Vol. 8(5) May 2015
America’s Growing Innovation Gap
Winner Adam R., Koppenaal John M., Mishra Bharat and Mishra Jitendra
Innovation is defined as the introduction of something
new: a new idea, method, or device; it is the development of new products, services,
or processes. America has always had an economy that is reliant on innovation to
allow for prosperity. However, over the past few years, innovation in our nation
has seemingly been on the decline: educational struggles, a lack of technological
advancements, and a decline in medical innovation all point to a disturbing trend.
It seems that today a television or radio cannot be turned on without some statement
being made about America’s steady slide away from innovation. A recent study ranked
the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness,
but 40th out of 40 in "the rate of change in innovation capacity" over the past
decade. The ranking, published last year by the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, measured what countries are doing—in higher education, investment in
research and development, corporate tax rates and more—to become more innovative
in the future. The U.S. ranked dead last.24 In the past, our country promoted, encouraged
and even applauded innovation from everyone. Sadly, in recent years, the people
of America have begun to remove themselves from the idea of innovation as a driving
force for growth. But some groups are pushing back and they have big ideas to tackle
the growing innovation gap.
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Cost benefit analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR)
Barot Gaurangkumar C.
The role of new manager in 21st century is very crucial
in corporate field nowadays. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a process
with the aim to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and to encourage
a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees,
communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere who may also
be considered stakeholders. The corporate has to spend at least 2 percentages for
the activities of CSR. Corporate social responsibility CSR, also called corporate
conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible
business/ Responsible Business) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated
into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism
whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of
the law, ethical standards and international norms. In some models, a firm's implementation
of CSR goes beyond compliance and engages in "actions that appear to further some
social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by Law.
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Marketing Channel Integration -A Review of Current
Debates
Busse Ronald
This article will distinctly focus on the most recent
of research progress that has enriched the field of online and offline marketing
integration and will therefore predominantly concentrate on the development of the
field since 2010. On the basis of current literature, I argue that, on the one hand,
channel integration is generally relevant but on the other hand that product category
(hedonic or utilitarian, high-risk or low-risk) is a moderating variable for the
decision making process. It is crucial to decide when integration is needed and
when integration is expendable.
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Study of visual merchandising and customer needs in
visual merchandising for a toys store
Premachandran Kiran and Sahay Mridula
The aim of this article is to explore consumers or customers’
effective response to visual stimulus in stores by considering the aesthetic, symbolic
and cultural perceptions of function-oriented product-intimate toys. It also shows
that how important is the visual merchandising in toys as like other categories.
A different perspective on visual merchandising is offered through the different
types of intimate retailers. The literature to date tends to focus on the interaction
between individual visual merchandising elements with customers or consumers. There
are many researches related to knowing the customers behavior in visual merchandising
in other categories of product such as apparel, food items. There is no information
about the visual merchandising in toys category. This research is mainly focused
on importance of visual merchandising in toys and how it will affect the customers’
or consumers’ behavior. This information can be used by the retailers during their
store design. There may be different result and patterns in consumers’ behavior
according to the region, so this research is mainly focused on the Indian customers
or consumers’ behavior. The output of this research will be the importance of the
visual merchandising in toys store and the things that a toys retailer should focus
during a store design.
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Assessment of 10 Arbitrary Indian Shopping Websites
Vijay Shankar P.
Future ergonomics of business practices are moving online
because of cognition brought by web technologies, consumers are more likely to shop
at a well designed website. Increasing number of products is being marketed on the
web shop yet modest endeavor has been made on studying web shopping. Papers in literature
investigate mostly on design qualities of shopping websites. The current study analyzes
factors that influences web shopping or web vendors among affiliates. Data collected
from antecedent’s web shoppers reflect web shopping sites/vendor’s ability, integrity
and benevolence. The results of this study revealed that ability of web vendors
to provide numerous products which even the nearest retailer fails to provide exerted
a stronger effect than perceived factors for prospective and steadfast customers.
Implication of these findings is that providing best support in terms of security
(e-payment), post sale service, reliability/credibility, quality and privacy are
the key intent for ultimate increase/boom of web shopping. Results of the current
findings will assist information systems professionals and product vendors in developing
personalized sales tactic to target prelude sales and come again sales for different
groups of stakeholders.
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Study on the Factors influencing Online Buying Behaviour
of Customers while purchasing a Book by an Established Author against a Book by
a New Author
Jacob Mathew Rajkumar and Sahay Mridula
The purpose of the study is to analyse the factors that
customers consider when they purchase online a book or fiction by an established
author against a book by a new author. The particular topic is selected because
of the huge rise in e-commerce in India over the last couple of years. Increase
in sales of books over the internet is another reason for the same. Due to reasons
such as customer perceptions and shopping environment, the online buying behaviour
is considered as a complicated field. This study aims to find out the different
factors that customers consider while buying a book by an established author and
a new author. These factors are identified by conducting focus group discussions
with the target segment of customers. Students between the age of 18 and 30 form
the target segment. T-test is conducted on these factors in order to identify those
factors that are given maximum weightage by the customers while making a buying
decision. The factors are rated on a 5-point Likert scale by 210 students. This
study can be applied across different genres of books. The information would help
marketers to market their books better.
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