Home ›› October 2009
Practice :: General Management
Making outsourcing decisions data-driven
Despite the prevalence of outsourcing in business today, the decision to outsource itself is often opaque. How should a business choose between outsourcing an activity or performing the same in-house? Intuitive arguments of core and non-core activities have dominated outsourcing decision making.Professor Sourav Mukherji and Professor J Ramachandran of IIM Bangalore argue that analytical evaluation that considers risks such as knowledge spillover or poor performance by suppliers and transaction costs like searching, drawing and enforcing contracts is important for successful outsourcing. They present transaction cost economics as a method to generate data-driven decision rules for outsourcing.
Specialization and focus on a few activities is imperative for innovation in any organisation. How do managers decide which of the organisation’s activities should be conducted in-house and which should be purchased from the market?
Insight :: Economics
The real engines of India's economic growth
India's growth rate in the 1st calendar quarter of 2009 fell to 5.8%, after multiple years of greater than 8% annual growth. This has lead to a clamor in the media about the need to bring back foreign investments.Professor R. Vaidyanathan, says that we might be missing the woods for the trees.
Conventional wisdom is that liberalisation and resulting inflow of foreign capital to corporate India are the primary reasons for India's rapid growth in the past decade. The recent fall in the growth rate has led to much discussion in business media and economic circles on the stimulus required for corporate India.
Viewpoint :: Marketing
Do cultural cues in advertising influence product choice?
What influences consumers to make the product choices they do? Is the decision to purchase a specific brand of tea or hair oil solely governed by the functional orientation of a brand? Or is it influenced by cultural cues and considerations?Professor Ramesh Kumar and colleagues have researched the purchase decisions of two consumer segments of the Indian market in 3 product categories - tea, hair oil and fairness cream. The study analyzes how deeply entrenched cultural values in society manifest in the nuances of consumer behavior.
A study on branding by Briley and Aaker revealed that culture has significant impact on consumers' decision-making process. Many multinational brands that enter the Indian market re-use brand communication that has worked in other markets.