FIIB Business Review

This study conceptualizes and critically examines the business-level digital transformation and hinges on to the examination of business-level digital transformation from a strategy perspective. Using the conceptual review design, the study further explores the contents of the digital transformation process. We answer two key research questions: (a) what is the business model of a multinational company promoting through digital sources? (b) Is it relevant for multinationals in the digital economy? The study triggers determining the necessary steps to digitally transform a business and organizing them into categories of phases leading to the digital transformation process. In conclusion, this work allowed spotlighting the strategic character of the digital transformation and, above all, to grasp its multidimensional reach.

Paris Bakery, established in 2013, was one of the leading bakery food chains in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. In January 2019, the founder of the Paris Bakery, Mr. Jaynarayan Pujapanda, decided to use technology (particularly omni channel strategy) to expand and consolidate his market to different locations. However, he was skeptical about the investment and benefits from this approach. While omnichannel would help him to understand consumer behaviors better and predict the demand, the technology backbone required to achieve the scale was a point of contention. His research and discussions with experts had indicated that this approach is guaranteed to be a delightful experience for the customers, provided this strategy took care of the diversity of consumers taste and preferences. Known for his modesty and honesty among his stakeholders, decided to use omnichannel as the backbone for consolidation and growth.

Although brand personality as a research construct has been gaining immense consideration since the inception of the new millennium, the nature of research conducted over the years has heavily converged on a few specific avenues, such as scale validity across cultures and the generalizability across diverse sectoral contexts. The bibliometric analysis undertaken in the present review maps the global trajectories of brand personality research using the Scopus database. The current review analyses the entailed co-citation analysis based on cited references and cited sources, bibliographic coupling analysis based on authors and countries, and co-occurrence analysis based on author keywords. The review explains how the congruence between consumer personality and brand personality is yet to be explored further. The associated concepts of brand animism and anthropomorphism have not been sufficiently addressed when discussing brand personality. The review further advances that the applications of brand personality have been heavily concentrated in only a few specific brand categories, namely, travel and tourism, and Islamic marketing. The review shall engender pertinent research avenues that can be justified by the theoretical and managerial implications that would emanate from the study.

Asset pricing is a key area of literature in analysing and evaluating the stock market efficiency.

Though various pricing models made efforts to explain the behaviour of the stocks, the existence of seasonal anomalies in the stock markets creates an opportunity for the investors to generate abnormal returns. The present article emphasizes one of such market anomalies namely, the holiday effect using indices belonging to Indian stock exchanges. Thorough research is performed by including all the prime market-capital and sectoral indices of the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange. The ARIMAX methodology is adopted to observe the anomaly by considering exogenous variables representing the trading days before the exchange-mandated holidays. Further, the strength of the anomaly is analysed with the incorporation of various stock market reforms and observed to be significantly persistent among most of the Indian market indices (including both the sectoral and the market-capital based indices).

One of the situations encountered in time series analysis is long-range dependence, also known as Long memory. We investigated the presence of long memory in the Indian sectoral indices returns and investigated whether the long memory behaviour is affected by the data frequency. We applied the autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) models to 13 sectoral indices of the National Stock Exchange of India and examined the long memory in daily, monthly and quarterly return series. The results indicate the persistence in daily return series and anti-persistence in monthly and quarterly return series. Thus, we conclude that the frequency of data does have a significant effect on the behaviour of long memory patterns. The results will be helpful for present and potential investors, institutional investors, portfolio managers and policymakers to understand the dynamic nature of long memory in the Indian stock market.

Aerospace products undergo frequent modifications throughout their product life cycle due to changes in requirements, technology, policy or environmental concerns. These modifications/changes are dealt with through configuration management (CM), which is a techno-managerial function. Conflicting interests of teams involved, complexity due to a long product life cycle spanning over years, R&D nature and techno-political compromises often end up in sub-optimal decisions during aerospace product development. In this article, an attempt is made to apply a scientific method to CM decision-making rather than leave it to techno-political compromises. The CM decision-making is modelled as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem and is solved using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). As an example, the CM change proposal on propellant tank material in aerospace is taken up and solved using the model. The authors believe that results of the study will also pave way for substitute development with improved attributes, realized through advances in technologies such as nanotechnology and additive manufacturing, as mentioned in directions for future research.

Bangladesh, an emerging economy in South Asia, has gone through several regimes of exchange rate systems in the course of its 50 years of independence. A broad-based study to determine the exchange rate of the Bangladeshi taka (BDT) is missing in the existing literature. Using the annual data from 1972–1973 to 2017–2018, the study has measured the changes in exchange rates of BDT during three regimes: a fixed exchange rate, a semi-fixed system and a purely floating system or managed floating system that Bangladesh has followed in successive order. It has also described the factors that need to be affected by any change in the exchange rate. By using a desk research method, this article has investigated the roles of several macroeconomic variables such as the currency denomination of foreign exchange rate reserve components, money supply components, return on financial instruments or interest rates, gross domestic product, trade policy, asset holding strategy and interbank intervention strategy in BDT’s exchange rate fluctuations during those regimes. Among others, we found that Bangladesh’s volume of US dollars (USD) as a foreign reserve significantly outruns the sum of all other currencies and assets combined. However, an extreme dependency on USD might expose BDT to ‘currency risk’, which may be avoided by adopting a better nominal anchor and including some other major currencies in its basket.

This study aimed to explore the influence of social media on the perception and decision-making process of prospective students seeking admission to Business schools (B-schools) in the context of the increasing prevalence of social media in people’s lives. Specifically, it examined the perceived and actual utility of reviews posted on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and the role of Social Media Usage (SMU) as a moderating factor in shaping admission intentions. Additionally, the impact of ratings and reviews on the overall perception of B-schools was explored. To gather data, a questionnaire was distributed via Google Forms to over 500 second-year post-graduate students studying Business Management in various B-schools. Out of the total responses received (201 usable responses), it was discovered that the respondents’ personal experiences either aligned with the reviews they read before admission or surpassed their expectations. Moreover, ratings and online forums had a positive influence on shaping a favourable perception among potential students, ultimately leading to their decision to enrol in a particular B-school. The study also confirmed the moderating effect of SMU. Admission officers should recognize that user-generated content holds greater trustworthiness among prospective students in comparison to content generated by vendors. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize social media in their strategies. Additionally, there is a need to investigate the usage of SNSs by college admission offices and the impact of social media strategies on students’ admission intentions. Consequently, this study focuses on an underexplored area, shedding light on its significance.