The ever-evolving fashion industry is a clear reflection of the changing patterns in the social, political, technological and economic environment of a society. The past few decades have seen significant and diverse changes in consumer habits and lifestyles. At long last, garment purchase has come of age, with both male and female consumers becoming increasingly brand and fashion conscious. With the emergence of a contemporary social structure, garment purchase is no longer the forte of women alone. Research, national and international, expounds on the purchase decisions of the New Man who is becoming more fashion conscious and trend savvy when it comes to apparel. This article is an attempt to identify certain gender-based antecedents of garment purchase involvement. An attempt has also been made to identify the key drivers that influence the decision making process for garment purchase, separately for male and female customers. The findings demonstrate a paradigm shift in attitudes and purchase patterns, which can have important implications for the marketer.

The study empirically extracts the dimensions of perceived sales performance benefits of sales force automation (SFA) tools as perceived by sales professionals in India and empirically tests the antecedent relationship of salespersons’ perceptions with their overall satisfaction with SFA tools. Benefits of SFA tools as perceived by sales professionals were found to be a three-dimensional construct consisting of the factors (dimensions) of ‘selling effectiveness’, ‘cost of selling’ and ‘customer relationships’. All the three factors were found to be significant antecedents of overall satisfaction of sales professionals with SFA tools. The study was conducted with sales professionals of two large companies in India engaged in B2B selling. The study measures empirically determine the effect of sales professionals’ perceptions of benefits of SFA tools with their overall satisfaction and provide partial empirical support for the theoretical framework of cognitive evaluations leading to emotional appraisal, which is an attitudinal construct in the context of SFA tools adoption.

No abstract

The article attempts to empirically test a multi-dimensional and multi-level hierarchical structure of service quality in Life Insurance services in India. The study draws evidence from India to develop and compare a second-order hierarchical model with a first-order model to draw better insight into the determinants and structure of perceived service quality in Indian Life Insurance services. Five component dimensions of perceived service quality were extracted through exploratory factor analysis from a list of initially generated 38 items of service quality from literature and expert review. The five dimensional structure was then tested through confirmatory factor analysis using first-order and second-order reflective model to determine the best model of perceived service quality. The second-order reflective model was found to be of better fit based on indices of fit using AMOS ver 4.0 software. The results showed that both the first-order and hierarchical second-order models are of excellent fit after some modification based on modification indices. The second-order model was however accepted for interpretation of results since it has relatively better fit (significantly lower chi-square value and better fit indices values) and is a more parsimonious model. The results thus provide support for a multi-dimensional and multi-level hierarchical structure of service quality as suggested by Brady and Cronin ( 2001 ), third in Life Insurance services in India. The results show that perceived service quality of Life insurance services is a multi-dimensional second-order construct consisting of the primary dimensions of Service Delivery, Sales Agent Quality, Tangibles, Value and Core Service.

The ability relating to problem identification and problem solving play an important role in the thinking process of managers. An important part of this process is problem formulation, which involves problem categorization. How the problem is classified and defined is crucial to the solution of the problem as it guides further action by the manager. This study reports a ranking of problems perceived as important by different levels of managers in an organization, which are then categorized along the strategic-operational and internal-external dimensions. The hypothesis that strategic problems are perceived to be more important than operational problems by higher-level managers is empirically tested. The results partially supported the hypothesis and suggested an internal and operational focus in the organization. There seems to be a lack of marketing orientation. The paper also creates insight into how problems are defined and labeled by managers and staff of an organization. The focus of this study is on marketing problems of a Fertilizer Co-operative of India operating at all India level and involved in complete value chain of fertilizer product category but which has been facing declining sales in the past two years.