Chirag Patel
India
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Assistant Professor, Marketing
Areas of expertise
Customer/Client Satisfaction, Innovation, Organizational Practices
Contact
+33 4 76 70 65 31 - Office F707
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Dr. Chirag Patel is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Grenoble Ecole de Management. His primary research interests include radical innovation, organizational learning and consumer relationships. Dr. Patel's PhD thesis titled "Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Learning and the Innovation Process" focused on competition between incumbent banks at developing online banking. He has received numerous grants and awards for his research studies. In 2007, he was invited to participate in the "Dynamics of Radical Innovation" project funded by the Marketing Science Institute. Dr. Patel is ad-hoc reviewer for the American Marketing Association's Educators' Conference and the British Academy of Management Conference.
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Articles in Refeered Journals
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Many tools are used by retailing websites to increase their performance: for example, sponsored links in search engines, e-mails, enriched content and various other functionalities. Surprisingly, the effects of these tools are not always well documented. This is especially the case for new tools. We study Top 500 North American retailing websites using covariance analysis so as to quantify the relation between these tools and various performance measures like traffic, browsing experience, behavior, and the websites’ sales. Our results give to practitioners, for the first time, a perspective into the effects of many commonly used tools, assessed simultaneously.
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In this conceptual paper, we expose learning cultures that contribute to firms' sustained success in innovations. The learning cultures we propose are based on the cultural theory proposed by Mary Douglas. We argue that different learning cultures have different preferences for modes of learning: the hierarchical learning culture prefers internal knowledge creation; the competitive learning culture learns through external knowledge transfer and the egalitarian learning culture learns through debates and discourse. We argue that, owing to their inherent characteristics, each learning culture will be more effective at different stages of the innovation process: the hierarchical learning culture will come to the fore during the radical phase of the innovation process, the competitive learning culture will be more effective during the incremental phase and the egalitarian learning culture will outshine the other two during the transition period between the radical and incremental phases. Finally, we propose that firms that support different learning cultures during different stages of the innovation process in the sequence that we outline in this paper will enjoy sustained success in innovations. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed.
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Which of the three processes in business education leads to optimum student learning: conventional
learning processes, online learning processes, or joint conventional and online learning
processes? This question is found to be theoretically and practically important when we view
online education as a radical innovation. Taking this radical innovation view of online education,
we create a theoretical framework that seeks to answer the above research question. We
provide a number of propositions that compare the components of online learning systems with
components of conventional learning system in terms of their ability to lead to superior student
learning. The components of conventional and online learning systems in business education
used for comparison are the pedagogical role of the instructor, the teaching/learning environment,
the motivational level of the students, the role of action learning in business education,
and the role of creativity in business education. The propositions result in the creation of a
combined conventional and online learning system that we term the “integrated learning
model.” We propose that this model leads to optimum student learning.
This model is applicable to conventional universities going online as well as purely online
universities. It advises conventional universities to create a combined learning process for their
traditional offline students and at the same time advises them and purely online universities to
create offline learning centers in different geographical zones when addressing students enrolled
in distance learning programs. Finally, we provide support for these propositions through
examples of a conventional business school and an online university that have succeeded by
using the combined learning system.
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Papers in Refereed Conference Proceedings
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Following radical technological change, do firm business models affect market success of the radical innovation? Past literature on radical innovation has focused on the financial and technological antecedents of radical innovation. In doing so, the crucial role of business models has been overlooked. The development of a new business model is a key response to radical technological change because radical innovations create a new market infrastructure which requires development of new ways of doing business.
In this paper, we make three contributions to the past literature. First, we study the effect of business models on market success of the firm’s radical innovation. Second, we create a categorization of business models based on the concepts of ‘position within a value chain’ and ‘direction of information and product flow within the value chain’. Third, we measure business models objectively using archival data from the online retailing sector.
We use arguments based on network theory to hypothesize that business models designed to extend and support the basic benefits of the radical innovation are likely to have greater market success for their radical innovation as compared to business models that do not do so. For example, the basic benefit of online book retailing for customers is the ability to buy books and obtain information from the retailer at anytime and anyplace. In this context, a business model that allows two way flow of books and information between value chain members (like offline vendors, authors, publishers) and the final customer would extend and support the basic benefits of online retailing. This framework provides managers with guidelines for designing successful business models following radical technological change.
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How do virtual communities create increasing returns? Past literature has studied the intangible and tangible drivers of e-loyalty, but e-relationship marketing strategies and tactics have been understudied. We specifically, focus on studying the effect of using a virtual community business model as a relationship marketing strategy. In doing so, we make two contributions to the past literature. First, we study the nature of the effect of a virtual community business model on ‘number of members in community’ instead of focusing on e-loyalty per say. We contend that replacing the construct e-loyalty by number of members in community allows us to discover the nature of the relationship better. Second, we study the nature of effect of increasing members on sales. Analysis of an archival dataset of 500 internet retailers shows that websites with virtual community business model show increasing returns.
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Using the Douglasian Cultural Theory, we attempt to identify the organizational dynamics that will make firms more innovative on the long term. We do this by exposing the preference that each cultural group or solidarity has towards a specific mode of learning. We argue that each solidarity has an affinity for a specific mode of learning, which makes it more active either in the radical or incremental stages of the innovation process. By demonstrating which solidarity plays a dominant role during which stage of the innovation process, we hope to advise managers and policy-makers to encourage the right kind of organizational dynamics at each stage of the innovation process so as to lead to innovations and thereby success in the long term for their firms.
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How should incumbent firms innovate in the long term? Past research suggests that firms should be fast during the radical phase. In contrast, we show that incumbent firms can either be fast during the radical phase or the incremental phase. Incumbent firms that learn through the path of internal knowledge creation during the radical phase followed by external knowledge transfer during the incremental phase are slow at radical innovation but fast at incremental innovations. We provide evidence for this thesis by analyzing a longitudinal data set developed from archival sources for 89 incumbent U.S. banks with online retail banking.
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