Wal-mart supermarket Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Wal-mart supermarket - Essay Example The final important consideration by the company is that they should prioritize business processes and procedures more than the technology at hand; technology should be incorporated on the basis of business needs rather than joining the race of being equipped with the latest technology. The formulation of this strategy helps the company to maintain the technological development and ensure that it is directed towards the acquisition of the company goals. The founders of Wal-Mart have always treasured their customers and employees by giving them the status of ‘associates’; Koselka (1992) stated that Wal-Mart benefits these stakeholders in the following manner; by giving better prices and quality to their customers and empowering their employees. Information has been an integral part in the growth of the organization. Relevant and latest information has been available to the company with the help of their information systems. 3. Point of Sales System K-mart was initially co nsidered to be the biggest competitor of Wal-Mart. When K-mart started improving their business processes with technology, Wal-Mart also realized the need and deployed point of sales system in their stores. This system identifies each product in the store on the basis of its unique number and gives the respective price of the product from a database that is maintained by the IT department. A receipt is automatically generated with the respective product numbers and prices. This information is added in the sales reports and also used in the process of reordering inventory when more quantity is needed. The hardware technology that is used to identify the products is the barcode scanner. Barcode scanner makes the data available in the database immediately...Wal-Mart adapted the barcode technology while being influenced by its competitor. The incorporation of technology in the company reflects their commitment to providing value to their customers and improving their service. The point of sales system that was equipped with barcode technology proved to benefit the company in many different aspects; from automatic generation of receipts to accurate entries of transactions, from immediate entry of records to providing latest data for analytical purposes. However, barcode technology was adopted by the respective organization when computer technology was not as common as it is today. The lack of skills of several employees in this regard caused a certain level of resistance towards the technological change. Effective measures were taken to get the system accepted by the employees. Wal-Mart also utilized information technology to develop effective networking links with their suppliers. This technique reduced their communication barriers and avoided instances of undersupply. Timely re-orders resulted in a constant supply of products in the store and results in effective service for the consumer. The suppliers networking with the retailers provide them with useful information about the buying behaviour of the consumer so that they can alter their products according to the consumer requirements. RFID is a developing technology that will prove to be even more effective than the barcode technology.

What effect national cultural has on the marketing strategies of Essay

What effect national cultural has on the marketing strategies of business - Essay Example This essay discusses that as businesses expand into the international markets, it is imperative to better understand why a business, successful in one country, fails in its foreign markets. One major reason is that firms fail to understand and account for national cultural differences. This led to the 1990 mandate by the Marketing Science Institute to examine national cultural effects on market orientation for the firm. From this mandate came numerous theoretical and empirical works. The works studied two main areas, the affects of national culture on business performance and the affects of national culture on marketing efforts. Academic works on national cultural effects on marketing efforts lead to a split in the theory. It is argued for the globalization strategy that predicted consumer tastes would converge and marketing efforts should be directed toward standardization of products and marketing strategies. On the other side, Quelch and Hoff, Douglas and Wind, and de Mooij & Hofs tede contend that standardized global markets are a myth and that each nation requires firms to adapt and customize their products and marketing strategies. Both theories have strong arguments and empirical evidence to support their claims. Proceeding from the premise that retail marketing strategies are a key component to revenue generation for the retailer, this study, especially when it comes to retailing, subscribes to the theory that national culture should have an affect on the marketing strategy of the firm. These strategies can mean the success or failure of the company. To market effectively to the consumer, the marketer must understand what motivates the consumer to purchase at their store and not their competitors. 1.2 Statement of the Problem Numerous authors have studied various market theories and models with respect to national cultural effects. Their works looked at the specifics of marketing tasks to culture (micromarketing view) and the marketing concept to culture (macro marketing view). However, there are no significant works on the view between the micromarketing and the macromarketing in which the realm of marketing strategy falls. One reason for this is that it is typically a more difficult area to study. Each type of business dictates a different marketing strategy. It is easier to study very specific items, such as culture to product development (Hill & Still 1984; Imai & Takeuchi 1985; Nakata 1996), or culture to product choice. (Fawcett 1999; Luna & Gupta 2001) Or study very broad topics, such as national culture to market orientation. (Deshpande, Farley & Webster, 1993) However, the study of marketing strategy is between the micro and macro marketing views making it difficult to develop theories that are testable. Overall marketing strategy is too broad to practically study, yet not homogeneous enough to relate to as a whole. Therefore, to study this area requires the creation of artificial boundaries. Since it is such a difficult area to study authors have not published any significant research that may lead to a better understanding of why businesses have failed in their international efforts. Moreover, there is still debate among the academic community concerning the relevance of national culture in regards to customization versus standardization of products and marketing efforts. (Levitt, 1983; Ohrnae, 1989; Yip 1989; Deadrick, 1997; Olsen 2001) 1.3 Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study is to determine what effect national cultural has on the marketing strategies of business. Since marketing strategy is different for each type of business the only way to successfully study marketing strategy to national culture is to limit the study to one specific type of business. In this paper, the author looks to relate the marketing str

BUS 188 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

BUS 188 - Essay Example The process further stimulates plans to ensure prompt delivery of technologically improved products in order to deliver satisfaction to the consumers. At this point, Microsoft Inc. thrives as the industry’s most successful business entity in production of software applications that coincide with the prevailing market needs and lead to satisfaction by serving to the desired effect. Microsoft Dynamics and the â€Å"go-to-market† resolution is a precise approach to ensuring customer cohesion as the company focuses upon customer market segmentation in order to be certain of the production needs. Further, the company establishes on its various product category to ascertain on the mode of developing new products. However, laxity does not prevail thereafter as the company’s management intrigues into ascertaining different prices for its different product specifications and in accordance to the market variables. The company unleashed Microsoft, Fortune 500 as a new resol ution to ensuring that the company’s production line would produce a wider range of products including personal computers and mobile phones (Gross, Akaiwa, and Nordquist 45). Mainly, the company relates its performances into ensuring positive outcomes in its marketing and sales forecasts, and ascertaining that all services reflect to the needs of the consumer. Since Microsoft’s software products are the most reliable for use in personal computers, the company rests advantaged to competing at a broad perspective following the current venture in production of mobile phones and computer chips, for example, the windows phone. The strengths prevail that the company upholds importance of its products and focuses on developing its hardware devices in order to suppress the threat of counterfeiting and competition. The continuous update of the software programs inclines the company to luring the clientele group to the understanding that it is the most competent organization and aims at delivering value and satisfaction (Ward 48). Research and development play an important role in ensuring that the company engages on a continuous product development process which of lately led to the implementation of competitive windows products, for example, the continuous updates on windows software, the development of windows phone, and Xbox software among other products. The pricing approach for Microsoft products Microsoft Company’s marketing team ensures that the prices set for its products coincide with the technology used in the products. Therefore, its wide range of software products reflect on the use of different technological approaches thus; the prices established therein denote on the prevailing variations (Weiss 55). For instance, the Microsoft Windows 8 Pro sells in the global market at a price of $199.99 dollars whereas the previous innovation, the Microsoft Windows 7 Professional sells at $74.99. Further, research implements that Microsoft Office 2010 Professional sells at $254.99 in the global market (Gross, Akaiwa, a

Franz Kalfa's Metamorphosis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Franz Kalfa's Metamorphosis - Essay Example Although the family continues to care for him, providing him with food and water and cleaning his room once a day, Gregor becomes more and more detached from them, eventually finding it difficult to keep track of what has been happening around him. His room becomes dirtier, his family becomes less attentive and he becomes less concerned with their welfare in connection with his own. As his sister and mother move his personal furniture out of his room, he leaves the room with a mind toward helping his sister, but is instead attacked by his father, becoming wounded in the process when an apple thrown at him becomes lodged in his back. Rather than tending to his wounds, the family locks him back in his room again where the apple is able to fester for months. The room becomes the general receptacle of household debris before Gregor’s final attempt to reconnect with his family results in such harsh and complete rejection that he simply crawls back in his room and dies. Through the story, Kafka uses the concept of work to highlight some of the problems of the human condition. It can be argued that Gregor’s transformation is a literal indication of his feelings of separation from humanity, including from the members of his own family, as can be seen in from the very beginning of the story. Despite waking up to find himself in the form of a bug, Gregor’s primary concern remains to get to work in order to continue supporting the family who has been dependent upon him for the past five years. As he reflects upon his position, he reveals the level of disconnectedness that has already occurred between himself and his family, indeed the rest of humanity, since he took a job as a traveling salesman: â€Å"And apart from business itself, this plague of traveling: the anxieties of changing trains, the irregular, inferior meals, the ever changing faces, never to be seen again, people with whom one has no chance to be friendly† (13). Even in his own home, he

Expectancy Violations Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Expectancy Violations Theory - Essay Example However, the scholar argues that personal space is continually reflective of the compromise present between conflicting approach needs that are intact with human beings in relation to having affiliation and privacy (Griffin 85). It is worth mentioning that personal space emanated from an anthropologist, Edward Hall from the Institute of Technology in Illinois. In his argument, he coined proxemics as a study in which people utilise space as special elaboration of culture. Furthermore, he argues that America had four zones that were related to proxemics: intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance. In essence, the four zones range from 0 to 10 fits depending on the zone. In his works, Hall gives clear instances where Americans have continually being insensitive towards the cultures of other people. In response to such behavior, Hall argues that people should be enlightened on nonverbal behaviours that go in line with the communication rules from other peop le. For instance, he argues that people should not cross-boundary in any of the four proxemics zones without an invitation from the concerned person. Similarly, poem author Auden echoes the arguments of Hall insisting that one can only violate the personal space at his or her own peril (Griffin 86). In contrast to the expectation of many, Burgoon’s non verbal expectancy violation model counters the arguments of both Hall and Auden on the fact that people have specific expectations pertaining to invasion of privacy. In fact, her argument point to the fact that at times it is necessary to go against rules that have been put forward. Apparently, the application of this theory is mostly not assumed by the ‘culprit’ who invade the privacy of concerned individual, but the individual who gauge the zone in which the ‘culprit’ invaded in relation to their purported level of closeness and personal communication (Griffin 86). Of importance to note is that Burgo on at some point wanted to dismiss the entire model although she had no intentions of abandoning the concept of expectancy violation as an important concept in human interaction and as such gave an idea that the basic assumptions might have required testing and re-evaluation (Griffin 87). As a result, it was evident that the theory needed to be revised from a ‘convoluted model to an elegant theory’. For instance, in her previous writing Burgoon argued that people would automatically have physiologically arousal when their personal space was invaded. However, after re-evaluation she argued that a person would have mental alertness that would focus on the attention of the violator. In light of this, Burgoon new theory was able to incorporate other crucial nonverbal variables such as facial expression, face to face interaction, and body lean. Additionally, the theory is currently used to solve emotional, marital and intercultural communication (Griffin 88). In the general sense, the works of Burgoon have played a huge role in giving the necessary analysis of interpersonal communication and why people perceive its misuse as violation of personal space as per the limits of emotions and intercultural communication. As such, expectancy violation theory has three core concepts that revolve around it to ensure that its applications are valid.        

Union revitalisation in Europe and North America Essay

Union revitalisation in Europe and North America - Essay Example Due to increased integration in EU and development of favorable legal infrastructure coupled with favorable governments allowed trade unions to grow and gain the influence within the region. In US, too, due to local as well as international factors, trade unions are gaining momentum again.Gradually as the shift occurred towards more service oriented industries supported by technological improvements, unions lost their traditional advantage because organizations were less reliant on the human force as the main source of producing goods and services. Unions are often considered as the source of low employee turnover which effectively helps organizations to concentrate on core issues rather than emphasizing on non-productive activities. Besides that, collective bargaining powers of unions provide them necessary influence and power to impact the performance of different productivity variables within organizations.There has been counter argument to this also which suggests that the produc tivity and presence of unions are negatively related with each other and as such unions do not contribute towards the productivity of the organizations. This argument developed so strong that unions started to loose their traditional position as collective bargaining agents and as such the movements, generally, lost its significance and influence within the organizations and as agents of productivity and industrial relations.... Before analyzing the question of revitalization of the union activities within EU and North America, it is critical that a critical look at the relationship between the unions and economy and how both interact and influence each other. One of the most critical tasks performed by Unions is the compression of wage differentials in the economy. The collective bargaining power of the unions gives them an advantage to negotiate the wages with the employers, and empirically it has been evaluated that wages of those employees who is part of the unions enjoy higher wage rates than those who is not part of the union activities. It is within this context that it has been argued that unions tend to reduce the shareholder value because higher wages result into lower profits. As such union activities are therefore viewed within the perspective of agents which have negative influence over the wealth which shareholders may drive from organizations in an absence of union. This argument is further consolidated by the fact that unions often wield their power in a way which can halt the production activities due to their conflict with the management of the organizations on any issue. Such behavior and attitude tend to result in lost productivity due to stoppage of production activities. Unions also often tend to monopolize the power structures within the organizations and as such give unions power to regulate and modify the labor market therefore changing the basics of competition within economy. This monopolization of power gives unions power to influence the wage rates therefore effectively can increase the total costs for the firm which may result into lost competitiveness. As such the role of unions within the

Critical Literature Review (50%) - each student will choose a Essay

Critical Literature Review (50%) - each student will choose a particular International Marketing topic from the syllabus (severa - Essay Example The marketing mix commonly referred to as the 4Ps includes product, price, place, and promotion. It is noted that for a company to satisfy the needs of its customers, it must ensure that products of the right quality and quantity are developed, charged reasonable prices, found at the right place, as well as ensuring that the existence of the goods is made known to customers through promotion. This paper will discuss the marketing mix (4Ps) as well as the importance of the augmented product model with reference to the real world examples (Gitman and McDaniel 2008, p.13). Product The 4Ps of the marketing mix consist of the product, price, place, and promotion. The poduct is one of the most fundamental elements of the marketing mix that managers must take into consideration when making marketing decisions. The product in this case is the physical service or good that a company offers to customers. The basic elements of a product include function, packaging, appearance, and warranty amon g others. Therefore, the product that a company intends to deal with should satisfy the customer’s requirements in terms of quality, quantity, and appearance. Ensuring that these basic elements of a product are met will make a company competitive because of the fact that many customers will prefer the company’s products to those of other competitors in the market (Lamb, Hair, and MacDaniel 2008, p.56). Samsung is one of the electronic companies that operate in a very competitive environment. As such, the company understands that to remain competitive, it must offer products that compete favorable with other companies. To achieve this, Samsung has focused on manufacturing high quality products that satisfy the needs of its customers. Most of Samsung’s products are said to be of high quality with regards to proper functionality and appearance. In addition, the company provides a warranty of not less than one year for all its products. For example, one of the compa ny’s latest iPhone 5 is just amazing in terms of quality and functionally. The company reveals that the iPhone 5 started receiving orders even before its launch because of its quality and functionality (Page, 2013). General Motors is another company that performs very well in the automobile industry due to the high performance of its products. General Motors operates in a very competitive environment. As such, the only way to remain relevant is to concentrate on the manufacture of cars of high quality that satisfies the need of customers. According to Tehrani (2008 p. 8) a product is best described in three concentric circles namely the core product, augmented product and the Uber product. He observed that the core product is found at the center of the concentric circle and is meant to satisfy the pressing needs for which the product in developed. Then there is the augmented product consisting of the core product and other features that ensure that the product become more fun ctional. Finally, there is the Uber product, which consists of all other intangible features added to the product such as the brand promise. The concentric model of a product can be illustrated using the mobile phone marketing. In this regard, the mobile phone becomes the core product while the augmented products will include other features such as the product warranty and after sales services. The Uber product in this case could include the customization of the