REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

NICOM - 2017
Post-Conference Summary Report

Submitted by: NICOM Team

IMNU, Ahmedabad 1/27

REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

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 share and exchange ideas about the theme Contemporary
Marketing: Concept, Practice and Method
Venue : Auditorium, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad
Conference Organised by Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad

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

University
Dr. Anup K. Singh, Director General, Nirma
University
Chairman Dr. M.Mallikarjun, Director, IMNU
Conference Dr. Jayesh Aagja
Chairpersons Dr. Sapna Parashar
Prof. Tripurasundari Joshi
Conference
Co-ordinators
Core-Committee
Core Committee Rajwinder Kaur DPM
Publication & Review Meesha BBA MBA- IV
Chatterjee
Organizing Committee
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

Able to know various opportunities, underscore challenges and

Learning Outcomes : prescribe strategies to be adopted, both at macro and micro
levels as also at national and international levels

Main Theme and

: Contemporary Marketing: Concept, Practice and Method
Sub-Theme

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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 and recent years forever
altered the nature of information dissemination from marketers to various stakeholders, but
they have also led to a configuration of expectations for both personal and professional
activities.

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 in
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 being a service dominant and
gradually to an experience 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 aims at bringing together academic, marketing and strategy experts, as well as
practising managers to deliberate on contemporary developments and issues in the field of
marketing and strategy. The conference would be a platform for marketing and strategy
scholars as well as 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, Institute of
Management, Nirma University. Director General, Dr. Anup K. Singh then spoke of ambiguity
and uncertainty in this day and age and provided with encouraging words to fight challenges
in the face of the same.

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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. Shishir Rai, Assistant Vice-President, GIFT, Gandhinagar
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

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REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

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.
In addition, the Conference will have academicians and practitioners from India and abroad,
presenting their research in as many as 40 sub themes viz, Brand Management, Marketing
Research and Analytics, Retail Marketing, Consumer Behaviour etc., in five track sessions
spread across the three days Conference. Four plenary sessions are also arranged during
which, the prominent personalities from the industry will be addressing 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 was also present for the inaugural session. Dr. Anup
Singh, Director General, Nirma University was also a part of the function.

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The chairpersons for NICOM, 2017 were Dr. Jayesh Aagja and Dr. Sapna Parashar, professors
of the Institute of Management, Nirma University (IMNU). Dr. M. Mallikarjun, Director In-
charge, IMNU delivered the welcome address.

Mr. Tarun Arora began the session. 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 brain of the customers, which is an emotional entity and can
help him achieve success.

The books titled Consumer Behaviour and Contemporary Marketing Strategy' and Services
in Emerging Economies' were launched during the session.

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

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

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REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

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 the most crucial part of any company
especially during its product launch. 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 and innovation, pricing
strategy, etc. Major solutions to the challenges should focus on critical inventory
management, substitution alternative offerings for multiple time zones, etc.

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He concluded his speech by relating it with his own start-up Healthy Browns, which
primarily focused on making different types of breads and how they market the product in
and around Ahmedabad. In this New Year, they have launched a green campaign with the
tagline that says lets 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 programming advertising has evolved over the years from being human
driven to completely technology driven.

He demonstrated how digital marketing has emotionally connected the audience with the
illustration of dove promotional video campaign where it displayed how in todays world by
promoting female athletes the definition of beauty has changed over the years. The beauty is
not only restricted to physicality but also to 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 Machines Being Indian which has reached more than 150 million monthly
views on various digital campaigns. The major success was emotionally connected to
audience involved in the campaign.

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REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

Plenary Sessions

The first plenary session of Day 3 was presided by Mr. Rajendra Nargundkar, Professor, IIM
Indore. The topic of discussion was Thoughts on Advancing Marketing Theory and Practice.

He shared his views on how faculties, 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% of the
compensation is dependent on their publications and researches. He commended 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.

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Marketing suffers from a lack of theory development. Initiated or published conceptual

papers are few. He also pressed on writing a book to develop contextual theories and cases.
He shared that he finds it pleasant how we have started using books written by Indian
authors in our courses. Ultimately, he wants us to become thought leaders in our fields, which
is an ardent toil, but also a pursuit worthwhile to follow.

He explained how thought leaders predict the future and see what others cant. He ended his
session by discussing a few topics that are very debatable and researchable in marketing. The
topics he shared are Why people buy, Demographics, Leisure spends, Online v/s offline
buying, Malls, etc.

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Valedictory Session

The Valedictory Session started at 12:30 PM. Amongst the dignitaries, were present were Mr.
Saurabh Pandey as the chief guest, Mr. K.K.Patel, the Vice Present of Nirma University, Prof.
Tripura Sundari Joshi, Dr. M. Mallikarjun, Mr. D.P. Chhaya and Dr. Sapna Parashar. 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. He had taken up the topic of Viral Marketing for the discussion. 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.

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Best Paper Awards

Following were best paper in each category;

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

First Prize: Mr. Jayendra Bharati and Dr. R. Srikant for the paper titled: Application of
Learning theories to Mobile Learning in India: An empirical study

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

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Certificate Distribution to the Committees

The Certificate distribution was announced by Mr. Saurabh Pandey. Following were the
representatives of each committees who have collected certificate on behalf of 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

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REPORT: NICOM 2017 January 5-7, 2017

Abstracts and Full Papers Received - NICOM 2017

We received total 195 abstracts under various sub-themes like Brand Management, Marketing
Research and Analytics, Retail Marketing, Consumer Behaviour etc., and Interdisciplinary Issues.

Themes
Brand Management

2% Consumer Behavior
2% 2%
5% 6% 4% 7% 10%
2% Cross Cultural Issues in
4% Marketing
18%
8% Cross Functional Issues in
Marketing
10%
6% Customer Relationship
2% Management
2% Digital Marketing
3%
3% 2%
Entrepreneurial Marketing

Designation wise Delegates - NICOM 2017

Delegates
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
22% Dean
29%
Doctoral Student
Faculty
8% H.O.D
2% Professor
9%
1% Research Assosciate
17% 6%
1%5% Research Scholar
Student

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List of Foreign delegates: NICOM 2017

The Conference received a range of participants in academic and industrial category 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

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

Following are the members of students committees and Core-Committee of the NICOM-2017
team;

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Sponsors - NICOM 2017

Following were the sponsors of NICOM-2016, this sponsorship was extended in both cash and
kind;

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Details of Reviewers - NICOM 2017

Following is the list of faculty or staff members with the number of papers reviewed in the process;

Sr. Name of Faculty No. of Papers Sr. Name of Faculty No. of Papers
No. Reviewed No. Reviewed
1 Prof. Ashwini Awasthi 11 11 Prof. Prabhat Yadav 7
2 Prof. Bindi Mehta 10 12 Prof. Rajesh Jain 6
3 Prof. Deepak Danak 11 13 Prof. Reena Shah 4
4 Prof. Deepak Shrivastav 5 14 Prof. Sameer Pingle 12
5 Prof. Jayesh Aagja 15 15 Prof. Sanjay Jain 11
6 Prof. M. Mallikarjun 4 16 Prof. Sapna Parashar 15
7 Prof. Mahesh K C 5 17 Prof. Subrat Sahu 20
8 Prof. Meeta Munshi 16 18 Prof. Tripura Joshi 22
9 Prof. Nikunj Patel 10 19 Prof. V V Nath 15
10 Prof. Nityesh Bhatt 8

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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

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NICOM - 2017 : THEME

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NICOM 2017 Prastavana

Prastavana - The Book of Abstracts highlights on abstract of all papers received for the
conference. NICOM-2017 received overwhelming response from academia, industry
practitioners and students. Conference received around 195 abstracts and 120 full papers
from national and international delegates. We have also received research papers from Indian
delegates from across the country. In addition, we have also published two books containing
selected full papers, chosen on the basis of their strength of research from the Prastavana.

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Conference Proceedings Book 1 - Consumer Behaviour & Marketing Strategy

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Conference Proceedings Book 2 - Services In Emerging Markets

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NICOM 2017 Advisory Council

Report Prepared by : NICOM Team

Content Courtesy : Media Committee, IMNU

Photo Courtesy : Pratikriti Committee, IMNU and Photographer

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