Amrita School of Business recently hosted a round table conference on Marketing on the theme ‘Changing Indian Consumer – Opportunities or Challenges for Researchers ?’

At the conference, Dr. Sheth, recipient of all top four academic awards bestowed by the American Marketing Association (AMA), spoke about ‘Academic Entrepreneurship for Scholarly Success’.

Prof. Sheth took the audience through the evolution of consumers – of how wants became needs – that has fundamentally changed the way the market works. “Today, the choices available to consumers are incredible. The generation gap is now only eight years. An elder sister can relate to her eight-year-old younger sister. This has had an enormous effect on consumers,” he elucidated.

“The e-commerce platform has changed everything. New types of consumers are emerging. They are smart and unpredictable. Social media has changed the marketing media too. Today, you can change the destiny of a brand by just word of mouth,” Dr. Sheth added.

“We are now living like a fish in a digital aquarium. Internet is a very rich, all pervasive medium. Thanks to the mobile phone, the word-of-mouth today has moved from local to global. Marketers need to be aware of the power of these technologies. Also, they need to target new market segments. For example, how many marketers know that a crane-operator in a shipyard has much more disposable income than an IT professional in a metro?”

Marketing gurus, industry experts as well as faculty members and research scholars from well-known business schools like IIMs and XIME participated in the round table conference.

Among the speakers were Dr. Ramya Neelamegham (Professor, IIM Bangalore), Dr. Deepak Gupta (Professor, Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore), Dr. Subhasis Ray (Professor, XIM, Bhubaneswar) and Dr. Jayaram Iyer (Chief Strategy & Analytics Officer, Matrimony.com).

Also at the round table, Amrita School of Business and Academy of Indian Marketing, exchanged a MoU, making the B-school a Charter Member of the Academy of Indian Marketing.