Search results

After completing the case, students should be able to understand: the importance and uniqueness of the individual market and developing a suitable marketing strategy. The concept of value creation and learn the importance of developing the right value proposition to compete and succeed in a market. The target audience and how to create the right marketing mix. Competition in a digital landscape and the importance of developing an appropriate strategy to counter its rivals and position the brand effectively.

During his visit to India in December 2019, Netflix’s founder and chief executive officer Reed Hastings talked about a series of steps the company had taken in the recent past to successfully face stiff competition and move towards achieving its stated target of 100 million viewers. These steps involved significant changes in their marketing mix such as reworking their pricing, developing a rich portfolio of Indian content and building various partnerships. Since Netflix’s launch in India (December 2016), it faced fierce competition from players such as Hotstar and Amazon Prime, both of whom had developed a rich portfolio of Indian content and adopted a very aggressive pricing strategy thus, making these changes essential. At the time of their launch, Netflix had set a very ambitious target of gaining 100 million viewers within five years (by 2021) while adopting a premium pricing strategy and positioning themselves uniquely based on their international content. They quickly learned that they would have to reevaluate their approach if they wanted to achieve their target on time. The changes announced by Hastings were an effort in that direction. The moot question was whether these steps would help Netflix India reach its goal. This challenge was further compounded by an almost 40% hike in data tariffs by three major wireless carriers considering most Indians watched over-the-top media content on their mobile phones.

The case is designed for undergraduates, as well as for fundamental marketing courses in the Master of Business Administration and other graduate level programmes. It can be taught in the Principles of Marketing, Marketing Strategy and International Marketing courses. It is ideal for topics such as understanding the operation of a digital business in a new market, customer value creation and value drivers, brand and brand positioning, product promotion, strategies for business growth and expansion, fighting competition in a digital landscape.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Profit analysis of a two non‐identical unit cold standby system model with mutual changeover of the units is carried out in this paper. With mutual changeover of the unit, the operating unit, after functioning for some random amount of time, becomes standby to take rest, and the standby unit becomes operative. The failure and repair times of each unit are jointly distributed as bivariate exponential (BVE) with different parameters. Various measures of system effectiveness useful to system engineers and designers are obtained by using the regenerative point technique. Behaviour of the mean time to system failure (MTSF) and availability have also been studied graphically.

Investigates a stochastic model of a two identical unit cold standby system. Assumes that, if repair of the failed unit is not completed within a specified time, then an order is placed to replace the failed unit by the new one. The specified time is also known as the maximum repair time limit which may change from user to user of the system, so that it is assumed as a random variable. Joint distribution of failure and repair times is bivariate exponential whereas the distributions of lead time (difference between order and delivery time for a new unit) and replacement time of the new unit are negative exponential. Obtains various reliability characteristics of the system under study by using regenerative point technique. Also studied characteristics through graphs.

Deals with the stochastic analysis of a two identical unit cold standby system model with repair and replacement policies. Taking the bivariate exponential distribution of failure and repair times and using the regenerative point technique, various measures of system effectiveness are obtained.

Studies the cost‐benefit analysis of a complex system consisting of two subsystems for example, A and B, connected in series. Subsystem A is composed of two identical units while subsystem B has only one unit. The system functions if one of the two units of subsystem A and the subsystem B are operative. Assuming a bivariate exponential density for the joint distribution of failure and repair times of the units, obtains various reliability characteristics useful to system managers. Also draws explicit results for the case when failure and repair times are independent.

During the last two decades there have been significant policy changes in the banking system, primarily in the emerging market economies. These changes have impacted the competitive structure of banking. In India, since 1991, gradual reform measures have been initiated to improve efficiency, productivity, competition and stability of the banking sector. There is a requirement for a formal approach to examine level of competition in Indian banking sector after the liberalization. This paper aims to address this issue.

The article applied the conjectural variation method using 2‐stage least square for assessing the degree of competition in the Indian banking system.

The paper finds that competitive condition in the Indian banking sector has been improving 1996. However, big banks with market share more than 1 per cent have been exercising some degree of price mark‐up over their marginal cost.

Due to the paucity of data competition at the regional level is not analysed which is a limitation of the article.

Analysis of competition allows the policy formulators to design proper liberalization measures to ensure greater competition in the banking sector so as to prevent any cartel formation.

Since the Indian banking sector is monopolistically competitive, the article advocates for more liberalization measures to improve competition in the Indian banking sector.

To assess competition the article has covered 53 banks involving more than 90 per cent banking sector assets of the country. Through Lerner Index the article has found that big banks are able to charge a price which is about 30 per cent more than their marginal cost. The conjectural variation method is a monopolistic market structure prevailing in the Indian banking sector.

Presents the analysis of a two‐unit cold standby system in which the standby unit takes a random amount of time for operation whenever the operative unit fails. Each unit is first repaired by the assistant repairman and is then taken up for post‐repair if necessary. The failure and repair times of each unit are assumed to be correlated and their joint density is taken as bivariate exponential. Uses regenerative point technique to obtain various reliability characteristics of interest. Studies the behaviour of steady‐state availability through graphs. Verifies earlier results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the various segments of the managed funds market to establish if there is any significant difference in the way the assets are allocated into various asset categories and if investors base their investment decisions based on the past performance of the fund.

An average investor who does not possess superior investment knowledge may base their investment decision on the past performance of funds resulting in flow based on past performance. This study uses a panel regression model to test the relationship between net flows and past excess returns.

Significant differences are found in asset allocation between the retail and wholesale segments. Retail investors prefer less risky investments compared to wholesale investors and have lower preference for overseas investments. The results indicate that investors base their investment decisions on the past performance of funds, with the retail segment showing a higher level of influence of past performance, as compared to the wholesale segment. The results further show less evidence of a reaction to risk among the managed investment categories.

Fund managers use fund performance for marketing purposes and results of the study may be of importance to the managers and investors in understanding this objective. The findings are also of significance for policy makers in terms of understanding investor behaviour.

This is the first study of the Australian managed funds industry (including wholesale and retail funds) that tests the link between past performance and fund flows. The study includes data until June 2008, which includes a period when a number of policy changes occurred in Australian superannuation industry.

In today's world, all firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions are coming under increasing public scrutiny. This is especially true for large companies whose decisions can and do have impact on society. Public service advertisements (PSAs), a mass-media approach, are advertisements which inform audiences of a firm's CSR actions and enhance its public image. In this chapter, we focus on a supply chain system consisting of two firms and their coordination strategy for public service advertising. To describe the synergistic effect between a PSA and a normal commercial advertisement, a modified Nerlove–Arrow model is employed in this chapter. Using differential game theory, we calculate and compare the optimal advertising levels for each stage of the supply chain system under two different decision scenarios, i.e., (i) the two firms make decisions independently and (ii) the two firms make decisions as an integral system. A coordination mechanism on the public service advertising between the two firms has also been proposed for the supply chain system and has been proved effective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there exist significant benefits from diversification into frontier markets for an Australian investor in comparison to a US investor.

The study uses the computationally efficient ADCC GARCH model to estimate time-varying correlations of returns. The authors also compare the results to DCC GARCH correlations in order to test whether the results are model-specific. Optimal portfolios with several restrictions were constructed and the results from Australian and US investors were compared. The study also uses a holding out period that is rebalanced at the end of each quarter using new portfolio weights.

The study finds that there are significant benefits for the Australian investor from diversifying into frontier markets. However, the benefits to the US investor are much higher than that of an Australian investor. The results from the holding out period also present significantly higher benefits to the US investor compared to the Australian investor.

This study examines the diversification benefits to the Australian investor from frontier markets and compares the benefits of the Australian and the US investors. The results emphasise the potential benefits from including frontier markets in the portfolio. The paper also presents a holding out period analysis.