Day-9 and 10

Finally my stay at IIMA has reached two figures today. I was not able to write the blog yesterday as we had gone out for shopping and eating at a very happening place here at Ahmedabad known as CG road. After coming back Me and Nirav went for a game of TT. I had decided I wont be losing to Nirav anymore but fortunately for him we had too many players playing there and hence had to play doubles. FYI there is an Intra IIMA TT tournament starting today and we both have taken parts in singles and together we would be playing doubles as well. So it would be AIM Vs IIMA from tomorrow. I have been placed in the first half of the group table and Nirav in the second half (These guys want me and Nirav to play finals in the singles :-))))))). Now some serious stuff

Day-9

I had 3 lectures yesterday(1 session of MRIS(marketing research) and 2 session of IMEC(Internet marketing)). In MRIS we discussed the case of Kendal vetmat. Kendal was company which manufactured products for the dairy segment and the agri segment. However with its dairy segment not doing well it wanted to venture into new market. It found a new partner in American Inka whose product was a mat which was used by veterinarians for keeping the animals patients clean. They sold this product in Europe. John Buckingham was a manager at Kendal and he was sure that 24000 Veterinarian doctors in US would also like this product and wanted to launch this product in US. Currently 92% doctors in US were using paper as it was very cheap to use. John wanted a marketing research agency to tell him how should he market his product, at what price and how does he position it. However the Marketing research conducted a usage survey with 59 doctors in the whole US and concluded that there were some cleaning problems with the present product and very few doctors are interested in buying the Vetmat at the current price. They recommended not to go ahead with the product launch. This created a dilemma for John as he was previously very sure about the product success. If he goes ahead with the launch and the product fails he could be in trouble as he already knew the results of the marketing research. If he does not launch the product he would not be able to meet his targets for the year and the much optimism and excitement he shown earlier to his boss would go down the drain. The class discussed the flaws in the Marketing research process and finally most of us concluded that John should go ahead with the product. The Prof actually said that the product was launched in reality and was a reasonable success. The learning was that every Marketing research study should be studied well before believing it blindly. The decision maker should be aware of the methodology and should know the flaws with the Marketing research. Also the problem definition should be very clear before we conduct the study. John wanted the agency to tell him how he should market and position the product. He never asked the research team whether he should launch the product or not. Thus both the decision maker and the survey agency should agree on the problem strongly before conducting a Market Research.

The next 2 sessions were of IMEC and the Prof taught us more about Internet technology. Not much to discuss on this.

Day-10

Today also I had same classes and in MRIS we discussed the problem definition for a Mobile Company in Geneva. One of the MBA student who was doing a research for the company had found from a survey in UK that not many people understand the different tariffs of Mobile companies, the difference in different mobile brands and the technology that they adopt. He wanted to conduct a Marketing Research for a mobile company in Geneva and the problem was how to define the problem. All groups of MRIS are suppose to come up with a questionnaire tomorrow regarding the survey and define the problem for the Management team and for the Marketing Research team.

IMEC was again some lecture on Internet and Mobile technology and there was no case discussion.

Now I would be going for my TT practice as I want to at least reach the Semis......