BUSINESS STRATEGY

The main objective of this lecture given by my Prof.Tom was on how a firm would seek to employ a business strategy and side by side how to understand the processes implemented and communicated by a firm to denote its purpose and position within the industry sectors.

All the management activities consists of their own organizational culture as well as structure, corporate social responsibility . It even consist of developing strategy along with planning, controlling and measuring performance, the main point is their innovation and team building.

MISSION STATEMENT:

The mission statement should guide the actions of the organisation, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making. it provides "the framework or context within which the company's strategies are formulated." Its like a goal for what the company want to do for the world.it aligns with the stakeholders and enables employees to focus on the same goal. it actually defines the philosophy of a firm-what it stands for -why the firm exists.

EXAMPLES:
APPLE:"As a leader in innovation, the mission statement of the apple company should be equally innovative, inspiring and somewhat lofty, but officially and unofficially Apples mission is barely a mission at all."

GOOGLE: “to organize the worlds information and make its universally accessible and useful.”

E Bay: “provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.”

The BCG Growth-Share Matrix is a portfolio planning model developed by Bruce Henderson of the Boston Consulting Group in the early 1970’s. it is based on the observation that a company’s business units can be classified into four categories based on combinations of market growth and market share relative to the largest competitors
Market growth serves as a proxy for industry attractiveness, and relative market share serves as a proxy for competitive advantage. The growth –share matrix thus maps the business unit positions within these two important determinants of profitability.

This framework assumes that an increase in relative market share will results in an increase in the generation of cash. This assumption often is true because of the experience curves; increased relative market share implies that the firm is moving forward on the experience curve relative to its competitors, thus developing a cost advantage. A second assumption is that a growing market requires investment in assets to increase capacity and therefore results in the consumption of cash. Thus the position of a business on the growth-share matrix provides an indication of its cash generation and its cash consumption.

Managing a changing environment

In my this lecture I learned how to consider the macro-environment through the framework of PESTEL influences to establish the environment context. Even how to position the firms environment through Poster’s five forces.

The environment context consist of both macro as well as micro environment. Macro-environment that’s the external of the firm is of economic, social, political, legal, technological and international. These factors should not be seen as independent factors. Factors such as technological advances may probably affect the social and economic conditions in different markets.

And micro-environment the internal of the firm are the suppliers, distributors  customers and competitors.

PESTEL FRAMEWORK

The PESTEL framework is designed to provide managers with an analytical tool to identify different macro-environment factors that may affect business strategies, and to assess how different environment factors may influence business performance now and in the future.

Political factors

         Stability of government,  Social policies, Trade regulations,

          Tax policies, Entry mode regulations

Economic factors

         Disposable income of buyers,   Credit accessibility,  Unemployment rates

         Interest rates, Inflation

Social Factors

        Population demographics,

         Distribution of Wealth,Changes in lifestyles and trends, Educational levels

Technological factors

      New innovations and discoveries,  Pace of technological innovations and advances,  Pace of       technological obsolescence,  New technological platforms .

Environmental factors
   Environmental protection laws

          Waste disposal laws, Energy consumption regulation, Popular attitude towards the environment

Legal factors     Employment regulations,Competitive regulations, Health and safety regulations, Product regulations

The key for business managers is therefor to discover the main  drivers of change that may affect business strategies and to discover the factors most likely to influence the performance of the business.
In conducting a PESTEL analysis, business managers may create strategies that take several macro-environment factors into consideration, so that the strategy formulation process will be as sensitive to current and future environment factors as possible.

PORTER’S 5 FORCES:

Assessing the Balance of Power in a Business Situation

The Porter's Five Forces tool is a simple but powerful tool for understanding where power lies in a business situation. This is useful, because it helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive position, and the strength of a position you're considering moving into.
With a clear understanding of where power lies, you can take fair advantage of a situation of strength, improve a situation of weakness, and avoid taking wrong steps. This makes it an important part of your planning toolkit.
Conventionally, the tool is used to identify whether new products, services or businesses have the potential to be profitable. However it can be very illuminating when used to understand the balance of power in other situations.

CONSUMER CULTURE-Myth or Reality

What is a consumer buying behavior? A consumer buying behavior and the resulting purchase decision is strongly influenced by four major factors: personal, culture, social, and psychological factors. These factors cause the customers to develop product and brand preferences. Although many of these factors cannot be directly controlled by marketers, understanding of their impacts is essential as marketing mix strategies can be developed to appeal to the preferences of the target market.
The number of people involved in the buying decision increases with the level of involvement and complexity of the buying decision behavior.

The origins of consumer culture have been discussed by Grant McCracken (1998)who argues that there is minimal agreement in regards to the origins of customer society. McCracken took on the viewpoint that it would not be beneficial to look at a specific point in the time in which consumer culture arose but only to primarily focus on to the patterns of changes within the culture and who these patterns of changes led to the reformation of society.
I believe that consumer culture has had a very negative impact on the society. I believe this for many reasons, one of them being that Americans are, in a way, brainwashed into believing that we “need” something that they have to look a certain way to fit in. Like for these advertising companies don’t just target the adults, they also purposely target young children  they do this because they know that children’s brains are not fully developed and are very easily tricked into thinking that they need a certain toy or game to be cool and have friends. The main idea is that Americans are brainwashed into thinking is, “you have needs and you won’t be fulfilled until you buy the right product or commodity to fill those needs and wants.”

Fame and being famous has well and truly changed over the years. Since 2012, it is becoming increasingly harder to see or understand what defines a celebrity and therefore influence from the celebrities have on the average person is phenomenal. As in many young girls especially want to look like their favorite stars, they go as far as starving themselves.
I trust that influence by these celebrities sometimes might have negative as well as positive impact.  When stars get arrested for drugs or alcohol it sends a message that this is cool and many young people try the same thing, but with much different results. Even some people think our lives are boring and eventful compared to a celebrity and so they try to do what they do like for example many celebrities have failed marriage is not something that lasts so they just get tired of one partner they find another one. Our culture puts these stars on pedestals and we compare their lives to ours and that is unrealistic.
Helping yourselves by choosing the positive media role models who embody the values you want to pass down is a right thing to do.

My first blog

Welcome to My blog

Let me start by introducing myself. I'm Nathasha  Shanavas ( A tropical Asian starlings) Born in Dubai ,but basically from south- India  Kerala   Completed my schooling  from Our Own English High school-Sharjah and currently pursuing my higher education  in Heriot Watt University in Dubai Campus - Fashion Marketing and retailing.  

I discovered a new world - 'When I moved from School to the college campus’. Everything was pretty easy at school as we where most of the time spoon-fed. After joining the university, I knew how things could get harder in life. Within  one year I learned how to stand on my own foot As many incidence  and experience due to my negligence  have put me back on the right track.

I believe these blogs are an online extension of our lives in which we discuss about fashion, business, style, experiences and life. I’m new to the blog and bit nervous as its  my first Blog.
I  created this blog mainly for my new module –‘Principles of Management’.

 As I have done commerce in my high schools , business studies was a part of my course. So during my first class on principles of management by our prof.Tom Northway was  absolutely interesting and comfortable to me. It’s like learning more in detail about the chapters I did in my school.

My influence in my career is my dad as he is a manager himself at  Marakesh Express cargo LLC. And my interest lies on fashion so doing fashion along with management would be a excellent combination to start up a boutique of my own.

What I expect from this course is that I figure out the importance of managing people, and of management processes generally, even to understand the human and labor factors  in organisations including the structure, design and culture of organisations and in addition to learn the management theory; policies and practices in the context of organizational growth and development, theories of leadership, communication processes, employment relations and the dynamics of organizational behavior.  And here I would put in my whole effort to study this course as it is really important to me for my future career.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success;  leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.