processes and capabilities needed to cope with the actual fast changing, but at the same time, data-rich environment.

Green Marketing: A Tool for Sustainable Development

Green revolutions, going green, environmental protection, sustainable life style, sustainable development, protecting our earth and many more have become a natural phenomenon in our everyday life. Green marketing is a tool used by many companies in various industries to follow this trend. This concept has enabled for the re-marketing and packaging of existing products which already adhere to such guidelines. Additionally, the development of green marketing has opened the door of opportunity for companies to co brand their products into separate line, lauding the green-friendliness of some while ignoring that of others. This paper mainly focuses on the concept, need, importance & strategy of green marketing in India. Researcher also examines the present scenario of green marketing and reasons that organizations are adopting green marketing as a tool for sustainable development. Data has to be collected from multiple sources of evidence to understand the importance of green and sustainability management, in addition to books, journals, websites, and news papers. The paper analyses whether the manufacturers are cognizant about green products and eco-labeling, and also the difficulties in implementing green marketing. A guideline is given to the Indian manufacturers for producing green marketing products.

Changing Scenario of Rural Marketing A Review

Indian rural market is attractive as well as challenging. It offers s huge opportunities to the marketers as it is in developing stage and account 80 percent consumers. The lifestyles of rural consumers have undergone wonderful changes due to growing incomes, increasing literacy rate, exposure TV and interaction with the urban counterpart. Liberalization of trade, on one side, opened up new vistas to the marketers and on the other side, posed stiff competition. The present paper is an attempt to understand changing consumption habits of rural consumers, significance of rural marketing, its problems and prospects and to make some possible suggestions. Rural marketing has certain problems. Poor and inadequate infrastructure i.e. roads, storage facilities, communication facilities, small size of outlets etc. badly affect the distribution of products to rural consumers. In addition, the literacy rate in rural India is much lower which creates communication deficiency. Illiterate consumers are more prone to fraudulent tactics of greedy marketers. The degree of consumer awareness in rural areas is too lower. Rural economy still depends on gambling of monsoon and there are considerable fluctuations in income which have deep impact on purchasing power of rural people. Rural indebtedness has been serious problem which enforced more than 5000 farmers to embrace suicidal deaths in the last five years. This is clear indication towards faulty rural credit supply system. Rural women still has no major role in purchasing. Rural marketing in India is meant considering the needs and requirements of 80 percent population and fulfilling their needs timely, adequately and at the price affordable to them. In recent years, demand for agriculture inputs has grown significantly. Special efforts are made to boost industrialization in rural areas. Rural development programmes and welfare schemes have been contributing significantly in upgrading the standard of living of rural people. Information and communication technology (ICT) is instrumental in disseminating the information about various products in remote rural areas, albeit the process is slow. Rural consumers are adopting urban lifestyles. It has resulted in ever increasing demand for white goods in rural areas. There is shortage of drinking water but you can find Pepsi soft drinks in tiny rural outlets. Dhoti–Kurta has been replaced by pant shirts. Cosmetics are in great demand in rural markets. Modernization of agriculture and rapidly growing rural industries are responsible for increased demand for capital goods. In the changing business scenario world over, rural marketing is the most preferable destination to the marketers.

Current Scenario of Global and Indian Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management

The world pharmaceutical industry has been changing profoundly in the last decade. Intensive globalization, increased competitiveness and the fight for global market shares create new challenges for pharmaceutical companies. Fast globalization definitively reinforces the consolidation of the world Pharmaceutical industry. The current shift in the marketing strategy is work by multinational Pharmaceutical Companies. It is now High-end development that is being carried out by leading companies. And, increasingly, other companies are finding themselves competing against, or working with, new innovation-based companies. My study focuses on objectives, importance, levels, theories, functions and types of pharmaceutical management and also pharmaceutical marketing, difference between general marketing and pharmaceutical marketing. Also study the overlook on Global Pharma Industry and Indian Pharma Industry. In this study the top 50 companies in 2009 and 2014 year are listed out. Also OTC segments and Pharmaceutical Policy are included in this article.

Public preferences for electricity contracts including renewable energy: A marketing analysis with choice experiments

This study aims to understand people's preferences concerning different energy sources with a particular focus on renewables. Households' preferences were assessed by means of a choice experiment on a sample of people living in Veneto (north eastern Italy). The analysis considered real marketing scenarios, presenting different choice options inspired by real market offers by different companies on the Italian market. The energy packages were differentiated considering the monthly price, the source of the energy package (solar, biomass from agriculture and biomass from forestry), the size of the power plants, the minimum distance from houses, and, for biomass only, the certification of the origin. According to our results, there is a wide market for expanding “green” electricity contracts: 86% of the respondents stated that they are willing to pay more for them. People prefer electricity produced from photovoltaics, followed by forest biomass and by agricultural biomass. According to our results, the possibility to choose the renewable energy source matters: the willingness to pay for photovoltaic is 3.4 times that for forest biomass and 5.4 times that for agricultural biomass.

Green marketing initiatives to build eco-friendly environment

Green revolutions, going green, environmental protection, sustainable life style, sustainable development, protecting our earth and many more have become a natural phenomenon in our everyday life. Green marketing is a tool used by many companies in various industries to follow this trend. This concept has enabled the re-marketing and packaging of existing products which already adhere to such guidelines. Additionally, the development of green marketing has opened the door of opportunity for companies to co brand their products into separate line, lauding the green-friendliness of some while ignoring that of others. This paper focuses on the concept, need, importance & strategy of green marketing in India. It also examines the present scenario of green marketing and reasons that organizations are adopting green marketing as a tool for sustainable development. Data is collected from multiple sources of evidence to understand the importance of green and sustainability management. The paper analyses whether the manufacturers are cognizant about green products and eco-labeling, and also the difficulties in implementing green marketing. A guideline is given to the Indian manufacturers for producing green marketing products.

Factors influencing buyers' willingness to offer price premiums for carbon credits sourced from urban forests

Marketing carbon offset credits generated by urban forest projects could help cities and local governments achieve their financial self-sufficiency and environmental sustainability goals. Understanding the value of carbon credits sourced from urban forests, and the factors that determine buyers' willingness to pay a premium for such credits could benefit cities in strategically marketing carbon credits to generate revenue. This study surveyed business organisations participating in carbon trading in order to explore the factors influencing buyers' willingness to pay for urban forest carbon credits in alternative marketing scenarios (i.e., with and without explicit recognition of purchase). Results suggest that buyers are willing to pay a premium for carbon credits sourced from urban forests and the amount of this premium was influenced by the purchasing business's ownership type, size, geographical scope of operations, and the level of importance placed on the co-benefits provided by urban trees.

Viral marketing for dedicated customers

Viral marketing has attracted considerable concerns in recent years due to its novel idea of leveraging the social network to propagate the awareness of products. Specifically, viral marketing first targets a limited number of users (seeds) in the social network by providing incentives, and these targeted users would then initiate the process of awareness spread by propagating the information to their friends via their social relationships. Extensive studies have been conducted for maximizing the awareness spread given the number of seeds (the Influence Maximization problem). However, all of them fail to consider the common scenario of viral marketing where companies hope to use as few seeds as possible yet influencing at least a certain number of users. In this paper, we propose a new problem, called J-MIN-Seed, whose objective is to minimize the number of seeds while at least J users are influenced. J-MIN-Seed, unfortunately, is NP-hard. Therefore, we develop an approximate algorithm which can provide error guarantees for J-MIN-Seed. We also observe that all existing studies on viral marketing assume that all users in the social network are of interest for the product being promoted (i.e., all users are potential consumers of the product), which, however, is not always true. Motivated by this phenomenon, we propose a new paradigm of viral marketing where the company can specify which types of users in the social network are of interest when promoting a specific product. Under this new paradigm, we re-define our J-MIN-Seed problem as well as the Influence Maximization problem and design some algorithms with provable error guarantees for the new problems. We conducted extensive experiments on real social networks which verified the effectiveness of our algorithms.