Types of Airline Passengers

 Based on observation (one method of doing research), these are some types of airline passengers-

Corporate and Pseudo-corporate - they are usually carrying a laptop which they pretend to work on during the flight. Some carry a coat-case, while some wear a jacket- without a tie, as per prevailing fashion.

Mom or family with noisy kid- The kid makes a racket, and the Mom/Dad lovingly look on. 

Loo-minous ones- always visit the loo, two times or three, starting within five minutes of the flight. Leaving airport loos much cleaner, I guess.. not sure about the in-flight ones.

The Demanding Customers- they demand things which they wouldn't at home. Usually male, wanting water, tea or extras that they haven't paid for. 

Rude Rushers- they rush around and push people as if there's a Gold Medal for the fastest exiter.

Mindful Monks- they rarely speak, nod once or twice, and keep to their meditation mostly.

Mobile-watchers- after Kingfisher went bust, the TV screens disappeared. So these guys make up by watching some unwatchable muck throughout the journey. 

Research Shows- 2

My research findings from life, continued.

Teaching is an art, and not everyone is an artist.

If there is an artist-teacher, he or she can captivate a learner. I have had the fortune to get some artist teachers in school (Hindi, English), MBA (Organizational Behaviour, Marketing) and Ph.D.  College, not many. I also tried to introduce artistic ways of teaching humdrum stuff like Marketing Research and not-so-humdrum stuff like Digital Marketing and Advertising.

Learners also respond to non-academic ways of connecting, if done right. Without biasing the evaluation that needs to be done professionally. 

Ties can go beyond the college/school years, between students, and also between teachers and students. Some of these bonds can be as strong as those between friends of the same age. I have been very lucky in this department, with alums of various institutions who are great friends now.

Research Shows - 1

I spent much of my professional life teaching or practicing Market Research. 

So this is my new series regarding real-life research into friends, colleagues, other humans, countries, or things. 

Research shows that-

Politicians never change. We can stop expecting them to do so. They have an election to win, which they are not sure of winning. If they win, they need to recoup their expenses. Simple Maths. 

Parents are predictable. The major drivers for a parent are seeing their kids do well, and they are not reasonable. Blinded by love for kids, they will go to any extent possible to help them succeed.

Kids are also predictable, mostly. They rebel, at some point, for a long time. That goes on until they go through the same phase that the parents have. Eventually, life teaches everyone a lesson. We think we are different, but we are not all that different.

 

Faculty Development Program at Tetso College

 We (Prestige University, Indore) have a partner college, Tetso, in Dimapur, Nagaland. A lot of collaborations are being discussed with them, both for faculty and students. As a first step, we had a workshop on How to Publish for their faculty. It was a great experience, with around 50 enthusiastic faculty participating, and working towards developing a research paper in baby steps. Prof. Debabrata Sutradhar coordinated. Our Dean and I were the resource-persons.

Some pics from the exercise-

Faculty Development at NMIMS Bangalore

 For some reason, I have talked at a lot of Faculty Development Programs, either ones that we organised institutionally, or some that others did. I find it interesting to talk about research strategy, methodology, case writing and pedagogy for learning. Many diverse views generally emerge. So it was that we had a recent FDP at NMIMS Bangalore which I joined in late November. We primarily discussed Publication strategy, but also a bit of everything else that teachers contend with. Some pics from the FDP. 

Some of us in the classroom.

One presentation by Deepak Sharma, who also draws great caricatures- one is in the pic below

Above- a video case on Golftripz that I discussed. Below, Prof. Neelima Watve talks about Research Methods and Scale Development

Three IIMs As a Professor

 I will shortly complete my 7 year stint at the third IIM I have worked in. Lucknow, 2001-03, Kozhikode or Calicut (2003-05), and now, Indore (2013-2020). I have been frequently asked why I did not stay too long in some workplaces. I will instead try and tell you why I did stay here for 7 years. 

I had visited IIM Indore a couple of times for different reasons, before I came to work here. Always found the attitude of the staff to be helpful on my visits. Indoreans are, without exception, nice people-probably extends to the rest of the state..I have recently made some friends in Bhopal/Dewas too, which reinforces this belief. Also visited Khandwa, Mandu, Patalpani, Maheshwar and Omkareshwar a couple of times at least. My interactions with the housekeeping staff, the drivers and attendants at the offices, were cordial, and they were always helpful when we needed help. 

Students, I had a variety of- one year EPGP, 2 year PGPMX at Mumbai, PGP here and at Mumbai campus, and the crowning glory- PGP regular. Occasionally, IPM and Dubai programs. MDPs, in-company,, and GMPE were some others. We designed a couple specifically for Whirlpool, Tata Trent and HPCL. Most were memorable.

I learnt a lot about the new kid on the block, Digital Marketing, while teaching it and writing cases about it, or sourcing them from students or alumni. Also developed a course on Tourism Marketing for PGP and Ph.D. Very interesting for me!

A few international conferences enabled me to interact with global researchers, from Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Korea, etc.- enriching. Wrote cases on international marketing, retailing, tourism etc. Wrote research papers on Social Media, B to B marketing and Faculty Branding, some of which found outlets in journals of repute. 

Ran a couple of conferences with NASMEI with young colleagues. Also guest lectured at multiple places, went for faculty selections at IIMs and NITIE (renamed as IIM Mumbai now), and FDPs at Belgaum's Gogte Institute. All in all, an action-packed, satisfying 7 years, I must say. Hope the victims of my teaching feel good about my attempts as well! Will remember lots of them.

Teaching Ph.D. Students

 One of my favourite things in teaching has been the Ph.D. courses. For one, the class is small, usually not more than 3-4 in an elective offered to the area students- marketing, in my case. Second, you are constantly learning from the discussions, re-looking at the best work published around the world- I mostly did Seminar courses on Digital Marketing, Tourism Marketing or Retailing.

Research ideas come out of such interactions, not just for fulfilling course objectives but beyond them. Conference papers, journal papers can follow, sometimes with the students as co-authors. It lays the foundation for their Ph.D. topics, sometimes. Here are a few students of Ph.D. from IIM Indore these last few years..

Wahid, Alisha in 2020.

Aarushi, Shweta, Sanket, Ankita, and Sumit two years ago.

Priyavrat, Shweta, Sanket and Ankita earlier. This was Tourism Marketing.

How to Have Fun

Our definitions of fun may vary widely. For someone, fun may mean skiing in the Alps, for another, beach-running in Goa, and for a third, trekking in the Smoky Mountains.

But I have tried classifying what I consider fun things to do-

Having an unstructured conversation (Gossiping) over a beverage- Chai, usually, and wine or a malt at other times. Accompanied by food, usually. I remember many such conversations with Savitha, Achint, Pallavi, Shafique, Vrinda (and her family), Shweta Agarwal, Abha, Tosha, Urvashi, Garima, Meghna, Ratnashree, Divya Singh, Radhika, Sowmyashree, Prabhakar, Dash, Harish, Himanshu Manglik, Pragya, Arvind Joshi, Mrunal, Sheetal Garg, Anant Ram, TK Chatterjee, Gadgil, Vijayakumar, Dhanapal,.. and some family members, over the last couple of years.

Planning what to teach or how to teach it- the actual thing may be fun or not, depending on the response. Planning an exam, likewise.

Discussing ideas for research/case writing. Sometimes the doing is also fun, but getting bad reviews is not!

Travel, for any purpose..essentially, the prospect of something new is exciting, even if the travel is sometimes tedious. Road trips are actually more relaxed, and I did many of them in the U.S. Train travel in Europe was pretty cool too.

Reading. I love reading, though my throughput has reduced thanks to social media. But there's nothing like a good book. Currently, it's a biography of Asha Bhosle that I am reading.

Watching a movie- of late, my tastes have changed from the formula film to a slightly more meaningful type of cinema, but I still like a variety of films if well-made.

Blasts From the Past

Been meeting friends and students from the past who are now friends. Gives you a great feeling to see what they are up to, in the case of students, and in the case of friends, to see how they have aged (ripened). A bit of both happened, recently.

 PESIT alums Siddhant and Aishwarya (above) I met after quite a few years, and their little cute daughter for the first time.

Prabhakar and I checked out the Single Malt collection, with Mona Lisa smiling down at us-we were like the Columbuses of Single Malt discoveries a few years ago, and have now achieved the status of We Have Seen it All- almost!

Also had a chance to meet IFIM alum Bharath Shenoy again after a while, and found he's a globe-trotting researcher. And attended the Ganesh Chaturthi with Muthu and Vasanti at their place too. He like me, is a member of the Two Daughters' Club. Seems to be enjoying his time off from Marketing Research these days. When will my turn come? (Mera number kab aayega, in Hindi).

A recent trend I have noticed is that I first meet people on facebook, and then in person. So it was with Shatakshi and Varun, a couple from IIM Indore who I had never met except on fb. Meeting them at home though, it seemed like we had known each other for a long time- a homely feeling.

Jobs and Tourism

Pic from Jaipur

Tourism is a job creator many times over. Every tourist needs a place to stay in, food to eat, and transport to move around. Some of these (the first two) may require some capital investment, but the transport could come in various forms, including private taxis or aggregators, or other local options (two-wheelers, cycle rickshaws, etc.).

Guides speaking multiple languages are an asset, and so are other information creators and providers. Local travel agents can also play a big role. Entertainment providers can also think creatively and develop options for travellers on a tight schedule, or those with more time.

I have recently started looking into tourism for research, and I find it's an area rich in potential for research too. If the right policies are followed, India can probably outdo itself with its rich variety of travel motivators, from history and architecture, to spiritual or medical reasons.

Good marketing of course, can lead to a big impact on tourism, both international and domestic. 

What I Like About Facebook

Of course, there's a lot of criticism of it. But I want to look at the positives.

If you invest time, it is rewarding. It's like live Market Research (a subject I like, and teach). On any given day, you get to know what a range of opinions on any topic are- extremes are there in good number, but moderates too express themselves- if you look closely.

It's a great pictorial ride-through the lives of people you like (mostly).

(Pic from a recent outing in Sri Lanka)


It gives you instant feedback on many things- silences, likes, comments, all have a story to tell.

It gets you back in touch. Random conversations on Messenger included, but meetings have also happened many a time solely due to FB- which otherwise may not have. Ex-students, ex-colleagues, and sometimes, forgotten classmates. Or new-found friends-of which there are lots.

You can innovate- I have tried, sometimes with success.

It is flexible, in the sense you can stay on it or away from it depending on your other priorities. At least, I think I can (!), though it may not seem so obvious.

All in all, it has a thumbs-up from me.

What Makes People Boring (!)

I am going to present you with a deliciously ironic post- it's about boredom, but it's very interesting.

The source is a book by Sandi Mann, titled The Upside of Downtime. She has researched boredom (!) and the book has a lot of it, including some on bored students, and bored workers; but I will take that up some other time. This time, it's about what makes people boring.

She has listed 30 points, but (so as not to bore you) I will concentrate on those that strike a chord. Here goes-

1. They ARE boring, as in nothing interesting is happening in their lives.

2. They are serious at all times- humourless is the word.

3. They avoid eye contact- look down, look away, but not look at you. I don't recommend staring at someone as an antidote. And looking into someone's eyes is reserved for, well, special people. But, you get what I mean.

4. They are ingratiating. Flattering beyond the normal, acceptable limits. It's one thing to say, "You are looking nice" sometimes, but to keep doing so all the time is.. well, what do you think? Maybe some will disagree :)

5. Using jargon or acronyms that you don't understand (showing off).

6. Living in the past, and talking about it all the time. I am getting there, having so much of it, I'm afraid...

7. Quoting from movies/ TV shows. I am guilty of bringing up Arnab Goswami multiple times..he IS irritating, and I find it helps to vent..

Personal Branding and Digital Marketing

Two hot topics, and that is a good reason to research them.

I am involved in doing just that, with a journal paper on Personal Branding with my co-author Bhagylakshmi, due soon, and a case on which I am working as a precursor to offering a course on Digital Marketing in the next academic year.

Personal branding is about how you as a person can become a brand that is polished and well-known, in a systematic manner- using all available media, including word-of-mouth, social media and any other mainstream media (of course, the last may be too expensive for most). Other avenues to build a brand could be to write books (assuming people will read these!), and becoming known as an expert in a given field. Red Adair was a guy known for his expertise in capping oil-well fires, for instance. So find out what you are good at, become an expert through honing your skills, and brand yourself accordingly.

Digital marketing is about using any digital media to advertise, promote or market your brand (personal or corporate). It may include organic and inorganic methods, including creating a buzz without paying for it, and paid advertising and marketing where you need a budget. In either case,  the likelihood of measuring the response is higher than for traditional media. Of course there is much more, but this is the gist of it. As preparation for teaching the course in the near future, I am on the lookout for stories about successes and failures in Digital Marketing. If you have some, email them to me at rnargundkar@gmail.com.You can disguise the names if you wish to protect identities.

Leadership Memories

I spent a few years leading some Indian business schools in the period between 2005 and 2013. The things I remember that I think made a difference, during those years, to various institutes I was in.

1. PESIT, Bangalore. My first and only stint in an institute that was not autonomous.

Creating a self-belief that faculty there could do anything that autonomous B schools could. Running a scholarly journal, interacting with industry, teaching through cases, publishing, teaching internationally. Most of these worked beyond belief, with some of the performance indicators exceeding the then norms at better ranked B schools.

2. IFIM Business School: Streamlining the admission process for MBA. We had spectacular success in reaching out, to roughly 30 cities in a year for admission. Bringing in research emphasis. Repositioning the International Business program as a desirable one.

3. IMT Nagpur. Encouraging both faculty and students to excel, all-round, in academics and extra-curriculars. Adding placement reps in metro cities to market effectively. Alumni relations were recognised for their importance, and channeled into chapter meets. And, of course, building a Golf course, even if it was only two holes. And using it. Running conferences successfully, also. Industry interaction with compulsory industry guest lectures. Wrote my first video case on Golftripz in the process, with the help of an alumna from KIAMS. Institutionalising an annual faculty outing for introspection and just building up a rapport among the team.

4. IMT Ghaziabad. It was a rather short stint, but getting faculty interested in research, case-writing and their own career development was a priority. Working towards accreditation was illuminating, too. Again, alumni relations were consciously improved.

In the current role, I am in charge of our training programs or MDPs and it is amazing to unlock the potential that my staff has, to increase the business significantly. Of course, backed by colleagues who do the hard work of delivering.

Facebook Research

I did some serious research on Facebook recently. And this is what I found.

The frequency chart of Comments by Friends looks ‘’like’’ this- (for simplifying the complex figures, I have reduced it to a distribution of 100 typical comments).

How cute- 20

You look gorgeous!- 70

Perfect couple- 5

Happy anniversary, Happy birthday, Congratulations- 5

All the rest- 0

Does this point to a serious problem our next-gen is going to have with vocabulary? Are we going to be back in the cave-man days when da, duh, aah were the three major words we knew? Ah, well, I don’t know. That would need more research, wouldn’t it?

Happy New Year to Me

I joined IIM Indore about a year ago. It has been a very interesting year living on campus after a longish break. The perks are obvious- green, pollution free environment, peaceful walks, assured power supply and water supply (not available outside, though Nagpur had almost uninterrupted supply of both), and easy commute to work and the option to go back and forth if needed. Food supply too, in my case as I live alone, and use the mess for food- decent by institutional standards.

I also get to meet all new faculty who join because they initially are guests at the mess until they set up homes. Marketing area has seen lots of additions, almost doubling our strength in the last few months. I also taught in our Dubai and Mumbai campuses, getting to meet friends in both places. I am also in charge of MDP or short-term training programs.

Funnily, I met three IMT Nagpur alumni in my first few months here, visiting for an MDP or otherwise. Training programs happen at a dizzying pace at the IIMs, and we are no exception. Teaching in some has been a different experience. And then, I also taught a course using a simulation, and am now doing one on advertising after a while. Youtube has added a new twist to this course, and finding old videos of ads is very easy. Adds a zing!

Also went around to Mandu, Maheshwar, Patalpaani and Omkareshwar nearby. Also discovered a jurassic site with petrified logs and dinosaur eggs near Mandu. Great revelation!

All in all, an interesting year or so. Read lots of books too, many of them real humdingers. To the next year and more!

Anopheles and the Vanishing Rupee Trick

Ok, this is the latest tete-a-tete with my old friend Anopheles. For those who came in late, she is a female mosquito who specialises in intelligent conversation, sometimes giving me a complex.

This time, she asked me what problems my countrymen were facing. Brainwashed by the stories on TV every breathtaking hour, I replied, "The falling rupee."

She said, "What do you mean?"

I explained, "It's our currency. The rupee. It has fallen to an all-time low against the American currency, the US dollar."

She seemed amused. "Do you travel abroad frequently?"
"No," I said.
"Do you need something so badly that you have to import it?"
I was about to say "gold" but checked myself and said, "Not really."

"Then, pray, how does the rupee fall bother you?" she wanted to know.
I was a bit flummoxed. Then I thought of a killer reply "We need petrol and diesel, you know.That has to be imported. So we need dollars."

"Oh, so you can't do without oil." She seemed quite disdainful. "What research have you done into using solar energy, which is almost free? Or any alternative sources? Why haven't you developed electric cars, with all those millions of engineers whom you keep churning out of your wonderful colleges?"

How did she know so much about what we didn't do, I wondered. But outwardly I put up a brave front.
"Research is on, you know. We'll soon have some of those."

She was not convinced. "Are you sure? How many products or technologies have you produced out of your labs in the last sixty-five years?"
I could count about  four or five, and gave up.

"Ok, let's talk of something else," I beseeched her. She relented, so I told her how my state of birth was being split into two- Telangana and Andhra.

She was sceptical of the benefits.
"How do you expect the same bunch of people who ruled the earlier state to do anything different with the people just because you made a new boundary line?" was her searing question.

"Smaller states are easier to govern," I argued.

"Then how come you had all these great empires in the past? Were they all badly governed? The U.S. is large. Is it badly governed?" I had to admit my logic was sounding flawed, in retrospect.

Mulling over that lesson in "good governance", I bid her goodbye with a promise to meet another day.

Creating Doctors

We need hundreds of them. Doctors of Philosophy or Ph.D.s, in management, I mean. We have major weaknesses in our supply chain- read universities and other institutes. Many state universities lack quality guides and/or systems, though they allow flexibility. IIMs are inflexible, though they provide quality. Who will fill the gap?

No idea, as of now. But I am happy to have contributed my mite to solving this in a small way. I just helped one of my students clear his last hurdle towards his doctorate- he cleared his final viva yesterday. We celebrated with lunch at Lemontree in e-city.  We have a Ph.D. program with NLU and plan to start our own. IMT also conducts research methodology workshops for doctoral students (some of whom are teaching as well). Hope this helps a little bit.

Guide to Management Core Subjects-Statistics

It's one of the most misunderstood subjects in the world. Usually because (pardon me teachers) it is taught badly. With no appreciation that it can do wonders for you, if you don't seek perfection from it (like with most things in life, I might add).

Statistics is the art or science of estimating things, and sometimes calling these predictions- they are still estimates, and can be wrong to varying degrees. But within its limitations, you can estimate a lot of things using simple statistics. For instance, people visiting a store on a given day, or time of the day, can be observed, mapped, and used to determine how many staff would be needed, for example, at what times.

Or, you can look at purchase patterns and send out promotional offers to customers most likely to buy. Online marketers seem to have cottoned on to this, coz I am flooded with pop up ads for air tickets, if I have just browsed for a particular sector on yatra, without buying the ticket.

The trouble is, teaching starts at the wrong end- the theory, which is worse than nuclear physics, and hardly anyone understands it. Practice or application might be the place to start, and present a practical problem, and then go back to how statistics could help solve it (with a margin of error, naturally). And the discussion of errors of all kinds (Type 1, Type 2 are the least of them) goes on and on, that by the time you are done listing all of them you forget what problem it was you were trying to solve.

The other extreme is trying to fit a problem to a technique. As in, I want to use Regression (or Multidimensional Scaling, or whatever). How do I use it in my research? Or, after a questionnaire for a survey has been filled up, saying I want to use x,y,z, technique for analysis. That is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, surely? The scale of measurement determines what analysis can be performed. QED.

I will not even talk about probability, until I have understood how to make it better understood.

Doing Research- The Basics

Academic research done for the purpose of publishing a paper or presenting it at a conference or for a doctoral thesis is not everyone's cup of tea, and should not be. But if it is, how should one go about it? I get asked this question often, and it's not so difficult to answer. Let me attempt to do so. Sorry if it sounds like gyan from a baba or a baby!

The most important part of any research is not the statistics, but well, ...RESEARCH. Or, in easier to understand jargon, the literature review. Of past work done in the subject area you want to work on. Many researchers start with questionnaire design, do a survey of sorts, and wonder what they did! The reason is, there's no link with theory, no justification for what you did or how (methodology, to use jargon).

A good literature review can be done at your desk with the help of an online journal database like EBSCO or ProQuest these days. It takes only a day to download your readings for a particular keyword or phrase (research topic), but many weeks to read and digest it. Once it floats around in the brain, questions arise, and some of these serve as research questions for your study. Others lead to a possible methodology, after discussions with peers or your research guide. Justification for your work is easier, and linking your findings after your research to existing findings provides a validation or otherwise of work done earlier- and yours.

Questionnaire design is critical if you want to do a survey, but that must follow the literature review. That must result in getting the results in a format you want. If you can visualise blank tables of results, can you get them from the questions you have got on the questionnaire, is a good way to think about it.

Lastly, the results must allude to the hypotheses or questions asked in the beginning, and say what happened to each one of these. All this applies to research with primary data. Conceptual papers can come out of literature review and some projections or hypotheses alone.