Volume XXXVIII • Number  11 • November 2008

AEZ and Gherkin Production Under Contract Farming in Karnataka

Gherkin (Cucumis sativus L.), is a cucurbitaceous vegetable crop of 90 days duration, which is harvested raw for pickling. The product has negligible domestic market and the cultivation is exclusively for exports. The preserved/pickled fruits are used in the preparations like sandwiches, pizzas, etc. Major destinations for its exports are Europe, USA, Russia, Australia and few other countries. The crop was introduced to India only in 1990 as the crop can be cultivated round the year unlike other major producing countries like Mexico, Hungary and Madagascar, where it can be cultivated only for three months in a year. Further, Gherkin is a labour-intensive crop, and, hence, the cost of cultivation is lower in labour surplus country like India compared to Europe and America. For this reason, industries engaged in marketing of gherkin abroad prefer to procure the produce from India.Contract farming can be defined as an agreement between farmers and processing and/or marketing firms for the production and supply of agricultural products under forward agreements, frequently at predetermined prices. It is a system of production wherein the purchaser, usually a company engaged in processing and/or marketing/exporting of agricultural commodities, provides production support to the farmers by supply of inputs and technical advice to produce an agricultural commodity in agreement of farmers giving back specific quantity and quality of the commodity at a predetermined time and price and the company under obligation to buy the same.

Dr.H.M.Chandrashekar
Lecturer
Agri-Business Management
Institute of Development Studies
University of Mysore,Mysore
chandruids@yahoo.com

Determination of Potential for Customer Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction in Mobile Handsets Using Kano Model

Mobile phones, developed particularly to serve the purpose of communication between two persons have significantly gained a lot of popularity not as a mere communicator but are considered to be great multimedia tools. Mobile phones are being used for entertainment purposes due the introduction of new features everyday. They have become more than just call making and receiving devices. Mobile phone handsets now have more business-friendly applications that can enhance anybody’s business. With emerging technology, mobile phones have become more than communication devices; they are the tools to stay ahead of competitors and peers in the present times.Infact mobile phones have replaced a lot of conventional accessories and equipments from the lives of humans. These mainly include wrist watch for time checking, alarm clocks, phone books, calendars, video games, walkman, cameras and many more. The various modes of expression has also changed from greeting cards to SMSes, from smile to smileys, face to face meeting to chat and the like. But with the periodic introduction of new features and multimedia tools in the mobile handsets due to technological advances, more and more people in the Asian continent fancy buying them. People have started considering mobile phones as their campanion during their free time.

Chetna Mahajan
Shri Mata Vaishno Devi
University,Jammu
 

Marketing is an activity aimed at making available goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption. Its efficiency is largely dependent on several intermediaries who link the producers and the ultimate consumers. In agricultural marketing, the farmers have more often than not, to depend on the intermediaries to ensure that their produce reaches the market. Commission Agents help the farmers by procuring the produce from the farmers and selling them on their behalf. This saves the farmers from much of the hassles involved in selling the produce. The role of an intermediary is particularly important in agricultural marketing, given the perishable nature of the products. This study highlights the role of commission agency houses in the marketing of chillies and the problems that they face in marketing. The findings of the study have helped in putting forth certain suggestions which, if implemented, can go a long way in improving the functioning and survival of the commission agency houses.

Retailing to Women Requires a Holistic Approach

Retailing to women seems so complicated due to their purchase decision-making paths, which are bit winding. The key to understanding how to reach women buyers understands how women buyers think. Remember when women used to be viewed as a homogenous “minority” consumer segment? That time has certainly come and gone, as evidenced by the many that car manufacturers, hardware stores, banks and cosmetic retailers, among others, have been putting into more narrowly focused, segment-specific campaigns. Even olden days had witnessed exclusive goods dispensing and retailing to women of Rajputs, Muslim and wives of merchants & select communities. Yet single women remain one of the most neglected consumer groups.Sixty per cent of India is below 30 years of age, and has equal presence of young women those will earn and consume a lot. As per estimates to day, women control 80% of family purchases. At same time retailers are making attempts to develop formats to target women in particular. Women differ from men on various parameters such as physicality, psychographics, behavioral parameters and consumption. According to a MasterCard's Asian Lifestyles Survey conducted recently in 13 Asian countries including India, almost 80% of women consider travel important for their lifestyles. It further states that these cosmopolitan women travelers are highly educated tech savvy, posses’ high disposable income and increasingly adventurous experiences. Six keys will help companies get into the retailing to women mindset: Narrow your focus; understand your customer community intimately; Build customer feedback into the process; Focus on your product's context; Understand and define brand; be authentic.. Women no longer remain as niche market or as an exclusive market segment; rather they have emerged as major buyers of all kinds of products.

T.Srinivas
Reader
RVR & JC College of Engineering
Guntur,Andhra Pradesh
 

Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world. Tourism needs to be marketed, just as any other product indeed more so, because it is an industry in which the customer still has an immense variety of choice. However, the marketing of tourist destination differ in some important respects from the marketing of other goods and services and an awareness of these differences is important in a successful promotion of the images of tourist places. Like the normal consumer product or service, the tourist product may be seen as a composite product, as an amalgam of attractions, transport, accommodation, and of entertainment. Although general principle of marketing of product of other industries could be applicable to marketing of tourist product, with certain differences in approach. These differences are because of the peculiar features of the tourist product like intangibility, inseparability, variability and perishability.

Passenger Car Industry in India

The profile of the Indian Passenger Car industry is very different from what it is worldwide. Car industry is considered as a luxury product and it was treated with restrain. Categories of vehicles were limited to three passenger cars namely Fiat, Hindustan and Standard. Slowly foreign collaborations were permitted with equity participation in 1968. In 19870’s a series of liberal policy changes were rapidly introduced marking a crucial turning point for the automobile industry. The Indian Government announced “broad banding” policy in 1985 which gave new licenses to broad groups of automotive products such as two and four wheeled vehicles. The deli censing of the industry in 1993 opened the gates to a flood of international automakers. Many foreign manufacturers have concentrated on the premium and recently the mid car segment. Even though the Passenger car industry is having a competitive advantage, still it has to face lot of challenges in the forthcoming years to lead ahead in this industry.

India constitutes a large potential market for poultry meat. Poultry production and consumption in India appears to be expanding rapidly, fuelled by rising incomes as well as changes in the structure of poultry production and marketing. The key structural change spurring production growth is the emergence of integrated producers, which are combining breeding, feed milling, contract growing and marketing activities, and fostering improved productive and reduced marketing cost. Presently, world poultry meat output has increased nearly eight fold, from 8.9 to 70.4 million tones over 1961 – 2001. India was ranked as the sixth largest poultry producer in the world, in the year 2004. Of late, India is the world’s fourth largest egg producers and fifth major producer of broilers. India has made a considerable progress in broiler production in the last three decades and the eighties was a green decade in the growth of broiler farming in India.

                  Dr.N.Yesodha Devi
Principal
PSGR Krishnammal College for Women
Coimbatore,Tamil Nadu