Research seminar by Prof. Ajay K Manrai

Posted on March 11, 2026 by administrator

IIM K hosted its tenth research seminar on March 6, 2026, for the year 2025-26. It was conducted by Prof. Ajay K Manrai, Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, USA.

The topic was CTSCALE as a Tool for Measuring Perceptions and Navigating Empirical Research Challenges

Abstract of the talk given below

Marketing scientists are concerned with measuring consumer perceptions precisely because they serve as the basis of marketing strategy. First, we discuss methodological issues, such as self- selection bias, common method bias, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity, in empirical research, their negative consequences, and methods to mitigate the problems caused by such issues. Then we focus on the concept of “similarity” among brands to understand processes involved in brand switching, competition, brand loyalty, and market structure analysis. The spatial representation of “similarity” serves as a convenient method for describing, summarizing, and displaying such marketing data. Marketing researchers and managers have extracted increasing levels of insights from such geometric configurations, also known as perceptual maps. These maps have implications for market segmentation and product positioning. This paper presents a new model of similarity that is theoretically sound and lends itself to the geometric representation of brands in a multidimensional metric space. We also provide an empirical test of the new model and later develop a novel algorithm that employs a “similarity” type of marketing data to construct perceptual maps based on the proposed model. An empirical comparison of the results obtained from the new perceptual mapping technique with those from a traditional technique previously used by marketing researchers is also presented.