Basant Kumar Purohit

Basant Purohit is an assistant professor in marketing at XLRI since 2012. While doing his FPM from IIM Ahmedabad, he achieved various accolades (a) best paper award in 5th IIMA DC, 2012 (b) paper accepted for Academy of Marketing Science & World Marketing Congress at Reims, France in 2011 (c) paper accepted for conference in Harvard Business School, Boston, 2010 to name a few. Also, he taught courses like Marketing Management, Strategic Marketing, and Research Methodology at Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad; EDI, Gandhinagar; GBS, Gandhinagar and UBS, Gandhinagar. He has a work experience of about a decade in marketing in Abbott (I) Ltd. and Woolworth (I) Ltd.

*Experience Detail *

• Assistant Professor - XLRI since 2012
• Territory Executive - Abbott (India) Ltd. (Marketing - 98 months)
• Management Trainee - Woolworth (INDIA) Ltd. (Marketing -14 months)

Conference Proceedings-Refereed

• Title " Integrating Technology and Innovation: Perspectives from Amazon.com, Amazon.cn, Amazon.in, Flipkart.com" Asia Academy of Management [AAoM], Hong Kong, 2015 Abstract: Integration of new technology and innovations play a major role in changing the efficiency and effectiveness of any firms goods and services in general and of e-commerce firms in specific, thereby impacting their growth and performance favorably. E-commerce has its own technological infrastructure, new business models, value chain, and new value for consumers and the root of its success lies in consumers acceptance. The purpose of this study is to analyze, from secondary sources, a variety of technovations (composite of technology and innovation) and the heterogeneity of customers and suppliers, both on supply and demand side, and their interdependence in three economies namely US, India, and China and offer insights on (a) differences in innovative activities carried out by Amazon.in, Amazon.cn and Flipkart.com in Asian emerging markets and (b) spillover effects for advanced economy firms as well as domestic firms of the innovation performed by these firms in India and China (c) facilitating and hindering factors for technovation in these markets.
• 26th Convention of Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) was held from 21-23 August, 2014 at Pune. The theme of the convention was Rejuvenating Management Education. Paper titled Impact of Accreditation on Quality of Indian Business Schools examined the relationship of accreditation of Indian business schools and overall scores of such business schools. The explored relationship would help business institutes, recruiters and government to determine the future path of accreditation in India and its relevance in enhancing the operations of business schools. The result reveals that the accreditation does significantly affect the quality (measured by Business Today ranking) of business schools. Turkey HSD and Bonferroni post hoc tests reveal that the difference in quality of business schools is significant between accreditation by (1) European Foundation for Management Development Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and by University Grants Commission (UGC); (2) Association of MBAs (AMBA) and UGC. Further analysis indicates that the quality varied a lot for business schools with UGC accreditation

Cases developed for Teaching purpose

• The case Saligram: Modernizing Store Layout of a Traditional Grocery Storefocuses on the modernization of the store layout of a traditional Indian food and grocery store. The traditional layout restricts customers from viewing and handling the products and prevents impulse shopping. It is reliant on shopping assistants helping customers make purchases. The proposed modern aisle type layout addresses these issues but raises other problems as it increases the chances of theft, pilferage and breakages. Also, for many of the unbranded, loosely packaged food and grocery items, customers need the guidance of knowledgeable shop assistants to make the right choices. The case provides insights into the factors to be considered in retail store layout design.
• Case Bondage: Sins of Strained Sinews focuses on the disadvantages of expanding sales and distribution channel of an FMCG company dealing in soaps, hair dye and hair color products. The general belief of increased sales volume by increasing distribution channel network does not apply to all types of firms and is not suitable in all market conditions. The case provides insights into the factors to be considered in restructuring channel design. Ajay (VP Marketing) converted three sub stockists - Naman store, Ankur agencies and Nazar enterprise into direct stockists. Results for the next two months were really encouraging as all the new channel partners were performing very well and the management was also very happy with the clever move and launched a project to identify sub stockists who could be converted into direct stockists on the basis of their potential. However, after four months, the situation changed rapidly as business for the new distributors, on an average, shrunk by 18% in the last three months July 08- September 08. The primary reason, according to newly converted direct stockists was unhealthy competition by super stockists.
• Revisiting Gandhigiri for Managerial Skills. Movie-based adult learning tools have been highly popular in the international domain. A case in point is the extensive use of "Twelve Angry Men" movie, a 1957 Hollywood classic drama, in most training programs on leadership, negotiation, influencing and such. There exists a need for similar endeavors from the Bollywood as well. Our first work in this wonderful andragogical methodology is on a popular 2006 Bollywood movie "Lagey Raho Munna Bhai" pitched as a capstone training material wherein puzzles are created from multiple areas of management including strategic thinking, leadership styles, personality types, hierarchy of needs, marketing, finance and such.
• "Resonance Phosphate Limited (RPL): Resonating Strings of Sales Organization Structure for Synergistic Flows" registered with XLRI Case Development Centre (XLCDC) {by Narasimhan Rajkumar and Basant Purohit} The case describes the revised sales organization structure of a phosphatic fertilizer manufacturing company and the resulting sales personnel opposition of the new control system. The sales organization restructuring aims for leveraging specialization, better role clarity, centralizing pricing issues and smoothening of inventory flow from the manufacturer to the end customers. To motivate these personnel, two objective performance metrics were devised viz. sales target and payment collected against total amount due (CATAD). For the first time in the history of RPL, (a) an incentive scheme for the sales team was devised based on the above two metrics and (b) marketing, sales, and distribution activities were separated. The revised sales organization structure continued for one year yielding mixed success.