Current Happenings

The Centre for Consumer Research in India (CCRI) has secured its first industry-funded project. Afterthought Feedback Services, a leading and eminent Marketing Research (MR) company in Hyderabad, funded a project titled “Awareness of Unhealthy Food Consumed by Indian Consumers: An Empirical Analysis” to the tune of Rs 1.5 lakhs. The project will be executed by Prof. Bharadhwaj Sivakumaran, Dr Mohd Danish Kirmani and Dr Vimal Babu. More than ten students from the BBA and MBA programmes would help in doing the project as well. The project would study the extent to which employees consume unhealthy food and suggest ways of making employees eat healthy food. Mr Rahul Pulupudi, CEO of Afterthought Feedback Services, handed over the cheque to Prof. Bharadhwaj Sivakumaran, Dean-Paari School of Business. CCRI thanks Afterthought Feedback Services for its kind gesture!

The project would be of help to the Paari School of Business in general and its students in particular; and also be of help to society at large.

Dr Vimal Babu, Associate Professor and Mr Selvakumar R, Research Scholar from the Department of Management, Paari School of Business has published a fascinating book chapter titled “Crisis Management and Social Media Platforms: A Review and Future Research Agenda” in the book Social Capital in the Age of Online Networking: Genesis, Manifestations, and Implications examining their perspectives on the ever-changing digital ecosystem and its repercussions.

In this chapter, we research duo has made a concerted effort to advance the understanding of crisis management using social media platforms (Social networking sites). Crisis management encompasses a broader spectrum of crisis leadership, and utilising social media platforms (SMPs) for crisis management (CM) has become the modern approach to handling crisis events. Recognising the importance of exploring and advancing crisis leadership concepts to enhance the existing body of knowledge, his work is the first to employ a bibliometric approach to investigate this area, contributing to the nascent literature on the subject. The unique insights garnered from this analysis are expected to provide valuable guidance to researchers and scholars interested in this emerging field.

The book “Social Capital in the Age of Online Networking” digs into the fascinating growth of relationships and connections in the virtual sphere in a digital era when clicks matter as much as handshakes. This edited volume reveals the pattern of our modern networked society, linking theoretical ideas and real-world implementations. The book’s objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current and prospective state of theory and applications of this phenomenon, and it will benefit researchers, government and private research institutions, business corporations, and students in various fields such as business, economics, information technology, psychology, medicine, and humanities.