The recently published Report on Currency and Finance, 2020-21 of the Reserve Bank of India reviewed the performance of the fl exible infl ation targeting regime in India. In the light of stylised facts, cross-country experience, and detailed econometric results, the report seemed to suggest that despite several shocks (like demonetisation or introduction of the goods and services tax), a combination of good policy and luck have worked in favour of the success of the FIT regime in India. Going forward, while advocating some nuanced, subtle changes in the operation and administration of the FIT regime, the report called for its continuation as a strategy of monetary policy in India. © 2021 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the factors favoring the adoption of the challenges faced and support mechanism, which will lead to the proliferation of glass fiber-reinforced gypsum (GFRG) technology in India. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews with 35 experts, including construction developers, architects, contractors, government officials and design consultants, were conducted. This qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis and matrix analysis. Findings: GFRG-based buildings produce much less carbon footprints as compared to traditional ones and can be safely recommended as a promising, environmentally sensitive technology of the future. The major drivers in its adoption are its efficient construction capability, energy and soil conservation and significant waste reduction. Some of the challenges in implementation are long planning time, lack of skilled labor, lack of awareness about green building technologies and myopic perception of high cost incurred in green building adoption in people’s minds. Practical implications: This study establishes that the construction industry has the potential to contribute toward creating a sustainable and green planet. It does so by evaluating and then positively positioning GFRG as an environmentally friendly building system. Originality/value: The harmful effects of continuous environmental manipulation by humans leading to its degradation is a critical discussion agenda for most nations of the world. The issue has been taken up seriously by developing countries, and now, developing countries are also becoming sensitised to it. Several policies toward the attainment of this goal have been formulated and are being implemented by government and private bodies. Although some authors have studied the issues and challenges related to the adoption of green buildings, their attempts mostly focused on developed countries. Moreover, research that investigated the evaluation of the GFRG building system as a successful green technology of the future is inadequate. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The popularity of remanufacturing among the research community resulted in an increase in the number of academic publications in recent years. Quite a number of literature reviews related to reverse logistics, core acquisition management, Design for Remanufacturing (DfRem), production planning, analytical models in remanufacturing were published in various journals. The management of remanufactured products is quite complex due to specific operations like core acquisition, reverse logistics, disassembly, cleaning, repairing and reassembly. This often makes determining the price of remanufactured product a difficult task. Moreover, pricing of remanufactured products acts as a control mechanism to maintain the demand for both new and remanufactured products. A significant number of academic publications have been published regarding pricing and competition decision in remanufacturing. This paper aims to study with a focus on pricing related decisions in remanufacturing through bibliometric analysis that can provide insights into the latest research trends in this area by analysing the most significant and cited papers, authors collaboration network, keywords, countries, and institutions. In this paper, a thorough review and bibliometric analysis are conducted over 336 articles from 2000 until May 2020. The systematic mapping and analysis help to identify developing research areas, key research topics, publication evolution over time, collaboration patterns among authors, countries, the co-occurrence of authors keywords, and future research directions. From the content analysis, we have identified five pricing models such as pricing of remanufactured products under competition, impact of the product lifecycle on remanufacturing pricing, pricing related to product design in remanufacturing, pricing models under an uncertain environment, and optimal pricing under customer willingness-to-pay. We have also identified the decision variables, assumptions, and research objective(s) for each model. The findings of this research provide a direction for a further study in this domain, such as how pricing of a remanufactured products can be done in oligopolistic competition, how an effective product design strategy determines the price of remanufactured product, how the government regulatory policies influence the profitability in remanufacturing, or what is the effect of carbon cap and trade mechanism on the price of remanufactured products. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Skippable video advertisements (ads), which allow uninterested users to skip the ad after a few seconds, have witnessed rapid growth in the past few years. While their advantages for viewers and advertisers are obvious, they pose an ad revenue optimization problem for their publishers, i.e., the Video Sharing Platforms (VSPs). The VSPs need to critically balance the higher but uncertain revenue from skippable ads with the lower but guaranteed revenue from non-skippable ads. This problem is particularly challenging because non-skippable ads cause higher disutility to viewers. Moreover, due to network effect, this disutility has a long term impact on the VSPs’ revenue. In this paper we study the revenue management problem faced by a VSP in determining the optimal mix of skippable and non-skippable ads. We model VSP as a two sided platform, identify conditions under which an advertiser would prefer skippable ads over non-skippable ones, and derive the optimality conditions for VSP's optimal ad mix. Our model reveals the existence of an upper bound on number of non-skippable ads, such that continued violation of this upper bound leads to a cascading effect, resulting in a reduction of both skippable and non-skippable ads over time. Our analysis helps a VSP in determining the incentive it should provide to the advertisers to switch to its preferred ad type. Our study reveals that non-skippable ads are essential for VSPs with niche or low content, and the proportion of skippable ads increases as the content increases or becomes more general. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Operations research (OR) has been at the core of decision making since World War II, and today, business interactions on different platforms have changed business dynamics, introducing a high degree of uncertainty. To have a sustainable vision of their business, firms need to have a suitable decision-making process at each stage, including minute details. Our study reviews and investigates the existing research in the field of decision support systems (DSSs) and how artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities have been integrated into OR. The findings of our review show how AI has contributed to decision making in the operations research field. This review presents synergies, differences, and overlaps in AI, DSSs, and OR. Furthermore, a clarification of the literature based on the approaches adopted to develop the DSS is presented along with the underlying theories. The classification has been primarily divided into two categories, i.e. theory building and application-based approaches, along with taxonomies based on the AI, DSS, and OR areas. In this review, past studies were calibrated according to prognostic capability, exploitation of large data sets, number of factors considered, development of learning capability, and validation in the decision-making framework. This paper presents gaps and future research opportunities concerning prediction and learning, decision making and optimization in view of intelligent decision making in today’s era of uncertainty. The theoretical and managerial implications are set forth in the discussion section justifying the research questions. © 2021, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

The competitiveness of the business ecosystem is exponentially increasing nowadays. Cutthroat competition is being observed by the business leaders to retain the customers and to optimize the customer lifetime value (CLV). The marketers used to target and engage their customers based on the "gut-feeling" and "assumptions" of what is the in-sync audience for their offerings. However, data-driven marketing has heightened the campaign's efficiency and pull the business, voluminous rungs closer to the audience's behavior & expectations. Improving the information attribute is another crucial emphasis of the business leader to derive multidimensional success metrics and determine' long-term success.' The omnichannel experience (e.g., walk-in customers, social media, mobile app users, point of sale data, etc.) and cross channel customer experience is vital in elevating the customer lifetime value. The marketing strategies are crafted based on the different inputs of the big data-driven solution's information and its recommendation. This research model institutes an integrated relationship between big data-driven solutions, information quality, customer lifetime value, strategic decision, and business performance. The assertive usage of information with media and creatives is also discussed in the research. The moderating relationship of user behavior-based recommendations to marketing leaders is also established in the proposed model. The conceptual framework contributes to the business performance model through strategic marketing decisions. © 2021 IEEE

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to frame the guidelines for brand building for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and evaluate the role of the entrepreneur in the brand management process. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study comprising in-depth interviews of 20 Indian MSME entrepreneurs who had experience with brand-building was conducted. The entrepreneurs were probed regarding the brand management process and their role in the brand-building efforts in their organization. The guidelines that emerged from the study were compared and contrasted with those proposed in Krake’s model, and a new model for brand-building is proposed. Findings: The improvised new model highlights the importance of “name of the brand”, “managing finance simultaneously” and “exit strategy” as important factors for the creation of a successful brand, amongst other factors revealed in extant literature. The interviews also reveal that an MSME headed by a passionate entrepreneur who accommodates professional expertise witnesses a greater chance of success. Originality/value: In spite of the growing importance of SMEs, scant attention has been paid to the issue of branding in SMEs. This study contributes to the literature on branding and small business research by examining and advancing the brand-building guidelines developed by Krake. It further looks at the role of the entrepreneur in the entire process of brand building in the increasingly evolving Indian market. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

‘Buy online and pick up in-store’ (BOPS), wherein a customer buys the product online and picks it up from the physical store at her convenience, is fast gaining popularity. However, BOPS service complicates the store's inventory policy as BOPS orders, while waiting to be picked up, block inventory and thus delay replenishment requests. The store now has to maintain a base-stock level that is optimal considering both walk-in and BOPS orders. We discuss an inventory control policy that suits this situation. The problem is accentuated when the online channel and the physical store are under different ownerships, since the revenue from BOPS orders will now get shared between the two. In such a scenario, the store may opt for an inventory policy that favours walk-in orders over BOPS requests, as every BOPS order fetches less revenue than every walk-in customer. The extent of restriction on BOPS orders will depend on the revenue-sharing policy and also on the relative frequencies of walk-in and BOPS demands. We discuss two inventory policies that can help the store prioritize walk-in demands over BOPS demands. We compare the performances of the policies proposed, and show that each policy has its claim to supremacy over others in different operating environments, characterized by the input parameters. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Purpose: World over, change of base year in the gross domestic product (GDP) is a standard practice of GDP estimation. However, unless a consistent series of GDP is released with respect to the new base for the earlier period, the existence of multiple growth rates creates problems for applied researchers, policymakers and the general public alike. Faced with such a menu of GDP series researchers often try to interpolate a consistent series of GDP. The main purpose of this paper is to analyses the nature of the data generating process of such multiple interpolated series of quarterly growth rates and tries to discern the consistency of such processes. Design/methodology/approach: The present paper tries to look into the statistical implications and complications of such interpolated quarterly GDP/growth series in India in terms of three series of GDP, namely, with 1999–2000, 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 as its bases. Findings: The analysis reveals that as a result of a change of base year, the nature of the data generating process of the old and new GDP series could undergo changes and experience different breakpoints. While all these conclusions seem to be valid for GDP growth at quarterly intervals, taking the data at annual frequency is less problematic. Practical implications: The observation suggests that in most applied work, researchers may not have the luxury of only working with annual data and certain consistency checks will be necessary to check the veracity of the results based on quarterly data with those based on annual data. Second, moving forward it may be useful for the Authorities to make a transition to a chain-based linking method rather than fixed time-period-based bases as is currently done. Originality/value: The analysis of Indian GDP in this paper is, perhaps, indicative of the fact that usage of quarterly GDP data is to be handled with caution and it is preferable that any serious empirical analysis uses annual GDP data whenever it is available/feasible. The comparison of GDP growth rates at different frequencies and examining the true nature of the process are quite unique in their contribution towards empirical macroeconomic research. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

We consider a two-tier supply chain with manufacturing as the upstream tier and retailing as the downstream tier. We focus on investigating the impact of the retailers’ competition vis-à-vis their relative positioning within the retailing tier on the performance of the supply chain. Further, we develop a stylized game-theoretic model, where a manufacturer is the leader, while multiple competing retailers are its followers. We look to generate three distinct supply chain structures by varying the positioning (tier dominance) of one retailer with the other retailer(s): (i) simultaneous setting, (ii) sequential setting, and (iii) cooperative setting. Our analysis reveals some interesting insights regarding the impact of these distinct supply chain structures on channel efficiency. For instance, we find that the supply chain becomes the most efficient under the sequential setting. The economic rationale behind this non-intuitive result is rooted in how retailers’ relative positioning in the retailing tier interacts with double marginalization. Additionally, our results suggest that retailers’ tier dominance leads to a “win-win” outcome where both the supply chain and consumers are better off. Under the sequential setting, we determine the optimal number of tier-dominant retailers while maximizing channel efficiency. Finally, using numerical studies, we investigate the impact of the degree of product substitution on channel efficiency, whereby, we find that, under the simultaneous setting, channel efficiency monotonically increases in the degree of product differentiation, which essentially is not always monotone in the sequential setting. We also demonstrate how the power imbalance between retailers complements the theory of countervailing power. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

With high prevalence of conspicuous consumption in low-income emerging economies like India, we argue that households in these economies resort to debts to finance their conspicuous consumption. Using nationally representative household panel data from Indian Human Development Surveys, we provide evidence that an increase in conspicuous consumption results in higher household debt and more number of loans, using multiple empirical strategies. We further illustrate that this effect on household debt i) is higher for rural households, and ii) reduces with higher education. We contribute to the literature on conspicuous consumption and its unfavorable consequences in emerging economies. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Inflationary forecasts tend to play a crucial role in macroeconomic and financial decision/policy making. In particular, in an inflation-targeting framework, it is of paramount importance. While traditionally, model-based and survey-based inflation expectations are being used, in recent times, a literature has emerged to forecast various macro-aggregates using text-based sentiment estimates. Taking a cue from this approach, in this paper we attempt to decipher inflationary sentiments using text mining from two leading financial dailies, viz., the Economic Times and Business Line. We consciously avoid using social media news due to severe challenges and high noise-to-signal ratio. In our algorithm we aggregate CPI basket level (viz., food, fuel, cloth & miscellaneous) sentiment into an overall index of inflation, adapting techniques from natural language processing. Our results from this text-based model indicate significant success in tracking actual inflation. © 2021, Editorial Office, Indian Economic Review.

In the context of the demonetization experiment of November 2016 in the Indian economy, this paper aims at looking into its impact on digital payments. Using the major digital payment modes and following the methodology of time-series outlier detection proposed by Chen and Liu (1993), the impacts are found to be mostly transitory in nature. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore how a socio-digital platform can facilitate consumer responsibilisation in food consumption to encourage sustained responsible consumption and uncovers its possible impacts on different stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach: Two-year-long case study of a socio-digital platform that aims to integrate consumers with the farming process; creating value for them and the farmers in India. Findings: The process of consumer responsibilisation happens through three mechanisms; construction of a moral-material identity, vicarious self-artisanship and shared responsibilisation. Through these key mechanisms, the socio-digital platform could foster consumer responsibilisation and engender positive societal impacts by promoting both responsible production and consumption. Research limitations/implications: This study shows how the construction of moral–material identity could move beyond an either-or choice between moralistic and material identity and allow space for the coexistence of both. This paper highlights how a socio-digital platform can be leveraged to facilitate responsible consumer engagement in an aestheticised farming process. Practical implications: This paper aims to guide policymakers to design digitally-enabled human-centred innovation in facilitating consumer engagement with farming and cultivating responsible consumers in achieving sustainable development goals. Social implications: This study shows how consumer responsibilisation can actually address market failures by enhancing the value created in the system, reducing wastage and cutting costs wherever possible, which drive better incomes for the farmers. Originality/value: Previous studies have discussed heterogeneous motivations for responsible food consumption. However, this research explores the processes through which an individual reconnects to food production and the mechanisms that support this process in the long run. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Base of the Pyramid (BoP) producers have limited opportunities to create and capture value due to various constraints, which keeps them trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty. The emerging literature on the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the poverty alleviation of BoP producers focuses on ICT-enabled solutions to value capture. However, ICT-enabled solutions to create value at the BoP have received less attention. In this paper, we study the issues surrounding value creation for non-commodity BoP producers by employing a case study of four organisations in rural India. Our findings reveal two critical mechanisms for ICT-enabled value creation in a resource-constrained environment: awareness creation and repeated engagement. We find that ICT-enabled awareness creation has a positive impact on value-added, but this effect decreases as product complexity increases. We also find that ICT-mediated repeated engagement and value-added have an inverted U-shape relationship, with value-added increasing with complexity, but after a threshold, value-added declines with increase in complexity. Building on these findings, we use the lens of value co-creation and media richness perspective to contribute to theory, practice and policy by underscoring how awareness creation and repeated engagement act as key dimensions for value creation. We delineate how limitations in ICT infrastructure can be overcome in resource-constrained environments and explicate a conceptualisation of ICT-mediated joint value creation in general for spatially separated actors. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The impact of accounts receivables on the performance of salespersons is largely ignored in sales literature. However, in many sales contexts, managing customers' accounts receivables is directly managed by the salespeople, and therefore substantially impacts their sales performance. Towards such sales contexts, in this empirical study, we study the effect of customer account receivables and salespersons' customer orientation on their relationship orientation and customer-related performance. We further analyse the direct impact of relationship orientation on customer-related performance. Using survey-based data from 224 salespersons based out of India, we empirically test the proposed model using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Our findings suggest that accounts receivables from customers and salespersons ‘customer orientation strongly impact relationship building and also improves customer-related performance. The salespersons’ relationship orientation also partially mediates the relationship between customer account receivables and customer-related performance. Therefore, this study provides much-required evidence to establish the salience of salesforce appropriately managing customers' account receivables so that its impact on their sales performance customer relationships are not adversely affected. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

This article explores the emergence of small-scale iron foundries in the Howrah district of India. Based on the empirical findings the article contributes to the debate on indigenous entrepreneurship in colonial India. It shows that indigenous entrepreneurs were critical in the emergence of small-scale iron foundries in Howrah. Thus, it refutes the cultural constraint argument that Indians did not participate significantly in the industrial development during the colonial period. The slow growth of the foundry industry during the early half of the period of this study shows that it was colonial constraints that hindered the industrial development of colonial India. The article further shows that small-scale industries in colonial India emerged in relationship to the large-scale industries. At a more general level, the article points to important dynamics of industry emergence such as backward linkages, spin-off, and inter-firm linkages. The article further supports the classical argument regarding protection to emerging industries. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In the above article [1], we importantly missed out on generalizing the application scope to the inter-disciplinary contributions made in the article. It is essential to educate the readers on an increasing variety of novel and highly practical modern-day application families where the contributions made in [1] are equally applicable-not just the evident application pertaining to mobile-ad ecosystems, as in [1]. © 2013 IEEE.

Purpose: In the context of India, this article proposes an integrated multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) regression-based methodology to evaluate input-level performance of the schools and investigate the impact of this performance along with contextual factors, i.e. medium of instruction and location of the school, on the school's output level performance, i.e. student pass rate. Design/methodology/approach: First, Shannon entropy-based approach is applied for the weight assignment to different parameters. Then, integrated VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS)-based methodology is devised to measure the input-level performance of a school. Finally, multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis is incorporated to study the effect of input-level performance and above-mentioned contextual factors on the school's output-level performance. Findings: Proposed methodology is applied to assess the input-level performance of 82,930 primary and secondary schools of West Bengal, India. All the factors have a significant impact on boys' pass rate, whereas only input-level performance and location of the school have a significant influence on the girls' pass rate. Practical implications: The entropy-based approach highlights the importance of scientific weight assignment. Integrated MCDM demonstrates the significance of aggregation due to the variation in scores related to input-level performance across the methods. Regression analysis facilitates the exploration of determinants influencing the output-level performance of the schools. Originality/value: This work depicts a holistic picture of the performance measurement system of the schools. It encompasses scientific weight assignment to the evaluation criteria, integrated input-level performance assessment of the schools and investigation into the effect of this performance, as well as other contextual factors on the output level performance. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The paper argues both theoretically and empirically that incidence of extortion reduces the flow of private investment at a state in a federation. The states compete in terms of their firm/industry-specific investment to retain the investment in their own jurisdiction. It uses the data from Indian states for the empirical analysis. The spatial regression technique used in the analysis takes into account the proximity of the states in terms of their industry-specific investment and finds that the states similar in terms of industry-specific investment have similar private manufacturing investment. Also, a higher rate of extortion in a state creates a negative spill-over effect on the flow of private investment in the state from the private investment in other similar states. The results suggest that a policy of controlling extortion has significant return in terms of flow of private investment in a state, which is not mitigated through industry-specific investment. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.