Journal Press India^®

            I am happy to present to our readers yet another issue of MANTHAN where we have focused on a lot of diverse issues in the area of commerce and management such as financial literacy, investment, consumer behavior, political stability and health care issues. The paper by Dr. Saroj Kumar Sahoo and Sandhyarani Sahoo, deals with the human resource aspect of management and examines the underlying factors of satisfaction and motivation separately for sales-force in the Indian life insurance industry. Their findings reveal that there is significant positive impact of sales-force satisfaction on their motivation, which ultimately has a significant positive impact on performance of sales-force in the life-insurance industry. Another interesting paper is by Dr. Sonal Katyal on ‘Utilisation of Delivery Care Services in Haryana’. Her study analyses the maternal healthcare situation in Haryana to examine the differences in utilisation of delivery care service on the basis of socio-economic and socio-demographic indicators such as women’s age at birth, birth order, education, residence, religion, wealth index and caste. The results demonstrate that several socio-economic and demographic factors affect the utilisation of delivery care services in Haryana.

           This issue has a number of papers related to the financial health of the Indian economy in view of its rising significance for keeping the economy on high growth track.

The paper by Dr. Swati Narula examines the link between financial inclusion, financial literacy and investment patterns, for respondents in Delhi. The findings show improved financial literacy of people along with a rising confidence to face any financial impediments in future. All these developments could be attributed as a result of initiatives taken by the Reserve bank of India, SEBI, NSE, commercial banks, NGO’s, SHG’s and the government. Another paper on ‘short-term versus long-term investments’ by Dr. Tina Vohra attempts to identify the term for which investments are made by women investors of Punjab and to explore if there is a significant difference in the term for which investments are made by women investors based on their demographics. Her findings show that majority of women invest for short term, and the term for which the investments are made varies with the personal monthly income of the respondents. In the light of results, the study suggests that government and the policy makers should undertake various initiatives for the economic empowerment of women as their economic empowerment is a pre-requisite for their long term financial well-being.

            Two papers that contribute interesting perspectives are ‘Political Stability and Economic Growth: Reflections on Indian Economy’ by Dr. Shreya Raval and Dr. Prakash Salvi and ‘Key Strategic Prescription for Indian Financial Services Sector: A Study with Special Reference to ICICI Bank’ by Dr. Anurag Mittal. The former paper attempts to define political system and its inter-relation to economic development. It also attempts to explain a state of political instability and its channels of transmission on economic growth. The authors observe that political polarisation in India is higher as it has a multi-party system with two major political parties and many regional dominant parties. Thus, it is difficulty to take a unitary view on the question of political instability and economic growth. The latter paper discusses the emergence of ‘relationship marketing approach’ and highlights its importance in today’s highly competitive world with special reference to financial services sector. It also enlists some of the challenges that a modern marketer has to face in its path to implementing relationship marketing in financial service industry. Various relationship building tools and programs have been also highlighted to provide an overview of the execution of this philosophy in the financial services sector.

            Two papers dealing with case studies bring about important insights for ‘consumer behaviour’ and ‘liquidity versus profitability debate’. The paper by Dr. Navneet Gera and Dr. Ritu Bajaj identifies the determinants of consumer buying behaviour for ASBAH rice products in order to strategize the positioning of their products in Delhi NCR. An exploratory factor analysis has been performed to identify key determinants of buying ASBAH Rice. The results of the study state that brand awareness, promotion, buying intention and value for money are the key determinants of consumer buying behavior. Another paper by Dr. Radhagobinda Basak examines the ‘liquidity versus profitability’ relationship for the case of Hindustan Unilever Limited. In case of Hindustan Unilever Limited, it has been observed that with the passage of time, the company was able to improve both its liquidity and profitability. The present paper seeks to understand the reason behind this contradictory result. As per the findings of the paper, intelligent debtors and creditors management helped the company significantly in achieving higher profitability along with higher liquidity.

            I hope our readers find this issue of MANTHAN to be an interesting and insightful reading and we look forward to providing you more such issues addressing diverse themes in the area of commerce and management.

Dr. Himanshu Sekhar Rout

Editor