Growth and characterization of CDs thin films by photochemical and chemical bath deposition

Chemical solution deposition methods namely photochemical and chemical bath depositions are used to deposit cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films on insulating glass substrates. In photochemical deposition (PCD), the deposition occurs by light induced reactions in the chemical solution. A substrate is immersed in the deposition solution and irradiated with ultraviolet light. Then the compound is formed in the solution due to photochemical reactions and deposited in the irradiated region of the substrate. The reactions occur only in the irradiated region, and the deposition process can be easily controlled by turning on/off the light. While in chemical bath deposition (CBD), the deposition occurs by chemical reaction promoted by thermal energy. The films obtained by both methods are characterized by XRD, UV-Visible spectrophotometer, Photoluminescence and Raman measurements. A comparative analysis is presented

Theory of Brick-and-Mortar Retailing in India (ToR-b)

Brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers in India are constantly devoting their time, effort, energy, and money in discovering and adopting retailing theories, models, and frameworks that are practiced by the B&M retailers in the developed countries that have matured markets and consumers. This is a clear example of a serious timing issue. We believe the Indian market and consumers are moving towards the same maturity levels, but it is still a long way to go as the Indian consumers belong to the widest variety of religions, regions, languages, cultures, sub-cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds with divergent needs. In addition to expecting world-class overall store-image, they yet require retailers to facilitate honest and authentic human-led engagement. This means, thoughtful and logical integration of existing theories aligned to, the Indian market; consumer's maturity level; divergent consumer needs is crucial, and this is the core of our theory. The ToR-b adopts elements of retailing theories that are known and suitable for retailing in the Indian context, in addition to identifying i) new elements influencing honest and authentic human-led engagement; higher consumer-level customization; higher levels of consumer-orientation, ii) significance of their association and determination with return on investment, iii) their role in influencing the long-term sustainability of a retailer, and most importantly iv) their ability to enhance interest among existing and potential employees, investors, and consumer’s minds with a particular retailer. Insights from multiple empirical and qualitative studies, field experiments, and evaluation of consumer-level transactions involved in building this theory made us strongly believe that the overall phenomenon of B&M retailing in India is truly complex and complexity is necessary to an adequate description of a phenomenon. We hope that in addition to laying a foundation for new directions to guide future research on Indian retailing, our theory will provide new and noteworthy insights into the overall phenomenon of B&M retailing in India

Retailing Performance Evaluation Scale for Indian Brick-and-Mortar Lifestyle Retailers (LSRS-b)

A majority of brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India have adapted firm-level and output-driven measures to evaluate their overall retailing performance in addition to not apportioning the central office expenses incurred merely to run stores on to store’s profit and loss account. This output-driven approach is distracting them from focussing on input variables and efficiency that is inevitably imperative if sustainable retail profit and returns on investment are expected. In this exhaustive empirical study, we have studied a few select organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers to identify 64 variables that directly or indirectly determine the returns on investment of a lifestyle retailer, of which we have chosen 16 input-driven variables to design the LSRS-b instrument in addition to ensuring integration of variables that have a significantly positive association and determination with consumer repeat visit rate, sales personnel consumer orientation, cash flow efficiency, revenue generation, profitability, returns on investment, and consumer-level performance evaluation. Based on 24 months of data evaluated, we have found that these 16 input-driven variables have a significant determination of about 86.90 percent concerning the final output i.e., returns on investment (ROI) which is a strong indicator of the reliability of LSRS-b instrument in evaluating the overall retailing performance of organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India

Artificial Intelligence-Based Consumer Communication by Brick-and-Mortar Retailers in India Leading to Syllogistic Fallacy and Trap – Insights from an Experiment

It is observed that a majority of organized brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers in India believe that they have adopted the latest Artificial Intelligence-based consumer communication (AIBCC) tools/solutions and are yielding accurate outputs that can be used for interpretation, conclusion, and decision-making concerning consumer communications. This belief/assumption in itself is a classic example of a syllogistic trap. This study reveals that the B&M retailers in India are least worried about AIBCC tools/solutions repeatedly sending promotional/campaign messages to consumers based on their past transactional data till they come back again to the store without knowing the ‘Purpose of Previous Purchase’. This is mere because the cost of such communications is negligible (Just costs about 1 US dollar for sending 500 messages to a mobile phone number). We have also observed that the B&M retailers are unaware of the potential negative impacts of false/fake/artificial promotional/campaign messages being sent to consumers as a result of syllogistic fallacy caused by the AIBCC tools/solutions on the overall brand image in the consumers’ minds. Experimentation results demonstrate that the existing belief of the organized B&M retailers in India which assumes that the AIBCC tools/solutions are accurate is just a misconception and does not hold. On the other hand, when we experimented by identifying two main gaps (input and output-level) in their existing AIBCC tool/solution for six months at over 35 percent stores of a select retailer, the real treatment effect indicated that the experimental group of stores has shown (i) two times higher rate of conversion to any promotional/campaign messages; (ii) 19 times better in capturing the ‘Purpose of Purchase’ field; (iii) 22% lesser consumer communication expenses; (iv) 22.80% higher revenue generation; and most importantly; (v) 4.25 times higher store-level profits in comparison with the control group of stores. We have also noted that in the control group of stores about 36% of the customers/consumers who have received the promotional/campaign messages from the automated AIBCC tool/solution were not real consumers. Besides finding evidence of the syllogistic fallacy and trap, our results are also consistent with our ‘Theory of B&M Retailing in India and the concept of ‘Debiasing by Instruction’ by Evans et al

Exclusive Brand Outlet Expansion Framework for Lifestyle Brands in India (EBOE-LS)

Though EBOs’ (Exclusive Brand Outlet) risk-mitigation is a collective responsibility of lifestyle brand and the expansion partner (franchisee), a majority of lifestyle brands in India believe that the risk of capital investment/recurring expenses of EBOs and profit generated by EBOs has to be owned by the expansion partner. This belief and unbalanced business strategy of lifestyle brands though attract franchisees in the early stages of EBO expansion due to the brand’s reputation in the market or initial lucrative contract terms, it seriously fails to bring any long-term strategic and competitive advantages to the lifestyle brand as the drop-out rate of expansion partners increase significantly after one year of operation. This belief is also distracting lifestyle brands from understanding the long-term positive impact of EBO expansion frameworks that could balance the risk-mitigation and profits between the brand and the expansion partner. A single theory, model and framework of ‘Firm-Contracts’ and ‘Distribution Systems’ from the existing literature available across perspectives, paradigms, and areas of study (Economics, Business Law, Market Penetration, Business Strategy, Marketing and so on) is not entirely applicable that could be adopted to suit lifestyle brand’s EBO expansion plan in India and designing a framework without empirical pieces of evidence is also not appropriate. In this study, i) we have studied existing theories, models and frameworks relevant to market penetration and expansion; ii) analyzed 24 months’ of actual EBO data of a few select organized lifestyle brands in India across their existing expansion models; iii) borrowed experimental findings and insights from previous studies relevant in this context, to identify key decision and investment-making areas that could result in a balanced business contract between a lifestyle brand and the expansion partner thereby designing an economical/effective framework that would be useful in deployment of appropriate tactics of deciding a right EBO type for every City Type and the Store Location by a lifestyle brand in India. The framework is named as EBOE-LS

Sales Personnel Attrition Control and Retention – An Integrated Framework for Lifestyle Retailers in India (RSPR-LS)

A majority of organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India believe that the cost of Sales Personnel (SP) attrition is insignificant, and this belief has made lifestyle retailers ignore the importance of SP attrition control and retention activities (SACR). Mathematically it may be true that the cost of SP attrition is very low as the average salary of the SP is 5.46 times lesser than that of Non-Sales Personnel (NSP) in the organization, but the fact is a majority of employees in a retail organization who are closest to the market and the consumers are the SP even though they are at the lower levels of retailer’s organizational hierarchy. We determinedly believe that the key to success is in identifying who is closer to the market and the consumer and ensuring such employees (if performing well) are consistently motivated to stay in the organization for a longer duration. The literature, exploratory qualitative primary findings, and empirical evaluation indicate that the existing SACR model of select organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India is irrational as it seriously fails to understand the magnitude of the negative impact that is moderated by higher SP attrition rates on the overall store’s revenue and long-term firm’s sustainability. This study was not limited to just evaluating the existing SACR model of retailers in the study and recommending a theoretical framework. Once the RSPR-LS framework was designed that is built on proven theories in the literature, findings and insights from the exploratory phase of this study, and recommendations from previous research works relevant for lifestyle retailing in India, we have experimented the RSPR-LS framework on one of the ten lifestyle retailers in the study over 24 months’ at over 25 percent stores of the select retailer. Experimentation results demonstrate that these stores which have gone through the treatment have shown 37.59 percent improvement in walk-ins conversion rate, 87.54 percent improvement in consumer’s repeat store visit rate that resulted in 20.23 percent improvement in the overall store revenue and 2.00 times improvement in the overall store profit on account of 21.35 percentage points improvement in SP retention rate thereby providing validity and reliability of the proposed RSPR-LS framework in the field

Rational Organizational Structure: For Brick-and-Mortar Lifestyle Retailers in India to Overcome Diseconomies of Scale and Protect Firm’s Sustainability (ROLS-b)

A majority of organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India believe that the brick-and-mortar retailing model ensures economies of scale as they keep opening new stores. Having more stores might help retailers to gain product sourcing advantages in addition to generating additional revenue to the firm but at the same time, it fails to provide any other benefits towards economies of scale as every new store comes with new one-time capital expenditures and recurring fixed expenses. Another misconception is that lifestyle retailing must follow an organizational structure (OS) that is adopted by their parent company and hence a majority of OS adopted by lifestyle retailers in India is dependent on organizational form. This study was not limited to just recommending a rational OS based on exploratory research and existing theories in the OS domain. Once the ROLS-b was designed, we have experimented with the proposed rational OS on one of the ten lifestyle retailers in the study to test the validity and reliability. Experimentation results empirically and qualitatively demonstrate that the existing belief of brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India which assumes economies of scale and long-term firm’s sustainability as the retailer increases the store count is just a misconception and does not hold. On the other hand, when we experimented the ROLS-b for over twelve months at over 25 percent stores of a select retailer, results demonstrate that these stores which have gone through the treatment have shown 5.34 times improvement in the store-level profit and 1.97 times in the firm-level profit in addition to eliminating a majority of gaps found in the existing OS that was leading to diseconomies of scale and deteriorating firm’s performance

Consumer Communication Deployment Tactics: An Integrated Framework for Lifestyle Brands and Retailers in India (CCF-LS).

Though consumer communication and orientation is a collective responsibility of all the departments/functions across the organization, a majority of lifestyle brands and retailers in India believe that the consumer communication is the deliverable of a single department/function that is widely and erroneously tagged as Marketing Department. This belief is distracting them from understanding the long-term positive impact on consumer patronage and they continue to use high-cost advertisements as one of the major tactics for consumer communication. A single theory, model and framework of consumer behavior from the existing literature available across perspectives, paradigms, and areas of study (Economics, Behavioral Economics, Psychology, Social Psychology, Anthropology, Marketing and so on) is not entirely applicable that could be adopted to suit lifestyle brands/retailers in India and designing a framework without empirical pieces of evidence is also not appropriate. In this study, i) we have studied over 28 consumer behavior theories, models and frameworks; ii) analyzed 24 months’ of actual data of a few select organized lifestyle brands and retailers in India; iii) borrowed experimental findings and insights from previous studies relevant in this context, to identify 50 factors influencing the outcomes of each stage of the consumer decision-making process and selected a few of them that have indicated the high scope of influencing capability by a lifestyle brand/retailer to design an economical and effective framework that is useful in designing consumer communication deployment tactics by a lifestyle brand or retailer in India. The framework is named as CCF-LS

Changes in Consumer Perspective towards Discount at Brick-and-Mortar Stores owing to Emergence of Online Store Format in India

End-of-season sale (EOSS) has been one of the most important long duration sales promotion/discounting events for brick-and-mortar retailers and consumers in India. But, ever since the online retailing format has emerged in India, consumers now have wider options available for them to buy a product at a discounted price and notably, as online stores in India are following the product discounting as one of the key drivers for consumer acquisition, consumers’ perspective towards discount at brick-and-mortar store is expected to have changed. This change in consumers’ perspective has put the majority of brick-and-mortar retailers in India into a quandary and they are losing out their market share slowly to online retailers. In this research, authors have attempted to investigate; (a) proof, (b) pattern, (c) magnitude, (d) significance and (e) impact of this change in perspective towards discount across stakeholders and transpired the research outcomes into suggestions to enable brick-and-mortar retailers to design appropriate sales promotions

Experimental Investigation of Cannibalisation by Introducing a Global Brand Abreast Existing Indian Store Brand

Globalization of consumer brands and liberalization of the Indian retail sectors are enabling consumers to conveniently purchase their aspirational Global brands. India being one of the fast-developing countries with world’s second largest population and the majority of the retail market being serviced by unorganized retailers, many Global consumer brands are trying to penetrate into the Indian retail market through various routes viz, exclusive branded outlets, franchising and licensing. Ever since the penetration of Global consumer brands have started, the majority of Indian retailers’ and consumers’ perspective towards their own private/store brands is expected to have changed. This change in perspective has put the majority of retailers in India into a quandary and they think that this is surely leading to cannibalization and thereto impacting the store profitability along with losing out their market share slowly to Global brands. In this research, authors have carried out an experiment by introducing a reputed Global apparel brand abreast an existing Indian store apparel brand/private label to investigate; (a) proof, (b) pattern, (c) magnitude, (d) significance and (e) impact of cannibalization and transpired the outcomes of this experimentation into suggestions to enable brick-and-mortar retailers to design appropriate brand mix strategies