Two engaging plenary sessions bookended the conference paper presentations. An Industry Plenary session with Amazon Grocery Country Manager Sameer Khetarpal, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Vice President of marketing and Emerging Markets Raja MVSMA, and T-Hub Chief Executive Officer Jay Krishnan inaugurated the conference, providing a strategic and operational perspective on current issues in emerging markets. In the second plenary session, editors of eminent academic Marketing journals provided an insight into the research trends for the future.
Figure 2: Industry View
Aashish Pandey, a Research Associate at the ISB, pulled together word clouds based on the frequency of keywords mentioned in the Industry and Academic Plenary sessions (Figure 1 and 2).
Pandey notes that the Academic Plenary (Figure 1) focused on how researchers can contribute to marketing literature by working on issues related to emerging markets. Innovation, digitisation, and consumer behaviour are the directions in which emerging markets research will make significant strides.
In the industry plenary (Figure 2) session, experts shifted the discussion from emerging markets to growth markets based on innovation. The formula? Identify an opportunity and broaden its scope to turn an emerging market into a growth market. While firms will continue to face challenges in making their mark on emerging markets, geography-specific innovation and customer-centric learning will be vital.
Yogini Joglekar is Editorial Consultant at the Centre for Learning and Management Practice at ISB.