Marketing Management

S L Rao devoted a whole issue to Marketing Management in 1973 (Review of Management, August 25). The industrial climate in India has changed radically since then. There is a much larger base of production of consumer and industrial goods. There is a much larger middle class. The availability of media for advertising, and especially, television, has vastly improved in reach. But the most important change is that Indian industry is facing competition. In 1973, some of the consumer products industries had competitions and a total availability of production in excess of demand, giving the consumer a choice of brands. Even in those industries the competition was perhaps not in the same class as in the industrialised countries. Manufacturers were not able to go all out in improving products to meet rising consumer expectations because of restrictions in imports of materials, machinery and know-how, and their own unwillingness to invest in research and development. In the case of industrial products and consume! durables the position was that a licence to produce almost guaranteed a market for the production. Licensing was related to govern ment forecasts of market demand growth, which were many times wrong and not all licences got converted into production, or not in time.