Disrupting the consultants: Could the advisers use some advice?

Management consulting is a relatively new profession. Such consulting firms have become revered as thought‐leading think tanks and cutting‐edge research organizations. Yet, as they teach their clients to grow, thrive, and innovate, is it possible that top management consulting firms are being disrupted themselves? Even the most seemingly unassailable businesses fall victim to disruption, while others benefit from it to enjoy tremendous growth. Top consultancies are keenly aware of rising competition from emerging‐market information technology firms. Therefore, many have taken countermeasures such as expanding their operations in emerging markets and designing outsourcing strategies to mitigate cost gaps. Time will tell if these efforts prove successful. This article attempts to illustrate how the business of consulting is—after all—a business itself that is subject to the forces and perils therein. Top consultants would be well advised to confront disruption head on, rather than robotically focusing up‐market or silently hoping themselves immune. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ethics in Food Advertising to Children in India—A Parental Perspective

Marketers are seen to bombard children with advertisements for unhealthy foods using sophisticated promotion techniques that have serious negative effects on health and overall well-being of children. So parents try to mediate children’s exposure to media content and call for governmental regulations in an attempt to shield them. The extent to which they mediate further determines whether they contemplate food advertisements as being ethical or unethical. Therefore, the present study tries to uncover the antecedents to ethical versus unethical perceptions of Indian parents about food advertisements directed at children. No study, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, has been conducted so far in India in this regard. Using binary logistic regression with mothers, it is found that the mothers who view food advertisements as unethical report their children to watch fewer hours of TV during weekdays and hold negative attitudes toward advertising to children. These mothers, however, do not feel that the government needs to impose restrictions on food advertisements aired on TV since they themselves indulge in mediation of TV advertising as a general parenting responsibility. The implications of the article are finally discussed.     

Technology adoption in a differentiated duopoly: Cournot versus Bertrand

This paper shows that the cost as well as the effectiveness of technology has a differential impact on technology adoption under two alternative modes of competition. If the cost of the technology is high, Bertrand competition provides a stronger incentive to adopt technology than Cournot competition unless the effectiveness of the technology is very low. On the contrary, if the cost of the technology is low, Cournot competition fares better than Bertrand competition in terms of technology adoption by firms. This demonstrates that the commonly subscribed assumption of ‘positive primary outputs’ restricts (inflates) the scope of higher degree of technology adoption under Bertrand (Cournot) competition. Moreover, in contrast to standard welfare ranking, it shows that Cournot competition leads to higher social welfare than Bertrand competition under certain situations.     

Advertising to a social network

Direct advertising—sending promotional messages to individual customers—is increasingly used by marketers as a result of the recent improvements in consumer reachability. Most current methods to calculate optimal budgets for such advertising campaigns consider customers in isolation and ignore word-of-mouth communication (WOM). When the customer base forms a network (as is the case in telecom or social network databases) ignoring WOM clearly leads to suboptimal advertising budgets. This paper develops a model to help address this challenge. We assume that firms know the network structure formed by customers but do not know (or are not allowed to use) data on individuals’ connections. Under this scenario, we compare the optimal campaign of a monopolist to that of firms competing in simultaneous-move or sequential-move games. The analysis provides two key insights: (i) we show that ignoring the existence of WOM leads to significant profit loss for firms and this is more so under competition. In particular, knowing the “density” of consumer connections is crucial for the design of optimal campaigns. (ii) Competition in direct advertising exhibits strong first-mover advantages and, even in a simultaneous-move game between identical firms, highly asymmetric outcomes are possible. The paper also explores two extensions. First, we study the nature of the trade-off between increasing network size versus increasing the connectivity between existing network members. Second, we investigate how firms’ advertising activity may endogenously grow the membership base.     

A three layer multi-item production–inventory model for multiple suppliers and retailers

The paper deals with a production inventory model for various types of items where multiple suppliers, a manufacturer and the multiple non-competing retailers are the members of the supply chain. In this model, each supplier supplies only one type of raw material to the manufacturer. The manufacturer produces a finished item by the combination of certain percentage of the various types of raw materials. The manufacturer produces also multi-items and delivers them according to the demand of the different retailers. Finally, an integrated profit of the supply chain is optimized by optimal ordering lot sizes of the raw materials. A numerical example is provided to justify the proposed model.     

Export performance of emerging market firms

I investigate the export performance of firms from emerging economies based on resource based view (RBV) of a firm. Based on review of extant literature, I identify firm size, research and development expenditure, advertising expenditure and business group affiliation to be important antecedents of level of exporting activities of a firm. I utilize a two-stage least square estimation (G2SLS) on a sample of 47,140 firm-year observations over a period of sixteen years from 1990–2005. The findings suggest that export sales and domestic sales are interdependent and affect each other. R&D expenditure and business group affiliation positively affect export sales, however advertising expenditure negatively affects export sales.     

Power,policy networks and planning: the involvement of major grocery retailers in the formulation of Planning Policy Guidance Note 6 since 1988

This paper explores a neglected issue in the study of retail strategy and store location by considering the nature of policy networks operating at the interface between retailers and central government. It argues that informal networks, coupled with the economic power of retailers and the legitimization of their activities with reference to the 'consumer interest', have served to provide retailers with an influential avenue through which they can exert power over the nature of the regulatory environment within which they operate. The paper considers the limited extant 'evidence' of the operation of such networks before moving on to outline the results of a case study. The case study reflects on new store development in the UK grocery sector since 1988 as a backdrop to an analysis of the form of policy networks operating at the interface between government departments and retail organizations. It also explores the role of other stakeholders in this process. The existence of a number of such networks is described and their role explored with reference to the involvement of retailers in the formulation and evolution of Planning Policy Guidance Note 6 on retail development.     

Contingent Valuation and Actual Behavior: Predicting Connections to New Water Systems in the State of Kerala, India

In 1988, families in Kerala State in India were surveyed toascertain their willingness to pay for household connectionsto a piped water supply system. In 1991 the families in thesecommunities were surveyed again and their actual decisions recorded.This article explores the validity of the findings of the 1988study on the basis of actual behavior. It looks at the questionof benefit revelation: did people behave as they said they would?And it looks at the question of benefit transfer: did peoplein one site behave as they were predicted to behave, on thebasis of the predictions of a behavioral model for a differentsite? The data were also used to analyze the policy relevanceof behavioral modeling.     

Industrial relations and organizational behaviour: a critical appraisal1

This paper is concerned with the growth and development of two fields of study which are customarily separated in both theory and practice. Those who specialize in one area, whether as students, teachers or research workers, are not necessarily familiar with, or required to learn, the state of knowledge in the other, although, as we shall show, there is a considerable commonality of interest. To some extent, this situation is an accident of history and the first part of this paper deals with the events and influences leading to the emergence of each field of study. In the second part, common strands and factors leading to the convergence of the two fields are considered. The third section examines the “state of the art” and evaluates current strengths and weaknesses. Finally, an appraisal is made of the direction of likely future trends.