Ramendra Singh - Your Talent Matters, but Your Attitude and Motivation Matter Much More (Professor of Marketing, IIM Calcutta)

Don't compare yourself with anyone, and try to keep learning from everyone, and all the time, and become the best version of yourself

1. Tell us about your background and journey and your experience as an educator.

I have completed a B.Tech and MBA followed by PhD from IIM Ahmedabad, and now working as a marketing faculty at IIM Calcutta for the last 14 years.

2. Your publication "Emotions and Consumer Behavior: A Review and Research Agenda" delves into the relationship between emotions and consumer choices. How do emotions impact consumer behavior, and what implications does this have for marketers?

Consumer are human beings and thus bring emotions into their decision-making processes, including during shopping, as well as consumption processes. The implications for marketers are huge, as they have to understand consumer emotions shown during consumer journeys and how they shape their consumption experiences. 

These emotional needs of the consumers are often subtle or subliminal and thus difficult to understand in explicit ways. Marketers need to learn new approaches to understand emotions working beneath the consumers’ psychological processes (e.g., using neuromarketing approaches), while also meeting firms’ own objectives.

3. With over a decade of experience at IIM Calcutta, what significant changes or trends have you observed in the field of marketing education and research, and how have these influenced your teaching approach?

 

Marketing Education like other streams of education is always dynamic and changing. Education is always catching up with the latest changes happening in the industry and society at large. For example, with dynamic technological changes that span AI, blockchain, IoT, ChatGPT, cloud computing, ML, AR/VR/Metaverse, etc, terms such as Marketing 5.0 have already hit the market few years ago, yet marketing education still lags behind. While we teach courses around these topics, in particular, the business and marketing implications of Marketing 5.0 are huge, and yet to be fully fathomed. 

While the industry will move ahead very fast with this disruptive change, educational institutions will always lag behind. New theories, meta-theories, concepts, models, and frameworks will always take several years to develop and get established.  On the other hand, we have challenges in developing pedagogies that make learning of these new concepts more effective. 

Case methods which have been long used in MBA classrooms are very restrictive in teaching these concepts. Simulations are increasingly finding more space in the classrooms now, but they have their own limitations for enhancing students’ learning as these are algorithm-driven only, and are weak in developing the business skills of the students. 

Lecture methods work only up to a point, and everything cannot become experiential in the classroom. I foresee more and more flipped models of learning in which students would have to read some basic readings and then come to the classroom for enriched discussion and then post that go and do a live project to build skills around the knowledge gained in the classrooms. Classrooms are not the best place to build skills, especially in a limited time frame of 30 hours that any course lasts. 

4. In your role as a Professor at IIM, a renowned institute, what kind of qualities or characteristics does the institute typically look for in prospective students, and how does IIM ensure a diverse and dynamic learning environment?

 

We increasingly find the students overloaded with work, unengaged, and stressed. These often defeat the very purpose of learning in the management institute. There is unnecessary hyper-competition among the students for grades and jobs, and they often lose interest in what is taught in the classrooms due to their stressed lives.

A dynamic learning environment means more student engagement with other peers, faculty, and course materials. For learning to happen, we would like students to have an open mind, with no stress to only achieve grades(which is a very restrictive way of measuring the learning outcomes of a course).

In an ideal world, we would like students in B-Schools to have some level of manager-like qualities, and some leadership qualities since no institution has developed managerial skills and leadership competencies if students have none to start with. It’s a mix of nature (inherent) and nurture(learned).

5. I have seen people usually mention "Grilling" in the Interview panel. So can you tell us why it is done so and how to give the best in such a situation?

 

The notion of grilling interviews is exaggerated. I have often seen candidates in MBA interviews and other places where they often fake their answers or CV points. If the answers sound ‘fake’ or ‘tutored’ they would naturally lead to some sort of ‘grilling’ process to test whether the candidate actually is what s/he is projecting to be (no one wants to hire a fake candidate). 

So my advice to all candidates would be to prepare but be natural and be yourself in the interviews. A little bit of stress is there in all situations, and if candidates cannot handle that they better learn it since life anyway is not a cakewalk.

6. How can one prepare himself for the PI round in IIM Calcutta? What are the x-factors that are seen by panelists for a candidate being selected and the candidate being rejected after the interview?

 

Some of these questions have got answered already in the above question. I would advise candidates to not pretend to be what they are not, but instead be the best version of themselves. Always go prepared for the interview, which means do your homework about which B-School you have applied for and which course you have applied for. You should know what you are talking about. Never lie to exaggerate your CV. Never write or speak anything if you don’t know about it. Your talent matters, but your attitude and motivation matter much more. There is no x-factor that anyone looks for. That is a misconception.

 

7. Can you share a challenging situation you faced in your teaching role and how you addressed it? What did you learn from that experience?

One of the biggest challenges that I faced early in my teaching career was in handling students. Most students that I see in the MBA classrooms do not know how to take feedback. When I gave them honest feedback in the classroom, they would sulk, and become angry. These are not signs of maturity. I understand that at the age of 20-something, maturity comes at a premium, yet if you don’t take feedback how would you learn. 

So my advice to them is to keep an open mind, and not take any feedback personally.  What does not kill you can only end up making you better.  So when I saw students sulking under honest feedback, I started sugar-coating it only to make the bitter medicine sweeter, hoping they would eat the entire medicine, and not just the sugar. 

8. Looking ahead, what are your professional or personal aspirations and goals in this industry, and how do you plan to achieve them?

 

I would continue to teach the students and executives (as I do now) for as many more years as possible for me, and anywhere in the world. I also love doing academic research and thus would continue to do that. Teaching and research are different sides of learning, and go hand in hand. As much as I learn from research, I also learn from teaching (and from my students). 

9. What advice would you give to students aspiring to pursue a career in this industry or academia, based on your own experiences and journey?

My only advice to them is to be genuine and be yourself. Always be independent in your thinking, and please speak your mind. You won't add any value to this world by becoming anyone’s clone. This does not imply that you don’t have role models but understand that your path is different from anyone else’s path. So please don’t compare yourself with anyone, and try to keep learning from everyone, and all the time, and become the best version of yourself.

Bio-

Ramendra Singh is a Professor of Marketing at IIM Calcutta, India. He completed PhD from IIM Ahmedabad, an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, and a B. Tech from IIT-BHU. His academic research has been published in reputed international journals. He serves on the Editorial Boards of several leading international academic journals. His research interests include marketing and the poor, ICT for Development, business and society, and salesforce performance management. 

He has authored several books, including an edited book titled, Bottom of Pyramid Marketing: Making, Shaping and Developing BOP Markets, a textbook on Sales and Distribution Management, and two books on marketing case studies. He has worked in the industry for several years in sales and marketing responsibilities.

Interviewed and Edited by - Arunangshu Chatterjee