Day 2 of the IIMI NASMEI conference

Day 2 of the conference kicked off with a presentation by four luminaries- Manoj Agarwal, Raji Srinivasan, Rama Bijapurkar and Pingali Venugopal. The first two are representing NASMEI, which is our partner for this conference. They are hard-core academics at U.S. universities. Rama is a consultant, and Venugopal is a prof. at XLRI.

As usual, there were many familiar faces, like Ramesh Kumar from IIM Bangalore, and a few new ones. Moutusy Maity of IIML told me she has published a book on Digital Marketing, and I am looking forward to reading that. I mentioned our plans to edit a Case Book on the subject (some of you readers would be the contributors).

Learnings- Customer value in emerging markets may manifest itself differently, because of lower discretionary income levels, but some aspirations are common across levels of income, and many marketing concepts hold good anywhere in the world.

Also, there are not enough customer voices or marketing people in the Board rooms of American companies. Third, that sustainability is not recognised enough by marketers and consumers, except sporadically. That needs to change.

Research Paper presentations will start today and continue through tomorrow.

IIM Indore-NASMEI Marketing Conference 2017

One of the most successful conferences we organised when I was with IMT was  the Case conference at Goa's International Centre. Looks like the IIM Indore Marketing Conference on July 28th and 29th with NASMEI and UT Austin is all set to surpass that one. We have 300 plus papers on a variety of marketing topics, and top academicians from leading management institutes are participating either as presenters or invited speakers, making it one of the biggest marketing events in India. In addition, we have a few global stalwarts like Raji Srinivasan, Manoj Agarwal, and Phil Zerillo who will grace the occasion. Industry is also well-represented, with people like Shiv Kumar from Pepsi and Rama Bijapurkar, consultant, speaking at the event.

My young colleague Abhishek Mishra and his able conference manager Veenus, aided by a team of FPM students and staff, are the reason for the success.

Next week is going to be a power-packed and interesting one. Looking forward to it.