Day-1 at IIMA- Subjects Marketing Research and Information Sys)tems(MRIS) and Consumer based Business Strategies(CBBS)

It is Day-1 of my Exchange program at IIMA. Carrying the torch of AIM in the midst of best minds in India (and keeping it lighted) is a huge responsibility. However the students here have been very welcoming. Especially the dorm mates on my floor have made sure that I am at ease with everything here. I must say that the Exchange committee (made up of students) here has done an excellent job . Each student in the committee has been allocated 3-4 ISEP students whom they personally contact and help them in case they need some information.

Now something really important stuff. I would like to mention the way IIMA functions with regards to electives. Each students is given a week to attend the classes of his choice in the first week. After that he can either drop a subject or add a subject. The professors are also flexible in their way of teaching. They are open for feed backs and if the students think that some topics should be added to the course or some changes should be made to the current course content students are encouraged to give inputs(personal experience of MRIS Prof). The exchange students are given a quota for electives. Which means that exchange students would most probably get all the subjects they have opted for. For the student belonging to IIMA if there are certain subjects where the demand surpasses the supply, students can bid for these subjects. This is an area where AIM can definitely improve so that the Marketing people dont get converted to finance :).

Coming back to the classes on my first day, I had two classes today. Before going to the class I was really concerned with my preparation the previous night. The first lecture was MRIS and the topic was Introduction to Marketing Research. The Professor shared with us the importance of Marketing Research for a company. Marketing Research should be thought of like a lamp that illuminates the area, however it is you who should decide on which road to follow. People generally think Marketing research does not provide the right answers. The fact is Marketing Research is not meant for providing you with the answers in the first place. It is just a tool which helps you in taking decision or coming up with answers. But the most important consideration one should have before conducting Market Research is to define the problem correctly. The Prof shared with us the story of Santoor soap launched in 1985 by Wipro. Initially the soap sold 1.5 tpa and was a huge success with 1.5% market share in just two years of its launch. However with increase in the raw material costs the soap prices had to increase and that resulted in the sales of the soap dropping. The company conducted a Market research to know the reasons for the declining sales. They found that the soap does not communicate a clear USP to the market. The women using this soap are neither looked up or considered special. This is when wipro decided to come up with the advertisement of mistaken identity "A married woman with kid thought of as a young girl" (Meri twacha se meri umar ka pata hi nahin chalta). The ad was a huge success and Wipro was able to achieve its objective of 5000 tpa of sales and 4.5% of the market share withing 18 months(initially the target was 24 months). There was one other example of Cavin kare coming up with the fairever cream. They did a market research and found that the consumers think that the fairness creams are not good for the skin due to its chemical content. They also got insights that women consider milk and saffron very good when they are expecting a child. They had a perception that by drinking milk and saffron the child would be fair. Thus cavin kare came up with cream emphasizing on the use of milk and saffron. This broke the monopoly of fair and lovely and withing no time fairever captured 7% market share.

My next lecture was CBBS(consumer based business strategy) and the case was TI cycle. TI cycles used to be a leader in the bicycle market till 1970's in India but slowly lost ground to Hero cycles and Atlas cycles after that period. This was due to its high cost of production. TI came up with a strategy of entering into market with speciality cycles in addition to the standard but the competition was quick to response to that as well. In 1994-95 company suffered a huge loss due to the high export duty in Europe which halted their entry into the Europe market on which the company had high hopes. Mr.Ramkumar, General Manager Finance and a student of IIMA is told to take the position of Vice President (as the previous VP resigned). He has to take a decision on whether to accept the position and if he accepts how he should come up with a strategy to make TI cycles profitable again. The class discussion was well facilitated by the prof. I and Nirav both opened our CP account during this session:-). In fact we did 2 CP's each and it was well received by the students. Finally it was decided that the strategy of the company should be to cater to the speciality section in which it is still the leader and come up with new innovations which gives them a lead of 2-3 years from the competition. The Prof. told that TI cycles actually came up with geared cycles in 1996 and was able to cover some lost ground.

That's it for the day.......... I have decided I would be writing about my experiences everyday while I am at IIMA but am doubtful with the heavy course outline I have opted for. However do give me feed backs about the blog and let me know if I can add something to make it more interesting for you guys to read.......