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REPORT: NICOM – 2017 January 5-7, 2017

NICOM - 2017

Post-Conference Summary Report

Submitted by: Team NICOM


Post-Conference Summary Report

Details

Event Date and Time : January 5-7, 2017

9:00 am to 5:30 pm

Type of Event : 20th Nirma International Conference on Management

Number of Students 950 (Approx.)

Conference Objective : To deliberate and exchange ideas on marketing topics on the theme “Contemporary Marketing: Concept, Practice and Method”

Venue : Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad

Conference Organised by Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad

IMNU, Ahmedabad 1/27


: Patrons Shri K. K. Patel, Vice President, Nirma University

Dr. Anup K. Singh, Director General, Nirma University

Chairman Dr. M.Mallikarjun, Director Incharge, IMNU Conference Dr. Jayesh Aagja Chairpersons Dr. Sapna Parashar Prof. Tripurasundari Joshi

Core Committee Members

Rajwinder Kaur DPM

Meesha

BBA MBA- IV

Organizing Committee

Chatterjee

Prasad Joshi

MBA FT-II

Irfan Ali MBA FT-II

Dhaval Kansara MBA FT-II

Dhaval Kansara MBA FT-II

Varnika Mishra MBA FT-II

Neha Mishra MBA FT-I

Aman Marwah MBA FT-II

Divya Wadhwani MBA FT-II

Varnika Mishra MBA FT-II

Ankur Birla MBA FT-I

Learning Outcomes

To familiarize oneself with the research developments in various sub disciplines of marketing To develop research skills through the process of paper writing and presentation

Theme Contemporary Marketing: Concept, Practice and Method



Conference Background

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine

what you should be doing- John Russell, President, Harley- Davidson”

The focus of effective marketing has evolved in numerous ways over the past decade.

However, now more than ever, successful marketing in all its many forms is largely

dependent upon the ability to facilitate and sustain meaningful, engaging experiences for

stakeholders. Not only the momentous advances in technology in recent years have forever

altered the nature of information dissemination from marketers to various stakeholders, but

they have also led to a reconfiguration of expectations from stakeholders.

Customers have abandoned the influence of traditional one way communication in favour of

deeply engaging, multi-directional conversations that simultaneously span multiple media.

Marketing and business strategy are becoming increasingly relevant in the current

competitive world. At the same time, marketing is undergoing profound changes both as an

academic discipline and as a profession. The emergence of web and social platforms has led to

trends like crowdsourcing, gamification, virtual life and avatar, online brand community and

the like, which has resulted in new challenges and opportunities. The theoretical framework

of marketing is changing from a goods dominant field to a service dominant and gradually to

an experience dominant one. The resources and the mind-set required to create experiences

are different from those required to create products and services.

NICOM 2017 aimed at bringing together academic and practicing experts in marketing to

deliberate on contemporary developments and issues in the field of marketing and related

areas. The conference was a platform for scholars and experts to share their research and

insights on different facets of the discipline.

The Conference started with a welcome address by Dr. M. Mallikarjun, Director In-charge,

Institute of Management, Nirma University. Director General, Dr. Anup K. Singh then

expressed his views on VUCA i.e. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity in the

business environment.



SPEAKERS OF THE CONFERENCE: Chief Guest: Mr. M.G. Parmeswaran

Brand Strategist, Founder at Brand-Building.com and former CEO, FCB Ulka

Guest of Honour: Mr. Tarun Arora, COO and Director, Zydus Wellness Limited

Plenary Sessions: Mr. Aditya Agarwal, Joint Vice President (Sales), Credit Information

Bureau (India) Limited

Mr. Neeraj Hasija, Founder and CEO of Healthy Brown

Mr. Sameer Pitalwala, CEO of Culture Machine

Mr. Rajendra Nargundkar, Professor, IIM, Indore

Valedictory Session Mr. Saurabh Pandey, Founder& CEO, Dot Converse Social Media & Online

Marketing



Day – 1 – Inaugural Session

The 20th Nirma International Conference on Management (NICOM), organized by the Institute

of Management, Nirma University (IMNU), commenced at 10:30 am on 5th January, 2017.

NICOM has been an annual event at IMNU providing a platform for an interactive discussion

between academicians and industry veterans on a plethora of topics under a common theme.

This year the Conference had academicians and practitioners from India and abroad,

presenting their research on as many as 40 sub themes like Brand Management, Marketing

Research and Analytics, Retail Marketing, Consumer Behaviour to name a few, in five track

sessions spread across three days. Four plenary sessions were also arranged during which

prominent personalities from the industry and academia addressed the audience on various

topics.

The chief guest for the inaugural session was Mr. M.G. Parmeswaran, Brand Strategist,

Founder at Brand-Building.com and former CEO, FCB Ulka. Mr. Tarun Arora, COO and

Director, Zydus Wellness Limited was the Guest of Honour for the occasion. The president of

Nirma University, Dr. Karsanbhai Patel presided over the function. Dr. Anup Singh, Director

General, Nirma University graced the stage as a dignitary.



The chairpersons for NICOM, 2017 present on stage were Dr. Jayesh Aagja and Dr. Sapna

Parashar, faculty at the Institute of Management, Nirma University (IMNU). Dr. M. Mallikarjun,

Director Incharge, IMNU delivered the welcome address.

Mr. Tarun Arora began the session with his address. He said that consumer behaviour, these

days, is fast changing. The consumers have become more expressive and demanding than

ever before. These days the macro methods of segmentation are being done away with. They

are replaced by mass personalization and customization. The huge amount of data available

on the likes and preferences of consumers helps a marketer to come up with innovative ideas

with the use of data analytics. The consumers these days, according to him, are no longer

mere recipients but are also involved along with the marketer in brand creation.

Mr. M.G. Parmeswaran took over the session next. He discussed the role that emotional

advertisements play in attracting consumers. He gave numerous examples relating to the

Indian context. He discussed cases of some of the famous brands and how proper

advertisements helped them gain a good share of the market. He was of the view that more

and more brands are taking up social cause to get connected to the consumers. Also, the

essence of contemporary marketing amidst social and digital marketing should be change.

Dr. Anup Singh, Director General, Nirma University also said that marketing is all about

change which is a permanent phenomenon. As the needs and aspirations of customers are

changing, innovation is what becomes necessary. As long as a marketer focuses on these

needs and aspirations, he remains successful. He should remember that money is just a by-

product and the internal customers should also be kept satisfied throughout. Marketers

should try to connect with the emotions of customers, which can help in building emotional

bonds and achieve success.

The books titled ‘Consumer Behaviour and Contemporary Marketing Strategy' and ‘Services

in Emerging Economies' were launched during the session.



Plenary Sessions

The first plenary session of Day 2 was presided by Mr. Aditya Agarwal, Joint Vice President

(Sales), Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited.

The topic of discussion was Digitization in Banking – The Emerging Marketing

Challenges. Mr. Agarwal was of the view that the economy has changed drastically over the

past few years. With demonetization, more and more customers are using digital modes of

payments which moves India to a digitized economy. He discussed the journey of Banking as

an industry. It started initially as a manual process and digitization came in only in MNC

banks in the late 90s. In the early 2000s digitization became more prominent. He said that



now is the age of more and more personalization because of the advent of mobile phones as a

means of banking.

The mobile base in India, he said, is expected to grow to 1150 plus million users by 2020 with

45% penetration. Internet penetration is currently 30% and by the end of 2018, it is expected

to be around 70%. The developments in banking and payments sector that is helping more

and more people to go digital are many. Linking the aadhar card and mobile phones with the

jan dhan accounts is one such development.

These digital schemes empower the customers and provides them with a variety of options

from different vendors. In 2015, the amount of transactions done digitally surpassed the

number of physical transactions made. Since the customers have a variety of choices, the

vendors should stay abreast with the latest technology in the market.

Mr. Agarwal said that new age banking firms should aim at becoming more intelligent and

providing multiple channels, becoming more socially engaging and looking at the overall

needs of the customers, both banking and non-banking ones.



Plenary Sessions

The second half of Day 2 began with Plenary Session 2. The first speaker was Mr. Neeraj

Hasija, Founder and CEO of Healthy Brown. He spoke on Contemporary Challenges in New

Product Launch.

He started the discussion by focusing on the brand culture of any product. He emphasized

how mass marketing has turned into niche marketing and consumers have changed from

dormant state to an active state where they have involved themselves in the brand creation

process. Satisfaction of customers has become more crucial than ever. Consumers nowadays

are least concerned with where he can get the product but more concerned regarding what

the product is all about and why he/she should buy it.

He also explained the dynamics of the company by stating that all owners had been

disappearing slowly without being responsible for the growth of the company. Thus the

traditional marketing concepts had transformed into the digital marketing concepts.

According to him, the key challenges were product sync, quality, innovation and pricing

strategy. Major solutions to the challenges should focus on critical inventory management as

well as substitution and alternative offerings for multiple time zones.



He concluded his speech by relating it with his own start-up – Healthy Browns, which

primarily focused on making different types of breads and marketing them in and around

Ahmedabad. In this New Year, they have launched a green campaign with the tagline that says

“let’s make this new year green as well as a sign of good health.”

The second speaker of the session was Mr. Sameer Pitalwala, CEO of Culture Machine. He

spoke on Digital Marketing and the trends of late. He began the session by briefing about his

company which till date had succeeded to gather more than one billion views, 110 million of

them being unique, and more than 85 percent of coverage of audience on platforms like

YouTube and Facebook in India.

He described how advertising has evolved over the years from being human driven to

completely technology driven.

He demonstrated how digital marketing has emotionally connected the audience. He cited an

example of the dove promotional video campaign which showcased the redefinition of beauty

by promoting female athletes. Beauty is not only restricted to physicality but also to the inner

self and to the talents of female individuals.

He brought an end to the presentation by throwing some light on the digital campaign of his

start-up Culture Machine’s “Being Indian” which has reached more than 150 million monthly

views on various digital campaigns. The major factor according to him for success was

emotional connectedness with the campaign.



Plenary Sessions

The first plenary session of Day 3 was presided over by Dr. Rajendra Nargundkar, Professor,

IIM Indore. The topic of discussion was Thoughts on Advancing Marketing Theory and

Practice.

He shared his views on how faculty, academicians and researchers can improve and elevate

the level of marketing by various steps. The first one he talked about was networking. He

urged the audience to visit a new business school each year, attend conferences and meet new

intellectuals from time to time. He also elucidated how important it is to write and publish

conceptual papers regularly. He shared how at IIM Indore, where he teaches, 50 percent of

the compensation is dependent on their publications and researches. He recommended to

write at least one conceptual paper that extends theory by adding variables or constructs to

existing ones by using marketing orientation and marketing innovation.


Marketing suffers from a lack of theory development. Conceptual papers are few in number. He

also emphasized on writing a book to develop contextual theories and cases. He appreciated the

fact that academia have begun using books written by Indian authors in B school courses.

Ultimately, he wants us to become thought leaders in our fields.

He explained how thought leaders predict the future and see what others can’t. He also

discussed few other topics that are very debatable and researchable in marketing like “why

people buy”, demographics, leisure spends, online v/s offline buying and others.

NU, Ahmedabad 12/27


Valedictory Session

The Valedictory Session started at 12:30 PM. Amongst the dignitaries present were Mr. Saurabh

Pandey as the chief guest, Shri K K. Patel, Vice President of Nirma University,

Prof. Tripurasundari Joshi, Chairperson of NICOM 2017, Dr. M. Mallikarjun, Director Incharge,

IMNU, Shri D.P. Chhaya and Dr. Sapna Parashar, Chairperson of NICOM 2017. Prof. Jayesh

Aagja of the Institute of Management, Nirma University began the session by giving a brief report

of the Conference.

The chief guest, Mr. Saurabh Pandey, Founder and CEO, Dot Converse Social Media and Online

Marketing spoke on the topic of Viral Marketing. He said that word of mouth is a more powerful

tool than brand advertising. People who buy a product because of the positive word of mouth it has,

tend to stay longer with it. The challenge that a brand faces is the decay of trust with time. If the

media is already proliferated and all marketers decide to spend on it, they add to the clutter and end

up decreasing their presence. This decreases consumer retention. They should try to create a model

that is different from the rest. They should advertise across different categories.

Dr. Sapna Parashar then presented the vote of thanks. The guests, the presenters, the faculty

colleagues and students were thanked for their contributions that made NICOM 2017 a grand

success.



Best Paper Awards

Academic and Industry category

First Prize: Dr. Gaurav Mishra and Prof. Balakrishnan Unny Raghavan for the paper titled: Factors Influencing Use of Telecentre based Services in Rural Areas: A Case of Akshaya Project, Kerala

Second Prize: Dr. Vivek Bhatt and Prof. Shriram Kadiya for the paper titled: Fuzzy Logic Application to Brand Assessment for Smartphones in India

Student category

Second Prize: Navaneethakrishnan K. and Prof. Sathish A.S. for the paper titled: Boys and their bikes: Studying the relationship using brand romance, brand attitude and brand loyalty



Certificate Distribution to the Committees

The Certificates of contribution in various sub committees were distributed by Mr. Saurabh Pandey, the chief guest at the Valedictory function. The following were the representatives of each committee who collected the certificate on behalf of each sub committee team.

COMMITTEE

REPRESENTATIVE

PROGRAMME

Core Committee Rajwinder Kaur DPM Publication & Review Meesha Chatterjee BBA MBA- IV

Sponsorship Prasad Joshi MBA FT-II Invitation Irfan Ali MBA FT-II

Logistics Dhaval Kansara MBA FT-II Accommodation Dhaval Kansara MBA FT-II

Food & Beverage Varnika Mishra MBA FT-II

Registration & Reception Neha Mishra MBA FT-I

Stage Aman Marwah MBA FT-II Track Management Divya Wadhwani MBA FT-II

Audience Varnika Mishra MBA FT-II Publicity & Media Ankur Birla MBA FT-I



Abstracts and Full Papers Received - NICOM – 2017

We received a total of 195 abstracts under various sub-themes like Brand Management, Marketing

Research and Analytics, Retail Marketing, Consumer Behaviour and so on.

Themes

Brand Management

2% 2%

2%

Consumer Behavior

6% 6% 4% 7% 10%

2%

Cross Cultural Issues in

5% Marketing 18%

8%

Cross Functional Issues in

Marketing

6% 10%

Customer Relationship

2% Management

2%

Digital Marketing

3% 3%

2% Entrepreneurial Marketing

Designation wise Delegates - NICOM – 2017

Delegates

Assistant Professor

22%

Associate Professor

29%

Dean

Doctoral Student

8%

Faculty

H.O.D

2%

9%

Professor

17% 1% Research Associate

6%

1%5%

Research Scholar

Student



List of Foreign delegates: NICOM – 2017

The Conference received submissions from participants in academia from several countries.

Name Country Affiliation Mr. Hitimana Jean Pierre Rwanda Academic

Dr. Baig M.S.A Rwanda Academic

ABM Shahidul Islam Bangladesh Academic

Mr. Ali Akkas Bangladesh Academic

Suliaman Agha Saihoon Afghanistan Academic



Members (Core-Committee and Students’ Committee) - NICOM – 2017



Sponsors - NICOM – 2017

The following were the main sponsors of NICOM-2017.



Details of Reviewers - NICOM – 2017

The following is the list of panel members for review of papers submitted to the conference.

Sr. Name of Faculty Sr. Name of Faculty

No.

No.

1 Prof. Ashwini Awasthi 11 Prof. Prabhat Yadav

2 Prof. Bindi Mehta 12 Prof. Rajesh Jain

3 Prof. Deepak Danak 13 Prof. Reena Shah

4 Prof. Deepak Shrivastav 14 Prof. Sameer Pingle

5 Prof. Jayesh Aagja 15 Prof. Sanjay Jain

6 Prof. M. Mallikarjun 16 Prof. Sapna Parashar

7 Prof. Mahesh K C 17 Prof. Subrat Sahu

8 Prof. Meeta Munshi 18 Prof. Tripurasundari Joshi

9 Prof. Nikunj Patel 19 Prof. V V Nath

10 Prof. Nityesh Bhatt



PROGRAMME – NICOM 2017

09:00 AM – 10:15 AM Registration & Breakfast

10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Inauguration

Thursday, 12:30 PM – 01:30 PM Track I

January 5, 2017 01:30 PM – 02:15 PM Lunch Break

02:15 PM – 03:45 PM Plenary Session 1

03:45 PM – 04:00 PM Tea Break

04:00 PM – 05:15 PM Track II

09:00 AM – 10:00 AM Breakfast

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Plenary Session 2

11:30 AM – 11:45 AM Tea Break

Friday, 11:45 AM – 01:00 PM Track III

January 6,2017 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM Lunch

02:00 PM – 03:30 PM Plenary Session 3

03:30 PM – 03:45 PM Tea Break

03:45 PM – 05:00 PM Track IV

09:00 AM – 09:30 AM Breakfast

09:30 AM – 10:45 AM Plenary Session 4

Saturday, 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM Tea Break

January 7,2017 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM Track V

12:15 PM – 01:15 PM Valedictory Session

01:15 PM Farewell Lunch



NICOM - 2017 : THEME



NICOM – 2017 Prastavana

Prastavana - The Book of Abstracts presents the abstracts of all papers received for the

conference. NICOM-2017 received 195 abstracts and 120 full papers from national and

international delegates from academia, industry practitioners and students.



Conference Proceedings – Book 1 - Consumer Behaviour & Marketing Strategy



Conference Proceedings – Book 2 - Services In Emerging Markets



NICOM – 2017 – Advisory Council


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