Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : B

It is brand insistence.

Brand familiarity is described in stages: brand recognition (the consumer knows the brand), brand preference (the consumer chooses it over others when it is available but will accept a substitute), and brand insistence (the consumer wants that brand so strongly that he or she will not accept a substitute and will search for it).

Brand loyalty is the general tendency to buy the same brand repeatedly; refusing every substitute is the extreme stage called insistence.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

The definition is in Section 3 of the Indian Majority Act, 1875.

Section 3 of that Act provides that every person domiciled in India attains majority on completing eighteen years of age. (Before 1999 the age was twenty-one for a minor under the care of a court-appointed guardian.) The Indian Contract Act relies on it: Section 11 of the Contract Act says a person is competent to contract if he is of the age of majority according to the law to which he is subject.

So the Contract Act does not itself fix the age. The Companies Act, 2013 does not define a minor in its Section 3, which deals with the formation of companies, and the juvenile justice law is a separate, criminal-law code.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

The Basel Committee was established by The Central bank governors of the group of ten countries.

It was set up at the end of 1974, after the collapse of Bankhaus Herstatt disrupted international markets, by the central bank governors of the G10 countries, and it meets at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. It produced the Basel I, II and III capital adequacy standards.

It was not set up by European countries as a group, nor by India or the U.S.A. alone; India joined only in 2009 when membership was widened. Its founding members were the G10 central banks.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : B

Merchant bankers are Financial intermediaries.

A merchant banker stands between companies that need capital and the investors who supply it. Merchant bankers manage public issues, advise on capital structure, mergers and acquisitions, arrange loans and syndication, and act as underwriters, bankers to issues and portfolio managers. In India they are regulated by SEBI's merchant banker regulations.

Underwriting, credit appraisal and broking are only some of the services they provide. Naming any one of them describes part of the role, while 'financial intermediaries' describes the whole of it.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : C

NSDL was promoted by IDBI, UTI and NSE.

The National Securities Depository Limited, India's first depository, was set up in 1996 after the Depositories Act by the Industrial Development Bank of India, the Unit Trust of India and the National Stock Exchange of India.

The other combinations are wrong. SHCIL (Stock Holding Corporation) and NSCC (the NSE's clearing corporation) are related bodies, but they were not NSDL's promoters with IFCI or ICICI.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

CRISIL's AAA describes the highest credit quality.

In CRISIL's long-term rating scale, AAA instruments are considered to have the highest degree of safety regarding timely servicing of financial obligations and carry the lowest credit risk.

AA means high safety, A adequate safety, and BBB moderate safety, so options B, C and D match lower grades.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

The fair practice code was brought out by the I.B.A.

The Indian Banks' Association (which the paper calls the Indian Bankers' Association) issued a model Fair Practice Code for banks in June 2004, setting out standards of disclosure and fair dealing with customers. It was later taken over by the Code of Bank's Commitment to Customers of the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India.

The RBI issues fair practices guidelines of its own on lending, but this code was the IBA's, and neither the Government nor the Ministry of Finance issued it.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : D

The balance should be paid to the legal representative of X, Y and Z.

When a joint account carries no survivorship mandate (such as 'either or survivor'), the deceased's share does not pass automatically to the other holders. On the death of X, the bank pays the balance jointly to the survivors Y and Z and the legal representatives of X, so that X's estate receives its share.

Paying Y and Z alone, or either of them, would require a survivorship clause, and paying X's legal representative alone would ignore the rights of the living account holders.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : D

The method that is not off-the-job training is special assignments.

Special assignments give a trainee a real task or project within the organisation, so the learning happens while doing actual work. They are an on-the-job method, like job rotation and coaching.

Vestibule training uses a separate area equipped like the workplace, and simulation and business games recreate decisions in a classroom or exercise. All three take place away from the job, so they are off-the-job methods.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : B

The answer is Mental Revolution.

F. W. Taylor described the essence of scientific management as a complete mental revolution on the part of both workers and management: both should stop quarrelling over the division of surplus and work together to increase it, replacing suspicion with mutual trust and rule of thumb with a scientific attitude to problems.

Time study, motion study and work study are techniques of scientific management, not the change of attitude the stem describes.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : C

ANOVA involves splitting of the variance as variation between the samples and also within sample.

R.A. Fisher's analysis of variance divides the total variation of all the observations into two parts: the variation between the sample means, which reflects differences between the groups, and the variation within each sample, which reflects chance. The ratio of the two mean squares is the F statistic used to test whether the group means are equal.

Computing the means and variances of each group, or setting out the ANOVA table, are steps in carrying out the analysis, but they do not describe what the technique essentially does.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

The keyed answer is that business economics is essentially Applied microeconomics only.

Business (managerial) economics applies economic theory to decisions inside a firm: demand analysis and forecasting, production and cost, pricing, and capital budgeting. These are the subjects of microeconomics, the study of individual units, which is why texts such as Joel Dean's describe it as applied microeconomics.

Macroeconomic conditions such as inflation, interest rates and the business cycle form the environment in which the firm decides, so they are drawn on, but the core of the subject is micro. That is why the key rejects 'applied macroeconomics only', and does not treat the subject as an equal mix of the two or as neither.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : C

Domestic currency tends to depreciate owing to a high inflation rate.

By purchasing power parity, if prices rise faster at home than abroad, domestic goods become less competitive, exports fall and imports rise. Demand for the home currency falls and demand for foreign currency rises, so the home currency loses value. High inflation also erodes the real return on assets held in that currency, which pushes capital out.

A falling or constant inflation rate, or no inflation, would tend to support the currency rather than weaken it.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : C

The balance of payments usually records a country's transactions for one year.

It is a systematic record of all economic transactions between residents and the rest of the world over a period, and the standard period is a year (in India, the financial year). Quarterly figures are also published, but the annual statement is the usual accounting period.

Two, five or ten years are spans used for plans or trend analysis, not for the balance of payments account itself.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : A

Toilet soaps call for an intensive distribution strategy.

Intensive distribution places a product in as many outlets as possible: grocery stores, chemists, supermarkets and roadside shops. It suits convenience goods such as soap, toothpaste and soft drinks, which are low-priced, bought often and with little effort, so a buyer will simply pick another brand if the usual one is not available.

Selective distribution uses a limited number of chosen outlets, suitable for shopping goods such as appliances and clothing. Exclusive distribution gives one dealer sole rights in an area, as for luxury cars. Inclusive distribution is not a standard strategy. For a mass-consumed product like toilet soap, maximum availability matters most.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : B

A parameter is the population mean.

In statistics a parameter is a numerical measure that describes a characteristic of the population, such as the population mean (μ), standard deviation (σ) or proportion. Its counterpart computed from a sample is called a statistic and is used to estimate the parameter.

The sample mean is therefore a statistic, not a parameter. The size of the sample is chosen by the investigator, and the size of the population is a count of units rather than a measure describing the distribution of the characteristic studied, so neither is the parameter the question means.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : C

The budget line shifts upwards to the right.

The budget line shows all the combinations of two goods a consumer can buy with a given income at given prices. Its slope is the ratio of the two prices. If income rises while prices stay the same, the consumer can buy more of both goods, so the line moves outward parallel to itself, away from the origin, and the intercepts on both axes increase.

A shift backwards to the left would follow a fall in income. The line would stay unchanged only if income and prices were unchanged. It would become vertical only if the price of the good on the vertical axis became infinitely high, which has nothing to do with income.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : B

The plan is Taylor's.

F. W. Taylor's differential piece rate system sets a standard output for each job by time study and fixes two piece rates: a higher rate for workers who reach or exceed the standard and a lower rate for those who fall below it. Efficient workers are rewarded and inefficient ones are penalised, which is the plan described (the paper's 'alone' standards reads as 'above').

Halsey and Rowan devised premium bonus plans that pay a bonus for time saved against a standard time, without two piece rates. Henri Fayol is known for the principles of management, and Mary Parker Follett for her work on conflict and integration; neither devised a wage incentive plan of this kind.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : D

The item that is not in the current account is external borrowings.

The current account of the balance of payments records transactions that do not create claims for the future: exports and imports of goods (the trade balance), trade in services, primary income such as interest, dividends and wages, and transfers such as remittances.

External borrowings, such as loans taken from abroad and their repayment, create liabilities and belong to the capital (financial) account. The interest paid on them, however, is a current account item, which is why interest payments, import of services and export of goods are all current account entries.

Your Answer : (Not Answered)

Correct Answer : D

On the key's reading, the force that is not listed is increasing population.

Marketing and business environment texts single out a few forces that are reshaping how firms operate and to which they must respond directly: the consumer movement (consumerism), which presses for safe products, fair dealing and information; environmentalism, which presses for less pollution and resource use; and the changing competitive environment brought by liberalisation and globalisation.

Population growth is a demographic trend that shapes the size of markets over time, often as an opportunity, rather than one of these pressures the business is confronted with, so the key treats it as the odd one out.