Quarter 9 - Week 8

Not much happening this week. Some interesting cases, but nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to college life. Ooh, can't wait for Eximius the next week though!

Consumer Behaviour

The prof was a little down on his regular energy in class. We were studying the reactions people have post-purchase, and essentially about the cognitive dissonance that consumers sometimes face when they find that the product doesn't fulfill what they thought it would. So we look at the different aspects of purchase, and what prompts people towards repeat purchase, or not purchasing it ever again. The whole funda lies on the premise that if the difference between consumer perception and satisfaction breaches a limit, then that's the time that cognitive dissonance takes place.

The second session was meant for a case discussion, one that's based on a venture of one of our seniors. It was quite interesting to read what happened at the venture, and a lot more interesting to hear people's interpretation of it. I totally thought that one of the teams had it bang on, when they compared the venture to other successful ventures, and tried to demarcate the roles of informational sites vs. commerce sites. Very interesting take, and one that I found to be quite apt. One of the few student presentations in class where I had some takeaway.

Strategic Leadership

Iconic. That's the one word I would use to describe the cases this week. We studied two behemoths in India - ITC and Tata. The first session, on ITC, was quite different when compared to what we had studied last week about Unilever. In the latter, we studied how the parent company and the subsidiary work together towards achieving relevant goals. In ITC however, we looked at how the Indian holding stands up for its Indian-ness, and how it asserts its goals irrespective of what the senior says. I found some brilliant takeaway in terms of challenging accepted norms, and challenging myself on some thoughts. A week ago, if you asked me, I would have said that ITC is only making its money on cigarettes, it's an unethical company... and this week, when the prof. gives us an option to sell the cigarettes division, no one wants to do so. It's a cash cow, we say... it funds all the other operations. What happened to all our ethics?? A very enlightening case, with a lot of different small pieces of learning, all of which require deep reflection.

The second session was on Tata, and how it grew from an Indian company to a multinational corporation. More importantly, how the dream of JRD Tata, was taken forward by Ratan Tata, but along a different course altogether. JRD was the tech guy, providing creative freedom to the different companies. Ratan appears to be the consolidator, trying to bring together the different companies under the Tata umbrella, and protecting the brand equity of the Tata name, besides enabling the acquisitions of international behemoths by smaller Tata companies, all because of the promise that the Tata Group can handle such an acquisition. Most importantly, we partly understood why promoter-led group holdings are more popular, accepted, and succesful here in India when compared to the rest of the world, that would rather prefer diversification of portfolios within a certain company.

Personal Interpersonal Effectiveness Workshop

Today's readings had a lot to do with the roles of others in your life, and raising your own self-esteem. The first reading takes off on the Polyanna story, about how being optimistic and trying to change your life might make life a little hard for your loved ones. The premise goes - the change that you bring to yourself might be acceptable to you, but how does it affect those around you. Were they aware that such a change was coming, would they be able to adapt to being a different person around you? The article basically suggests what we can do to make things easier for the other person, and how we need to stop being selfish and consider tying our goals with goals of those around us.

The second article, about self-appreciation and self-esteem, was all right. Not much to really speak about, I'm just getting tired of applying so many exercises to the same one/two instances that I find may be bothering me. There was also a story about hope, that prompted a lot of people to share their own stories with the group. It was an interesting session where we saw more of what our classmates went through, in terms of career progression and how they identified with certain characters in the reading. We ended with meditation, with an additional 'vipassana'-based step.

All my projects are expected next week, it's interesting how the universe (or IIMB profs in this case) conspires to put you through a living hell.