The 11th edition of the Great Lakes NASMEI (North American Society for Marketing Education in India) International Marketing Conference, organised by the Kotler-Srinivasan Center for Research in Marketing, was held at Great Lakes Chennai recently. The two-day conference focused on various aspects in the marketing arena and had two stand-out features — the doctoral workshop and the research grant competition.
The event kick-started with the lighting of a lamp by chief guest Priya Raghubir, Dean Abraham L Gitlow Professor of Business, Professor of Marketing, Stern School of Business, New York University, USA; Vaidy Jayaraman, Associate Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM); conference co-chairs, Bharadhwaj S, Professor of Marketing, GLIM; and Sridhar Samu, Associate Professor - Marketing, GLIM, in the presence of research scholars, faculty and students.
Delivering the keynote address on the topic 'leveraging life', Priya Raghubir said, “As we go through life, we evolve in different ways, we play different roles, and at times it gets difficult to manage different calls that come from the roles we play. And this makes it difficult to find time for the things that make us happiest.” She went on to recollect how she and her colleague, Aradhna Krishna (Professor of Marketing, University of Michigan), while walking back from a lunch, argued on the shortest route back to office, which led to two research publications: Clutter Bias in Numerosity , where people were asked to count the number of dots in various patterns, and The Eucledian Length Effect, where the length of a line affected people’s perception of the number of items on that line. “Instead of balancing life and work, I leveraged life to enrich my work and then put research into action to enrich my life," she added.
Good participation
NASMEI 2017 saw participation from over 110 leading institutions across the world, including IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIT Madras, ISB Hyderabad, University of Florida - Dartmouth College, University of Michigan, IIT Stuart School of Business - Chicago, Murdoch University - Australia, and Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong.
Financial marketing, consumer behaviour, green marketing, brand management, e-tail and retail, Facebook marketing, and services marketing were the key topics that were discussed and covered on both days. The conference was preceded by a three-day doctoral workshop by Priya and Ana Valenzuela of City University, New York, on research methods for doctoral students that helped them enhance and nurture necessary skills to think and solve problems.
Research grant
This was followed by research grant participation in which five short-listed participants presented their research proposal. Three distinguished research scholars from the USA: Rajeev Batra, Professor of Marketing, University of Michigan; Raj Sethuraman, Professor of Marketing, Southern Methodist University; and Srinivas Durvasula, Professor of Marketing, Marquette University, evaluated the proposals and declared four winners.
The conference, in overall, engaged with researchers, marketing students of GLIM, and delegates through thought-provoking conversations on various verticals and important strategic issues around marketing.