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Born of the vision of eminent faculty member, Dr Sharad Sarin in 1979, the novel concept of the Marketing Fair, is today an accredited marketing research tool. This brilliant & innovative method goes beyond the blind testing concept and uses a "mela" or carnival milieu to conduct meaningful consumer behavior research. The underlying concept involves designing games and events as surrogates to actual research questions, to elicit unbiased & accurate information from customers regarding their preferences & perceptions. The consumer is attracted by the fun element, and enjoys the series of carefully designed games, unaware that his responses and actions are being tracked, and valuable consumer behavior data being collected, for subsequent analysis, using the latest statistical and non statistical tools like focused group discussions, multivariate analysis, non-parametric tests, conjoint analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, Mann-Whitney u-test and other general statistical tests.
The concept has received great acclaim in India and abroad. Over the years, Marketing & Strategy Gurus, the likes of Philip Kotler of the Kellogg School of Management, Theodore Levitt of the Harvard Business school, Dr. Philip Adler of the DuPree College of Management, and Dr. Jim Nelson from Colorado University, among others have all personally congratulated Dr. Sarin on his innovative MR technique. Dr. Sarin's presentations of the concept at several US universities have met with great success. University of Rhode Island in 1968 conducted this fair, which was a huge success, and this was done with professional expertise from Dr. Sharad Sarin. Several business schools have adopted the idea, and variants of the original Maxi Fair are conducted at the University of Rhode Island, as also at several Indian business schools like IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Lucknow, & NMIMS-Mumbai.
The innovative concept has not just appealed to the academia, but has its share of supporters and followers in the corporate world. Several international corporate giants like Citibank, Nestle, Cadbury, Bata, Philips, Coca Cola, the ANZ Group, ICI, O&M, Ponds, P&G, RCI, Shaw Wallace, GSK, UNICEF, and HSBC along with large number of Indian business houses like Unilever's Indian arm HLL, ITC, Asian Paints, ICICI, SBI, Tata Tea, Titan, Voltas, Dabur, GIC, Hindustan Ciba-Geigy, HMT, HMV, Indo National, Marico, New India Assurance, Arvind Mills, Bharat Shell, Berger Paints, Blowplast among others, have presented research problems to XLRI for further study. And their respect for the validity of the concept is borne out by their basing strategic business decisions to the tune of millions of dollars, on the research results that emanate from the Marketing Fair. In early 1997, Nestle decided to rethink its strategy to launch Iced Tea in India, based on the Maxi Fair results. Richardson Hindustan tested their Herbal Vicks product at the Fair before its launch. Brooke Bond launched a highly successful tea pack in 1996, which is now a Rs. 100 Crore Brand, based on the feedback it got from the fair.
The Marketing Fair of 2001 had Top FMCG companies like Nestle, ITC and UB presenting their problems, which were successfully solved by XLRI students and the results presented to the respective companies.
And the legend promises to grow and spread. Dr. Sarin wishes to extend the relevance of the concept to the Internet, in keeping with the times - an "E-Marketing Fair", which envisages providing a platform to analyze issues regarding marketing on the Internet.
*Contributed by -
THE MAXI TEAM:
Ramendra Singh, Prashant David, Manas Ganguly, Mehernosh Malia, Siddharta Dutta, and Nishant Mihir.
STUDENTS OF BMD-I; XLRI JAMSHEDPUR.
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