...P3 Market Research In this section of Unit 3 I will be discussing Apple and how they conduct their market research. Market research is when a business/organisation goes out and gathers information about customers’ wants and needs. Primary research is a type of market research, its research that has been gathered first hand by the person or group conducting the research i.e. surveys, focus groups or observations. Secondary research is another type of research that involves getting your information from someone else; using the research that someone else has gathered. Qualitative and quantitative are the natures of primary and secondary research. Qualitative research is market research that explores the attitude and behaviours of customers. Apple use this to gain an insight on not only what customers think about their products but why they think it. Quantitative research is the process of gathering information by asking people for their opinions in a structured way in order to produce hard facts and statistics; research that deals with numbers and figures e.g. 65% of iPhone 6 users want the iPhone 6s. The sole purpose of market research is to collect data on customers and potential customers. The data that has been collected aids the business in future decision making thus reducing the risk involved in making such decisions. By aiding in decision making, market research guides apple’s marketing plan as well as the four Ps: place, product, price and promotion. The research gathered...
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...UNIT 19: EXTERNAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT Get assignment help for this unit at assignmenthelpuk@yahoo.com LO1 Understand the impact of socio-economic change on the development of commercial organisations in a business and services industry context Structure and operation of UK economy: market structure; perfect/imperfect competition; oligopoly; duopoly and monopoly; national/local factors; determinants of free-market economy Government economic policy: aims and influence; effects on employment policy; inflation; balance of payments; economic growth in industry sector; current issues Income, wealth, employment and occupational distribution: structure and composition of business and services industry; patterns of demand for business and services; the socioeconomic framework of demand; labour demand in industry sector Demographic trends: geographical pattern of labour demand; nature of employment in business and services industries; employment profiles eg age, sex Social structures: types of people employed; geographical variations; self-employed; unemployed; labour turnover; levels of pay Industry context: contexts eg hospitality and catering, hairdressing and beauty therapy, sports and leisure, travel and tourism LO2 Understand the effect of legal and political environments on business and service industries Structure, operation and influence of local government: structure; areas of control; limits of authority; interface with national government; powers affecting business...
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...Unit 19 Developing Teams in Business Assignment 1: P1 & P3 Different types of teams What is a Team? A team is individuals whom are moulded into a group who work together to achieve an objective or task. Team Recruitment Recruiting the right team members is the key to the success of your team. When the leaders of any group recruit new members, there are a number of skills, qualities needed as well as a process that each member has to go through in order for them to be an successful addition to the team. This process is called job analysis from where a person specification is drawn up and following all the qualifications and qualities that a new team member would be expected to have. The process of recruitment for a successful new team member’s selection. Recruitment> selection> -training •coaching •mentoring •motivation the first steps to a successful recruitment > recruiting and selecting people who will be good team players > training them, providing mentoring and coaching to help them to perform better in the teams > creating your high-performance team. R (Reference: Business BTEC national book1 level 3, page 363) Benefits of a team * Working in a team as part of a company is good as every individual has their own contribution to the team they all share their ideas to help better the company * Team work empowers creativity within the members * Each individual grows as they have other team members to support them There are different...
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...There are many things that are needed in order to make sure that a business is going to be working correctly in order for it to make money. All these things should be considered and reviewed regularly to ensure it’s running as smooth as it can be. The main thing that makes a company work is to have effective teams in place to make sure that all the work is being done and that they are being collaborative when working together. Within Xtrac there are many elements that are key in order to make sure that the business can function and this is because of the way that the teams are laid out and to make sure that the workload is even. In order to make the process work, there needs to be members of teams that are going to merge to say make sure that making a new product is feasible. Xtrac use a relativity small business plan to work out who is where and what they are going to be doing in terms of the teams, people and where they are, like what department. The first team that should be taken note of and should be used as a benchmark are the Managers and Senior Members of the company. There are many reason that the management team is effective and how the are beneficial to the organisation. Without the management team there would be a lack of work done in the company. They make sure that people are doing what they need to be doing and have the power to change things around and to make the processes faster in order to make more money in the time that they have got. They need to...
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...while maintaining their vertical control from their headquarters in Calgary; by analysing Agrium’s history, corporate structure, and three key business units. At the end of this case study we hope other Canadian organizations will adopt the Agrium model when they consider expanding operations globally. Keywords: Agrium, Agro-food, , clusters, global, mining, and vertical integration Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................................................................................................. 1 History .......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Corporate Division ...................................................................................................................................... 2 Governance ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Board of Directors .................................................................................................................................. 3 Chief Executive Officer .......................................................................................................................... 3 Code of Business Conduct and Ethics................................................................................................ 4...
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...Lecture Week 7! Business Level Strategy! 2 ! 1 ! Learning Outcomes – Week 7! Be able to! • Identify Strategic Business units in Organisations! • Explain the different bases of achieving competitive advantage! • Explain the factors influencing the sustainability of competitive advantage! • Explain the relationship between competition and collaboration ! 3 ! Strategic Choices ! Exhibit III.1! 4 ! 2 ! Business Level Strategy - Outline! • Strategic business units! • Competitive advantage (strategy clock)! – Price-based! – Differentiation! – Hybrid and focus! • Sustainability of competitive advantage! • Co-operation and competition! • Game theory in competitive strategy! 5 ! Business Level Strategies! Exhibit 5.1! 6 ! 3 ! Strategic Business Units! A strategic business unit is a part of an organisation! for which there is a distinct external market for goods or services that is different from another SBU! • Opposing pitfalls in identifying SBUs! – Too many different products/markets means lack of focus! – Too few means not reflecting diversity of products/markets! 7 ! Criteria for Identifying SBUs! External! Same customer types! Same channels! Similar competitors! Internal! Similar products/ services! Similar technologies! Similar resources and competences! 8 ! 4 ! Bases of Competitive Advantage! • Competitive strategy! – The bases for achieving competitive advantage ! – The bases for providing best...
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...BCO 321 Strategic Management School of Business Vincent Chee, 110144 Ricky Liew, 100517 Walter Chin, 100936 Table of Content Case Abstraction 3 Vision Statement (Actual) 4 Mission Statement (Actual) 4 Mission Statement (Proposed) 4 Vision Statement (Proposed) 5 Slogan (Proposed) 5 The CPM Matrix of P&G Company 6 External Factor Evaluation (EFE) Matrix for Procter and Gamble (P&G) 9 The I/E matrix for Procter and Gamble (P&G) 14 Internal Factor Evaluation (IFE) Matrix for Procter and Gamble (P&G) 16 A SWOT Matrix of P&G Company 21 Strengths 23 Weaknesses 23 Opportunities 24 Threats 24 The FOUR strategies 25 The SPACE Matrix 26 Calculation 27 The SPACE Matrix chart 28 The BCG Matrix 29 The BCG Matrix chart 29 The Recommended Long-Term Planning 30 Income Statement and Balance Sheet for Procter and Gamble (P&G) 32 The Recommended Annual Objectives & Policies 35 The Recommended procedures for strategy review and evaluations 35 References: 37 Case Abstraction The Procter & Gamble Co., also known as P&G, is based in the United State of America. Mr. William Procter and Mr. James Gamble are the founders of the company in 1837, and this tell the story behind the company’s name. The P&G company is born when Mr. William, a candle maker from England and Mr. James, a soup maker from Ireland in Ohio. They are met eventually when they married sisters. The company is headquartered in downtown...
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...The Case Study for PROJ587 will place the student in the role of a senior manager in charge of one of your company’s Strategic Business Units (SBU). Your first task in this new position is to develop a project portfolio management process and then use this process to select projects for your SBUs portfolio. The Case Study will involve the application of the tools and techniques of multi-project/program management and will deal with the analysis and establishment of project management systems based on the structure of the project. The expected outputs from this Case Study will be in the form of a two part written report due week five. Background The senior management of your company has already made the strategic decisions to allocate annual funding to each of the Strategic Business Units (SBU) within the company. You have been hired to manage one of the companies SBUs. Your new company is a mid cap company with revenues of approximately $350 million dollars a year. This company, like many others, is struggling in today’s economy. It realizes in order to survive it needs to both expand and control costs at the same time. You are new to this industry. This company’s vision is to become the “go to” support or the “provider of choice” for the cruise ship industry throughout the world. This company currently is in the travel and hotel support industry. As such, you supply support services to the travel and hotel industry such as linen services to...
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...Case Study Analysis 8 Nestlé: Sustaining Growth in Mature Markets Strategic Management Instructor Dr. David J. Rambow Associate Professor of Management Summer Term 2011 Anchorage Campus Wayland Baptist University Nestlé: Sustaining Growth in Mature Markets Introduction Dated back to 1866, the Nestlé company had acquired profound knowledge of markets all over the world over the previous 130 years. Nestlé is the leading position in the global food industry with operated factories in 77 countries and sells its products on all six continents. Nestlé has a broadly diversified business portfolio and with leading global market shares in numerous product categories including coffee, mineral water, dairy products, nutrition and baby food, ice cream, confectionary, pet food, and chocolate. Nestlé is also committed to providing quality brands and products that are essential to good health. In doing so, Nestlé incorporated nutritional elements into vast array of product categories to promote food that are safe of high quality (Raisch & Ferlic, 2006). Peter Brabeck-Letmathe took the job as CEO of Nestlé in June 1997; he faced the challenge of having to improve the company’s profitability. In order to generate the financial means required to invest in growth initiatives, Brabeck launched a suite of process innovation initiative in an effort to maximizing existing assets, maximizing capacity utilization, and maximizing distribution logistics...
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...and learning ranging somewhere in between. Our study implies that the idea of standardization beyond financial measures is based on three performance measures characteristics: 1) reliance on data already available, 2) easy benchmarking, and 3) possibility of being audited by third parties. We advanced implications for managers and for future research on the information generated in the BSC. 1. INTRODUCTION. This paper has been motivated by the evidence of some limitations of the balanced scorecard (Lipe and Salterio, 2000; Banker et al., 2004). These authors examine the judgmental effects of the balanced scorecard (BSC) and found that when evaluating the performance of different strategic business units (SBU), superiors tend to focus on common measures of the BSC of the units. Therefore, the BSC would fail in multidivisional firms since while using this model, senior managers will...
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...FACILITY SUPPLY DISTRIBUTOR IN BRITISH COLUMBIA by Derek Brooks B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1993 PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION In the Executive Masters of Business Program of the Faculty of Business Administration ©Derek Brooks, 2014 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2014 All rights reserved. However in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work, may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for Fair Dealing. Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, Particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Degree: Title of Project: Derek Brooks Master of Business Administration A Strategic Analysis of a Facility Supply Distributor in British Columbia Supervisory Committee: _____________________________________ Dr. Aidan Vining Senior Supervisor CNABS Professor of Business and Government Relations & Area Coordinator, Strategy. _______________________________________ Dr. Andrew von Nordenflycht Second Reader Associate Professor Date Approved: _______________________________________ i ABSTRACT This paper presents a business level strategic analysis of RST Corporation’s facility supply division, in British Columbia Canada. The facility supply industry is in decline. Firms find it increasingly difficult to achieve...
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...Beyond Benchmarks: Estimate Your Application Maintenance Costs Using Internal Data by Phil Murphy EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Applications professionals struggle to explain the cost of their applications' ongoing operations and maintenance to their business counterparts, who commonly perceive the costs as excessive. The business perceives these costs as excessive in part because of the way applications professionals deliver the information — as a large and indecipherable lump-sum budget item. Applications professionals who want to avoid blind mandates to cut costs by "X" percent must break out application costs in a way that business people can analyze and digest. When they do, they give the business an opportunity to make smart, surgical reductions to costs and shift underutilized resources to the work that is most important to the organization, increasing overall agility and innovation while reducing wasteful spending habits. IN SEARCH OF "INDUSTRY STANDARD" BENCHMARK COMPARISON FIGURES When business and IT executives push back on the costs of applications, they raise a common set of questions such as, "Are we spending too much?"; "What do other companies spend for the same services?"; and "How do we measure up against 'industry standard' measures and benchmarks?" The erroneous assumption is that "industry standards" exist for virtually every category of IT spending. The term "industry standard" implies that an industry such as manufacturing or insurance agrees to use a certain...
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...those investments actually translate into real profits, and that creates misunderstandings. Question 2 Why should we plan for, institute and execute a serious post project audit policy? Options: i. Because there is a law of nature that tells us that just by measuring something we increase the likelihood of success ii. Because that allows our IT Center to be more like a Profit Center iii. Because that allows the Management Team to find the strategic business value of IT iv: Because it uses valuable resources, namely time Select one: a. i, ii, iii b. i, ii, iii, iV c. ii, iii Question 3 IT-Business Alignment demands a strategic process to be in place. According to the Strategic Process we learned in class from the Institute for CIO Excellence, IT initiatives should be ranked in terms of: Select one: a. Payback Period b. Other c. Internal Rate of Return d. Net Present Value Question 4 The main point of this case is to show that there are always advantages from standardizing the IT Function across business units. Select one: a. False, the purpose of the case is to highlight that while...
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...Sony, Ericsson, Cisco etc. Initially, Solectron manufactured a wide range of products for its customers in many business segments like Networking, Telecommunications, Computers, Computer peripherals, avionics, consumer electronics, GPS etc. As Solectron grew, it expanded its services so much so that by the end of 90s it had three strategic business units: * Technology Solutions, which provided technology building blocks which helped customers minimise time-to-market for new products * Global Manufacturing, which provided design, new product introduction, and manufacturing and distribution services * Global Services, which provided repair, upgrade, maintenance etc The company, with Mr. Chen concentrated on offering high quality, responsiveness, communication, service and technical support. The main objective was to achieve customer satisfaction by providing high quality. When Solectron offered contract manufacturing services to OEMs, its aim was to offer them services at reduced prices due to greater volume purchasing. Rather than outsourcing as a way to access relatively inexpensive skilled labour, it became a source of tactical advantage which they provided. Tactical turnkey assembly meant that OEMs specified what was needed, and Solectron bought the materials, built the product, and shipped it to customers. In 1992, Solectron introduced a new business model when it purchased manufacturing sites from IBM. As a part of the asset acquisitions, Solectron received...
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...------------------------------------------------- Josephine Malesheka Mathole ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Student No. 271199 ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- To be submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the ------------------------------------------------- BBA Honours degree ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- at ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- SOUTHERN BUSINESS SCHOOL ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Supervisor: Prof. Louw ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 June 2013 ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS...
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