Volume XXXVIII • Number  3 • March  2008

The Role of Women in Advertisements

Advertising seems to be obsessed with gender and sexuality and continues to represent an arena in which gender display plays a major role. It has emerged as a world of ‘commercial realism’ in which we are given ‘realistic’ images of domestic life and male-female relationships which are not actually real but which provide us with a ‘stimulated slice of life’. As gender representation is such a dominant feature of modern-day advertising, it is often called the social resource ‘used most’ by advertisers. The changing role of women in society has created a challenging task for advertisers — how to portray women in advertisements.

Dr.Rashmi Prakash
Lecturer
School of Management Sciences
Varanasi,Uttar Pradesh

Facility Management

The term 'Facility Management' is generally preferred in United States usage, while 'facilities management' is more common in UK, Canada, Australia and English-medium businesses in several European countries.In India Facility Management is of a recent origin and is growing at 50% CAGR as businesses have identified the need and benefits of specialized Facility Management service providers. The reason being the companies can focus on their core businesses by outsourcing non-core support activities like Facility Management.

Challenges of Merchandising Strategies in Fashion Retailing- A Study on Private Labels Vs  Manufactured Brands

With the constant Rising income, Changing demographics and Consumer taste are driving the growth of more than 30 per cent of the modern retail formats, and it is expected to grow another 9 percent in the year of 2010. India is more attractive than ever to global retailers. India’s economic growth, forecasted at 9-10 percent of GDP 2007-08, continues to support the retail industry. The estimated $350 billion retail market is expected to grow at 13 per cent and the top five retailers account for less than 2 per cent of the modern retail market. And with one billion people, it is second largest population in the world. Clothing, Textile and Fashion accessories segment constitute significant portion (35%) contributing to the growth of Indian retail industry. Competitions in this segment are intensified as many as players were entered into this segment constitute both unorganized as well as organized players. All these players are using a different kind of strategies like Store ambience, Store Atmospherics, Aesthetics of the store, Visual Merchandising, Discounted pricing, value added services etc., to attract more footfalls to patronage their customers. All these strategies will become meaningless unless the store has right mix of merchandise in terms of varieties, assortment, colour, and support levels to satisfy the target customers. Therefore this research is an attempt to find out the challenges of merchandising strategy followed by fashion retailing. Because the fashion retailing is now harder than ever to predict the next season’s breakthrough fashion trend. Retailers of clothing, shoes, and accessories operate in a fast-moving market where many different styles and trends simultaneously influence tastes. Both basic wardrobe staples and high-fashion apparel are affected by regional differences in sizes and preferences. A retailer’s ability to respond quickly to shifting patterns of demand depends heavily upon how well it controls its supply chain, collaborates with suppliers, and manages its merchandise. Retailers have to quickly introduce new lines to maintain high sales and out-pace the competition.

S.Prasanna Venkatesh
Assistant Professor
MATS School of Business & IT
Bangalore,Karnataka
 

FDI in Retailing

The center of economic gravity in the world today is shifting to the east, towards Eastern Europe and Asia. The Asian market spanning three time zones cover over 40% of the world’s population and over 20% of the global GDP. In a growing market such as India, and as the retail pie continues to expand on the back of rising incomes and increasing consumer expanding, there is room for everyone-like the global retail giant Wal-Mart and small players like Adani or Subhiksha the time to shift gears and accelerate the pace of retail development in India has arrived. It is now up to the Government, retailers and potential investors to make this happen.

Self Help Group (SHG) is a mechanism to extend mutual help and support through sharing ideas, experiences, information, other services and resources. The groups may be viewed as a process or an institution for socio-economic transformation leading to empowerment of the rural poor. It is worth to note that access to financial services is a basic objective of SHGs and may be a dominating one. However, they are basically credit plus groups. Credit plus implies that apart from credit facility, other activities related to economic business and social development are also undertaken with equal emphasis.

Prof.H.Venkateshwarlu
Principal
Osmania University PG College
Nalgonda,Andhra Pradesh
 

Consumers' Attitude Towards Network Marketing with Special Reference to the City of Rourkela

INetwork Marketing (NM) also known as the multi-level marketing started in the late nineties in India has become popular with the Indian mass breaking the age, income, qualification bars. The concept challenged the entrepreneurs to write their own success stories as leaders. The idea is to give financial independence to people involved in the process as well as to provide full time career opportunities. This paper aims to find the consumer’s awareness and perception about the network marketing through a sample survey in a city of Rourkela. The paper considers both user and non-user of the network marketing for the study. The result shows market potentiality for the network marketing, as non – user has a positive opinion about the concept and the existing user are satisfied with the products bought through the channel. Moreover the service provided by the network marketers is found to be satisfactory.

A Comparative Study of Tractors with Special Reference to Sonalika Tractor

India is the largest manufacture of tractors in the world. The growth has been continuous and good for several years. In the current year, sales have declined by a good 12 per cent in the first six months. With new entrants fighting for market share, competition is intense. There is a welcome focus on R&D directed towards greater fuel efficiency and longer life. Decades of oligopoly and cartelization may, hopefully, give way to competitive market-orientation that would provide some consumer delight. The tractor industry in India has developed over the years to become one of the largest tractor markets in the world. From 50,000 units in the early eighties, the size of the tractor market in the country has grown upto over 200,000 units. Today the industry comprises of 14 players, including three MNCs. The opportunities still are huge considering the low farm mechanization levels in the country. After a downturn during the last three to four years, the industry is back on a growth path, which we believe would sustain in coming years as well. During the fiscal 2003-04, the industry volumes as a whole reached 1,89,000 units, the first growth year since 1999-2000. The trend continued in the first half of fiscal 2004-05 as well. Tractor sales during this period have grown by 45 per cent to 1,11,000 units against 76,000 units in the corresponding period of last year. During the period 1998-2000, tractor manufacturers had build up large inventory levels at the dealer’s end, in the race for cornering greater market share.

                          Dr.Uday Singh Rajput
Lecturer
Bhagwant Institute of Technology
Bijnor,Uttar Pradesh