Yale-Great Lakes center holds Conference on Brand India; Great Lakes also host NASMI marketing conference

Great Lakes Institute of Management concluded International Research Conference in Chennai on December 23 under the Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research. Also, Great Lakes Institute of Management and the North American Society for Marketing Education in India (NASMEI) concluded an international marketing conference on the overall theme of Creating, Communicating, and Delivering Value in growing markets on December 21-22, 2007.

International Research Conference in Chennai on 23 December under Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research was the second annual edition of this international research conference in Chennai on 23 December 2007. The center was started as a partnership with Yale University, USA in 2005 and this years conference Last the year the conference was inaugurated in presence of Indira Nooyi, CEO, Pepsi Co. The theme of the conference was Brand India. Illustrious scholars from leading institutions in India and abroad participated in the conference. Also students from different management institutes across the country participated to present their research papers in the event.

Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research aims to promote, facilitate, and advance India-centric management related research that contributes to the development of basic and applied knowledge in the field of management. The center will be a bridge that links scholars around the globe with India as a common interest.

Papers were invited on the theme Brand India from Academia and Industry. Overall 50 research papers were received out of which 30 papers were selected for presentation. Apart from paper presenters, distinguished scholars were also invited from institutions of global repute for delivering keynote speeches.

The distinguished speakers included: Bala V. Balachandran, North Western University; Shyam Sunder, Yale University; Seenu V. Srinivasan, Stanford University; Niharika Vohra, IIM Ahmedabad; Ram S Sriram, Georgia State University; Ranjini Jha, University of Waterloo; Siva Nathan, Georgia State University; Anantha Nageswaran, Bank Julius Baer, Singapore; Rama Shankar, Delta Management Associates, Illinois and Vaidy Jayaraman, University of Miami

NASMEI international marketing conference was sponsored by the recently established Kotler-Srinivasan Center for Research in Marketing at Great Lakes. Theoretical, methodological, and empirical research papers in marketing (B to B or B to C, products or services) were presented from participants from corporate and Indian and foreign B-Schools. Research papers ranged from topics related to creating value (market research, competitive analysis, product, service, pricing), communicating value (branding, advertising, personal selling, promotion), and delivering value (channels management, wholesaling, retailing, CRM, web-based marketing), and their integration (marketing strategy, competitive strategy, marketing processes, marketing organization).

The event witnessed Marketing researchers and academicians from across the globe. To name a few, some of the speakers represented universities like Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Wisconsin Madison, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Graduate School of Management and Economics - Tehran, University of Alberta Canada, IIM, Ahmadabad and IIM Bangalore, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade New Delhi. A couple of industry practitioners from Capgemini Bangalore and SAIL-DSP also stimulated the thoughts of the audience with their research papers.

Prof. V. Seenu Srinivasan, Stanford University, co-chair NASMEI, in his concluding speech emphasized the role of research to combat the growing complexity to design marketing strategy for the products and services and understanding the consumer preferences.