Parle Products: The Journey of Budget Brand Toward Premiumization

Parle Products has been one of the foremost pioneers of the biscuit and confectionery industry in India. Since its inception in 1929, Parle has been synonymous with quality, nutrition, taste, and affordability in India. Having more than 40 brands across different product categories in its portfolio, Parle Products has come a long way. Due to the enormous success of brand Parle-G, the mother brand Parle has been associated with values of affordability and quality. Parle has always been a strong player in the value segment and thus customers associate all brands of the company as being the affordable brand with quality. While the industry peers such as Britannia and Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) have positioned themselves as a champion of premium segments, Parle Products is still known as an affordable or budget brand among Indian masses. Considering the increasing demand for premium biscuits among the new generation of consumers, Parle Products has introduced the new division Parle Platina in 2017. But the transformation of “value” or “budget” brand into the luxury and premium brands is not easy, as the legacy of value brand among the masses is not easy to shake off. This becomes more difficult and challenging in a highly fragmented, competitive, and price-sensitive biscuit market like India. Another problem for the Parle Products is to hit the sweet spot between the mass market and the premium demographic which the brand is currently missing out in a highly fragmented and competitive Indian biscuit market.

INDIA-ASEAN TRADE OPPORTUNITIES UNDER ACT EAST POLICY AND INDIA’S NORTH EAST

The Act East Policy of the Govt. of India was started in 1991to strengthen falling economic situation. The basic idea was to link Indian economy with flourishing economies of the South East Asian nations to enhance India’s economic fortunes. The north eastern region being the gateway of the whole engagement is supposed to play the most crucial role in delivering the anticipated result. The paper has tried to study India-ASEAN trade opportunities in terms of merchandise trade vis-s-vis the opportunities for the NER. It is found that the merchandise trade has increased many folds between India and ASEAN specially in the post AIFTA period. The main items of India’s export to and import from the ASEAN reveal that the NER can be a strong player in the business activities as it has tremendous potential in producing those commodities due to the natural advantages it possesses. However, the main challenge is the lack of infrastructural facilities in the area which are absolutely necessary for international business and investment. KEY WORDS: ASEAN, Act East Policy, NER, AIFTA

The Polish Vision of EU Future: Imitation of the Hungarian Model?

The argument of this article is based on the assumption that the Hungarian EU model and the imitative Polish EU vision are based on Euroscepticism, creating the concepts equally incompatible with Western standards of democracy and the EU mainstream views. The strong articulation of extreme opinions leads to the isolation, while in the light of liberal intergovernmentalism it is the Polish concept that undermines the relative position of that state in the EU system more than the Hungarian one. First, compared with Hungary, Poland has completely different interests based on a Russian threat and geographical location. Second, due to its size Poland could be a relatively strong player in the EU, while presentation of a radical concept weakens its role, making it impossible to act as intermediary, an honest broker or a group leader. On the contrary, the Hungarian model, based on a similar concept but applied to a small political actor, can strengthen the relatively marginal position of that state, being a beneficial way to achieve some goals in tactical games.

The Third Place Game

We study an elimination tournament with four contestants, each of whom has either a high value of winning (a strong player) or a low value of winning (a weak player) and these values are common knowledge. Each pairwise match is modeled as an all-pay auction. The winners of the first stage (semifinal) compete in the second stage (final) for the first prize, while the losers of the first stage compete for the third prize. We examine whether or not the game for the third prize is profitable for the designer who wishes to maximize the total effort of the players. We demonstrate that if the players are asymmetric and there are at least two strong players, then there is always a seeding of the players such that the third place game is not profitable. On the other hand, if there are at least two weak players, then there is always a seeding of the players such that the third place game is profitable.

A Decision Tree Analysis of a Multi-Player Card Game With Imperfect Information

This article describes how computer Daihinmin involves playing Daihinmin, a popular card game in Japan, by using a player program. Because strong player programs of Computer Daihinmin use machine-learning techniques, such as the Monte Carlo method, predicting the program's behavior is difficult. In this article, the authors extract the features of the player program through decision tree analysis. The features of programs are extracted by generating decision trees based on three types of viewpoints. To show the validity of their method, computer experiments were conducted. The authors applied their method to three programs with relatively obvious behaviors, and they confirmed that the extracted features were correct by observing real behaviors of the programs.

TIMP-1: a Strong Player in Colorectal Cancer

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Delays in Multilateral Trade Negotiations: An Experimental Study

This paper aims to derive policy implications for real trade negotiations from experiments on multilateral legislative bargaining games. The experiment results reveal that the existence of a strong player with veto power could delay the games. Considering the similarity between the games with the veto player and multilateral trade negotiations such as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), this paper argues that strong countries such as the G-4 (the United States, the European Community, Brazil, and India) may cause delays in the negotiations. Based on experimental findings, this paper suggests group negotiations as a policy option for the DDA.

The Brazilian Initiative in MNT for Aerospace Applications

The Brazilian Nanotechnology Program, organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2001, has created grants for several collaboration networks, new laboratories, and special projects, from materials to biotechnology. It is accepted that nanotechnology has an enormous potential to impact the aerospace industry, mainly because of the increased functionality and reduction in weight, size and energy consumption. On Aerospace Science and Technology, Brazil has been a strong player. Embraer is one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world and has significant presence in commercial, defense, and executive aviation. Brazil is also one of the few nations around the world with a complete space program, which includes families of satellites, sounding rockets, launching vehicles, launching sites close to the Equator, and partnership in the International Space Station. Therefore, the country is well placed to move forward and incorporate MNT into the aerospace industry. The Brazilian initiative in MNT for Aerospace Applications has arisen in 2004, aiming to direct the effort and to foster the aerospace industry. The first workshop of MNT for Aerospace Applications – “Nano-Aeroespacial 2004” took place in October 2004. The “Nano-Aeroespacial 2006” meeting is scheduled to happen on October 2006. The Brazilian Roadmap on MNT for Aerospace Applications has already completed two phases and the third and last one is scheduled to happen on May 2006. The results of this roadmap will be communicated at the conference time.