XLRI fair tries to crack marketing puzzles

Good corporate participation and visitor turn out marked the annual fair conducted by the city-based B-school Xavier Labour Relations Institute's (XLRI) marketing society MAXI "� in its silver jubilee year.

The MAXI fair, a tool devised by an XLRI team under Sharad Sarin, aims at identifying solutions to practical marketing, finance and general strategic problems posed by corporate bodies using games and contests to gauge people's attitude and response.

For the first time in the 25-year history of the fair, 11 companies wanted solutions to the practical problems faced by them. However, the XLRI marketing society could only accommodate seven research problems from six companies "�Colgate-Palmolive, Franklin Templeton Investments, ITC, Nestle, Titan and UTI Bank. Requests of five other companies were turned down owing to 'shortage of manpower'.

Ignoring the cold, hundreds visited the stalls at the XLRI campus to participate in the games and contests. Each stall depicted one theme and attempted to understand consumer preferences through games and events. Visitors were rewarded with gifts and prizes. Their response helped researchers in identifying factors that influenced purchasing patterns.

UTI Bank's 'Main Khiladi Tu Anari' stall aimed at finding the potential of bankassurance before launching a package of savings bank accounts and health insurance.

The ITC stall under the 'Ali Baba and 40 thieves' label tried to guage the influence of the mother, child, retailers and point of purchase (PoP) on buying decision for biscuits. Another ITC stall called 'Baazar-e-Faayda' searched for the most popular fragrance, most effective price and the decision maker in purchasing a brand of incense sticks.

A Titan stall, 'Mungeri Lal ke Haseen Sapne', tried to find out what it should do before launch of its Fast Track range in the lower segment.

A 'Sholay' team tried to gauge the impact of a new variant of an existing Colgate-Palmolive tooth-paste.

The 'Kuber ka Mahal' stall set up for Franklin Templeton Investments checked investors' profile in Jamshedpur. The effort was to find study the demographics-related investments "� what part of salary goes to shares, banks or mutual funds and investors' source of information.

Nestle's Milo brand was on show at 'Kahani Apke Ghar Ki', to understand what mother and child expected in a health food drink in terms of taste and nutrition.

On the opening day of the fair, MAXI felicitated past secretaries. Around 40 XLRI students from XLRI's marketing society ran the event.