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This paper describes the patterns discovered in fruit and vegetable buying behaviour in the United States and India. Using claimed buying data obtained from online questionnaires, it compares the patterns against those found extensively in consumer goods categories across the world. This study analyses consumer loyalty with Double Jeopardy, consumer sharing with Duplication of Purchase and brand user profiles with Mean Absolute Deviations. The results show the buying behaviour patterns of Double Jeopardy, Duplication of Purchase and that brand user profiles exist within the fruit and vegetable categories. The implications of these findings are: (1) that the size of fruit and vegetable brands are largely determined by how many people buy them and not how loyal those consumers are; (2) fruit and vegetable brands share consumers with one another; and (3) fruit and vegetable brands are not purchased by unique segments of the population. Therefore, in order to increase the number of people buying fruit and vegetable brands, marketers should focus on increasing their mental and physical availability (i.e. the same strategies used for consumer goods brands). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Converter lining life is an important technical and economic concern of the steelmaking process. An increase in lining life decreases refractory consumption and reduces steelmaking costs. Increased availability of furnaces increases production rates and steel yield. Extended lining life was achieved by utilising the slag as a consumable refractory by splashing it over the lining. Slag splashing is a simple and effective technique followed worldwide to increase the converter life. This paper highlights the online study on various operating parameters and slag characteristics for consistent slag splashing in a 130 t converter. Parameters such as lance height, blow pattern, gas flowrate, bottom purging flowrates, tapping temperature, combination of gunniting with splashing, slag height and slag chemistry, were investigated. An optimised slag has been developed which served effectively to balance the lining erosion during blowing and maintain a uniform thickness throughout the campaign. Some innovative practices and design changes are also discussed. The developed slag regime and optimised parameters have helped in increasing the converter life to an international benchmark. JSW Steel has achieved the converter lining life of 13 771 heats, which is the highest ever recorded in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Production-to-consumption linkages are important to improve consumption of nutrient-rich foods to tackle malnutrition. However, understanding specific contextual factors influencing production, distribution, and consumption in rural communities is necessary. Objective: To explore household-, farm-, and market-level factors affecting consumption of nutrient-rich foods among producer and nonproducer households in Bihar, India. Methods: We conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) and key informant interviews (KIIs) in producer and nonproducer households of Gaya and Nalanda districts in Bihar to examine factors affecting production and consumption of red lentils, green leafy vegetables (GLVs), milk, eggs, and chicken. Through the KIIs, we identified distribution chains and elicited market-level challenges faced by producers, sellers, and consumers. Data were translated, transcribed, and analyzed thematically using NVivo version 9. Results: Findings from 27 FGDs indicate that consumers and producers were aware of the importance of nutrient-rich foods to health and the necessity of prioritizing their consumption in children. Food preferences, social factors, seasons, religions, and livestock epidemics influenced consumption. Among producers, consumption was mainly dependent on own production. Nonproducers perceived that production could help overcome the barrier of affordability and improve consumption. Data from 69 KIIs indicated that markets were unfavorable in terms of profitability for producers, spoilage and losses for market players, issues of accessibility, and availability for consumers. Conclusions: A local context-specific multipronged approach such as understanding sociocultural factors, own production, and local markets influencing consumption needs to be examined further to improve consumption of nutrient-rich foods among agricultural communities in India. Plain language title: Constraints and Facilitators in Production, Markets, and Consumption of Nutrient-Rich Foods in Bihar, India Plain language summary: Consumption of nutrient-rich foods such as red lentils, green leafy vegetables, milk, eggs, and chicken are essential to maintain balanced diet intake. In this qualitative study, we examined household-, farm-, and market-level factors that affected consumption of nutrient-rich foods among households that produced and not produced these food items in Bihar state, India. Group discussions were conducted among members of households that produced nutrient-rich foods and those that did not produce these food items. The group discussions helped identify challenges in production and consumption. Interviews were conducted with people involved in selling the nutrient-rich food items in the markets. These interviews enabled us to map the various levels food items have to pass from the food producer till it reached the consumer and the challenges faced during the course. From the group discussion, we found that consumers and producers were aware of the importance of nutrient-rich foods to maintain good health and the necessity of prioritizing their consumption in children. Food preferences, social factors, seasons, religions, and livestock epidemics influenced consumption at the household level. Producers of a particular food item were dependent on own production for consumption. Affordability was a key barrier to consumption, particularly among nonproducers. The common perception was that if they were able to produce a food item, it could help overcome the barrier of affordability and improve consumption. There were various unfavorable components in markets that interfered with the profitability for producers, including spoilage and losses, accessibility, and availability for consumers. We conclude that there is a need to understand local-context specific factors such as sociocultural factors, own production, and local markets that influence the consumption of nutrient-rich foods among agricultural communities in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shree Ganesh Bakery Nandani Private Limited was founded in Nandani city, Kolhapur, Maharastra (India) in 1991. The company was founded and spearheaded by Annasaheb Balasaheb Chakote and was in the business of manufacturing and retail of bakery food products. It was manufacturing 180 products majorly in the category of baked items, health-conscious food, sweet food, and namkeen (salted) food. It has a strong geographic presence across Maharashtra and other neighbouring Indian states, namely Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh through dealers and distributors. The company aimed to expand the business through regular development of new products, expansion of its distribution networks in the remaining areas of Maharashtra and its neighbouring states. However, it had difficulties in the supply of the new products to meet the consumer demand in targeted areas. In February 2017, Chakote aimed to devise a strategy to fulfil the planned expansion of the business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explore the narratives on metropolitan cities that appear in the supplements of the English language newspapers of India. The positioning of the city in these newspaper supplements predominantly projects the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, with an overt emphasis on a culture of conspicuous consumption. This is being thrust upon the public day after day. These supplements with their emphasis on gloss, glamour, gossip, and entertainment are predominantly projecting a high-end lifestyle, aiding and abetting the quest for affluence in the minds of the readers. Commercial interests are influencing the way news about the city is selected and written about in these daily supplements, resulting increasingly in the focus on issues considered by some to be of little worth culturally or socially. It is argued that there is a disconnect between the narratives on the city in newspaper supplements and public perceptions of the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sheds light on the mediating role of social networks on consumption behaviour, a significant facet of social mobility and well-being. Based on the Indian Human Development Survey, the article explores to what extent households across India participating in social networks have increased their consumption levels. While participation in formal social networks does result in improved household consumption levels, the type and number of networks are pivotal to this change. Nevertheless, not all networks lead to similar effects, although the number of social networks per se has a positive effect on consumption. Furthermore, the networks based on homogeneous groups, such as women’s self-help groups, have a negative or lesser effect on smoothing consumption, while those affiliated with heterogeneous networks have a positive effect on increasing consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2011, in the wake of some of India’s worst corruption scandals, a civil society group calling itself India Against Corruption was mobilizing unprecedented nation-wide support for the passage of a strong Jan Lokpal (Citizen’s Ombudsman) Bill by the Indian Parliament. The movement was, on its face, unusual: its figurehead, the 75-year-old Gandhian, Anna Hazare, was apparently rallying urban, middle-class professionals and youth in great numbers—a group otherwise notorious for its political apathy. The scale of the protests, of the scandals spurring them, and the intensity of media attention generated nothing short of a spectacle: the sense, if not the reality, of a united India Against Corruption. Against this background, we ask: what shared imagination of corruption and political dysfunction, and what political ends are projected in the Lokpal protests? What are the class practices gathered under the “middle-class” rubric, and how do these characterize the unusual politics of summer 2011? Wholly permeated by routine habits of consumption, we argue that the Lokpal protests are fundamentally structured by the impulse to remake social relations in the image of products and “India” itself into a trusted brand. Taking “corruption” as a site at which the middle class discursively constitutes itself, we trace the idioms and mechanisms by which the Lokpal agitation re-articulates the very terms of politics, citizenship, and democracy in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating tourism consumption within Bourdieu’s empirical paradigm, this article explores the development of a model of sociological choice in tourism consumption. By operationalizing habitus as sociological choices tourists make in the realm of tourism consumption, this article proposes that oppositional choices tourists make in the realm of tourism consumption are produced and reproduced by and in conformity with their respective class habitus, structured by cultural capital. A questionnaire-based study of Western tourists in Indian setting, using factor analysis and regression analysis, identifies three categories of tourism consumption lifestyles shaped by habitus and capital composition. The “tourists” consume tourism as a mass cultural activity finding “virtue in the necessity”; the “travelers” (with middlebrow taste) rely on off-the-beaten-track “travel” experiences and “intellectualize” tourism; and the “virtuosos” (with highbrow aesthetic taste) consume luxury tourism services taking privilege in appreciating what they see and consume, often with authority and arrogance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a third transformation in marketing pedagogy, one made necessary by the emergence of subsistence consumers as a high-growth market segment. Continued double-digit growth in buying power and consumption among the world’s poor appear certain, provided that the subsistence merchants serving such markets are effective. Ensuring such effectiveness, however, demands the training of millions of such marketers, which in turn requires the development of pedagogical approaches that take into account their unique capabilities, characteristics, and orientation. The article begins with a brief review of the historical record of transformation in marketing education in response to market changes, and then moves into a detailed description of subsistence merchants and the challenges they present to contemporary marketing education practices. Focus then shifts to the Marketplace Literacy Project (MLP) and its evolving methodologies for teaching marketing to subsistence merchants in India. The article concludes with takeaways from Marketplace Literacy Project’s efforts that are generalizable to other subsistence contexts and serve to inspire marketing educators to devote energy and resources to improving marketing effectiveness among the global poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on mean consumption, poverty (all three FGT measures) and inequality during 2004 for rural India using National Sample Survey (NSS) data for the 60th Round. Mean consumption at the national level is much higher than the poverty line. However, the Gini coefficient is higher than in recent earlier rounds. The headcount ratio is 22.9 per cent. Mean consumption, all three measures of poverty and the Gini coefficient are computed at the level of 20 states and 63 agro-climatic zones in these 20 states. It is surmised that despite impressive growth rates deprivation is pervasive, pockets of severe poverty persist, and inequality is rampant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]