The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector is an important contributor to India’s GDP and it is the fourth largest sector of the Indian economy. Globally, the FMCG sector has been successful in selling products to the lower and middleincome groups, and the same is true in India. Over 70% of sales are made to middle classhouseholds today and over 50% is in rural India. The sector is excited ab...

The rapid growth of the consumer-to-consumer online auction market demands research into its market structure and future trends. We propose that online reputation is becoming an important indicator of online traders' business capacity in the auction market. Based on the data sampled from eBay.com, we find that seller reputation, rather than buyer reputation, is lognormally distributed. Followin...

Quality function development (QFD) is a planning tools used to fulfill customer expectation and QFD is a systematic process to translating customer requirement (WHATs) into technical description (HOWs). QFD aims to maximize customer satisfactions related to enterprise satisfaction. The inherent fuzziness of relationships in QFD modeling justifies the use of fuzzy regression for estimating the r...

The two leading online consumer-to-consumer platforms use very different revenue models: eBay.com in the United States uses a brokerage model in which sellers pay eBay on a transaction basis, whereas Taobao.com in China uses an advertising model in which sellers can use the basic platform service for free and pay Taobao for advertising services to increase their exposure. This paper studies how...

The nature and quality of a firm’s dialogue with its customers is a core capability. Few firms are able to manage this dialogue effectively and use what they know to add more value for customers and ultimately improve firm performance. Knowledge management (KM) functions are therefore being asked how their expertise can help companies do a better job in this area. This paper examines the wide v...

There are many avenues for consumers to transact with one another. Consumers are increasingly trying to find ways to interact and transact with other consumers via the Web. This study utilizes young adults to assess a consumer’s choice to use consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electronic commerce by examining a consumer’s computer self-efficacy, Web experience, and C2C electronic commerce trust. In add...

Services that are delivered over the Internet—e-services— pose unique problems yet offer unprecedented opportunities. In this paper, we classify e-services along the dimensions of their level of digitization and the nature of their target markets (business-to-business, business-toconsumer, consumer-to-consumer). Using the case of application services, we analyze how they differ from traditional...

Even though e-commerce business grows rapidly, still building customer trust on e-commerce becomes more difficult than building customer trust on physical store. This study aims to identify factors that influence customer trust on e-commerce, to compare how important those factors in influencing customer trust and furthermore, to assess how important customer trust for purchase and word of mout...

Decision Making Process for Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Consumers: A Case of FMCG products Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of family purchase decision making at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) using a study of BOP consumers in India. The primary objective is to identify the purchase approach of BOP consumers for Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) products depending on the ro...