1.

Measurement and Validity of Jennifer Aakers Brand Personality Scale for Colgate Brand
Bejoy John Thomas and P C Sekar

This article is about measuring the brand personality of Colgate brand in India and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aakers Brand Personality scale. This research uses Jennifer Aakers Brand Personality scale because it is a standard scale that evaluates the brand on five scales of sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness with help of 42 standard traits. Thus it is possible to campare different brands on these five dimensions. OBJECTIVE: a) To study the personal, demographic, and rational profile of Colgate users b) To measure the brand personality of Colgate c) To explore the model validity of Jennifer Aakers Brand Personality Scale. METHOLOGY: Sample used was all households in ward number 46 of Tiruchirappalli district. The sample was selected by systematic sampling. Aa pilot study was done on 50 Colgate users. The standard deviation in pilot study came out to be 0.273 and sample size determined was 115. The questionnaire had 3 parts. First part contained questions like oral care products used, oral care brands used. Second part contained 42 questions corresponding to 42 traits of Aakers scale. Third part contained demographic factors of users. DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS: Sincerity, excitement and competence dimensions achieved a high Cronbachs alpha co-efficient suggesting a high reliability. Overall Cronbachs alpha coefficients for 42 brand personality items was 84.7 percent. Finally, the results of Hotellings T-squared test confirmed that the mean of different brand personality items under the five dimensions was significantly different from each other at 1 per cent level. This indicates that there is no equivalence between all the 42 items and that they are different. Multidimensional model of brand personality of colgate with confirmatory factor analysis was used for analysis. The study indicated that: About 93 per cent of the respondents used toothpaste, 55 per cent of the respondents used only Colgate brand, 61 per cent of the respondents who were using only Colgate brand were using the brand for more than three years which shows brand loyalty. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that Colgate Brand Personality scored high on ruggedness, competence, and excitement. This shows that there must be focus on functional benefits instead of emotional benefits in advertising. The itemstrendy, exciting, and youngunder Exciting Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate brand and the itemscool, contemporary and imaginativeare not applicable to the Colgate brand. Also, the itemsconfident, secure, and hardworkingunder Competence Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate Brand and the itemsuccessfulis not applicable to the Colgate brand. This finding will be an eye opener for the company. A validity check of the scale using Factor Analysis was carried out which indicates that the number of dimensions of Brand Personality

is 13 and that about 10 items of Jennifer Aakers Brand Personality scale are not applicable in the Indian situation. LIMITATIONS Indian brand personality construct may be different and may have some other personality traits which are not present in Aakers model. The sample was from only one city in India. In a vast country like India the sample should have been from diverse background to be truly representative of the countrys market.

2. Supply Chain Strategy, Product Characteristics, and Performance Impact: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturers -Yinan Qi, Kenneth Boyer, Xiande Zhao
This article does a study of supply chain strategies used by Chinese companies. An emerging body of literature offers a framework that talks about three kinds of supply chain strategies: lean strategy, agile strategy, and lean/agile strategy based on in-depth case studies. Extant research also suggests that supply chain strategies must be matched with product characteristics in order for firms to achieve better performance. OBJECTIVES: a) To study supply chain strategies used by Chinese manufacturers b) To assess the role of fit of product characteristics with supply chain strategy c) To assess the impact of supply chain strategies on financial and operational performance. METHODOLOGY: This article investigates supply chain strategies and empirically tests the supply chain strategy model that posits lean, agile, and lean/agile approaches using data collected from 604 manufacturing firms in China. Cluster analysis was done to figure out strategies that Chinese firms with different kinds of products were using. ANOVA was done to figure out some other statistics along with the effect on financial and operational performance. DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS: Cluster analysis of the data indicate that Chinese firms are adopting a variation of lean, agile, and lean/agile supply chain strategies. However, the data reveal that some firms have a traditional strategy that does not emphasize either lean or agile principles. These firms perform worse than firms that have a strategy focused on lean, agile, or lean/agile supply chain. Lean companies scored high on efficient production in lower cost. Lean surprisingly was also better in customer satisfaction and there was no significant different from agile. The analysis is reliable according to the F factors. LIMITATIONS:

This study limits its applicability to china only. Due to differences in practices in different countries a study of supply chain strategies in different industries in different countries must be done.