Decision making and stakeholders in market

Decision making lies at the heart of business activity. Typical decisions include:

• what to produce, and how

• how much to produce, and what selling techniques to employ.

• where to locate

• who to employ and how many

• whether to develop new lines or stick to existing ones.

Businesses are decision making units made up of a variety of decision makers e.g. directors, managers, and employees.Most classifications of types of decisions are based on the predictability of decisions.Programmed decisions are straightforward, repetitive and routine. They can be dealt with by creating routines and procedures such as stock ordering systems.

Chain of production in market

The chain of production consists of the various stages involved in the production of a particular product.

The chain of production for furniture may include the following steps:




The chain of production involves a series of stages, which add value to the end product. The trees in the forest will only have a limited value, but when the value is enhanced by sawing, seasoning, and construction they will be worth several times more.

As well as the various stages in the chain of production, we also need to consider a chain of distribution involving transport and communication, as the goods make their way to the end retailer.

Enterprise culture of market

Being enterprising involves being prepared to take risks and to 'think out of the box' in developing solutions to problems. The term culture refers to the typical way of behaving within an organisation or in society as a whole. An organisation therefore with an enterprise culture is one where people are imaginative and creative, rather than being reluctant to take risks. Most successful businesses in this country in recent years typify the 'enterprise culture'. This applies to a range of small and large enterprises. In big companies there is sometimes a danger that the organisation develops a structure that discourages enterprise. However, one way of getting round this has been to organise people into teams where they are encouraged to make decisions for themselves providing they keep in line with the overall objectives and targets of the organisation as a whole.

How businesses are affected by competition

Some markets are highly competitive, while others are a lot less so.

A good example of a competitive market in which there are many buyers and sellers is that of Internet booksellers. Because there are so many firms selling identical products then the price of these books will be highly similar. This competition helps to drive down the profit that such firms can make.

Competition occurs when two or more organisations act independently to supply their products to the same group of consumers.

Absorption and marginal costing in market

Before creating business plans or when evaluating existing ones it is important to 'scan' the external environment. This takes the form of a SLEPT analysis, i.e. an investigation of the Social, Legal, Economic, Political, and Technological influences on a business. In addition it is also important to be aware of the actions of your competitors. These forces are continually in a state of change. Social factors relate to pattern of behaviour, tastes, and lifestyles. A major component of this is a change in consumer behaviour resulting from changes in fashions and styles. The age structure of the population also alters over time (currently we have an ageing population). An understanding of social change gives business a better feel for the future market situation.

Calculating the break-even point in market

To avoid making a loss every business must at least break-even by achieving a level of sales that covers its total costs. But what level of sales is necessary to break-even?
To explore the concept of break-even, we need to define some basic terms:

• Fixed costs: Costs that do not vary with output or sales e.g. managers salaries, rent and rates on business premises.
• Variable costs: Costs that vary with the quantity produced or sold e.g. costs of materials and wages
• Total cost: Fixed costs plus variable costs for any possible level of output.
• Sales revenue: The price of the product multiplied by total sales
• Profit: The difference between total revenue and total cost (where revenues are higher than costs
• Loss: The difference between total revenue and total cost (where costs are higher than revenues)

Primary, secondary and tertiary activity in market

Business activity can be conveniently divided up into:

1. Extractive (primary)

2. Manufacturing (secondary)

3. Services (tertiary).

Extractive industries like farming take out things which are already provided by nature, for example:

• farmers grow crops

• miners take out fuel, minerals, etc.

Marketing techniques

A marketing strategy is an overall marketing plan designed to meet the needs and requirements of customers. The plan should be based on clear objectives. A number of techniques will then be employed to make sure that the marketing plan is effectively delivered. Marketing techniques are the tools used by the marketing department. The marketing department will set out to identify the most appropriate techniques to employ in order to make profits. These marketing techniques include public relations, trade and consumer promotions, point-of-sale materials, editorial, publicity and sales literature.
Marketing techniques are employed at three stages of marketing:

Staff training and development

Recruitment takes place from the point when a business decides that it needs to employ somebody up to the point where a pile of completed application forms has arrived in the post. Selection then involves choosing an appropriate candidate through a range of ways of sorting out suitable candidates leading to interviews and other tests. Training involves providing a range of planned activities that enable an employee to develop the skills, attitudes and knowledge required by the organisation and the work required.

Recruitment

Attracting the right candidates to apply for a job can be an expensive process. It is even more expensive when done badly because when unsuitable candidates apply for a job, then the post may need to be re-advertised - so it is best to get it right first time.

Marketing mix (Price, Place, Promotion, Product)

To create the right marketing mix, businesses have to meet the following conditions:

• The product has to have the right features - for example, it must look good and work well.

• The price must be right. Consumer will need to buy in large numbers to produce a healthy profit.

• The goods must be in the right place at the right time. Making sure that the goods arrive when and where they are wanted is an important operation.

• The target group needs to be made aware of the existence and availability of the product through promotion. Successful promotion helps a firm to spread costs over a larger output.

Product-Market Combination Analysis

The product life cycle theory that can be used to determine what priorities should be given in the product portfolio of a business unit. To ensure a long-term value creation, acompany should have a portfolio of products that contain both high-growth products in need of cash inputs and low-growth products that generate a lot of cash. It has 2 dimensions: Market share and market growth. The basic idea behind it is the bigger the market share is or the faster the products market growth the better it is for the company.
Placing products matrix results in 4 categories:

1. Stars (=high growth, high market share): use large amounts of cash and are leaders in the business so they should also generate large amounts of cash.
2. Cash Cows (=low growth, high market share): Profit and cash generation should be high and because the hrowth is low, the invetsments and need for cash are low.
3. Dogs (=Low growth, Low market share): Avoid and minimize the number of dogs in a company, beware of expensive turn around plans, deliver cash, otherwise liquidate.
4. Question marks (=high growth, low market share) Have the worst cash characteristics of all because thigh demands and low returns due to low market share. If nothing is done to change the market share, question makrs will absorb great amount of cash and later as the growth stop will become a dog. Either invest heavily or sell off the off.

Find Your Passion, Name Your Poison

If you find yourself saying, "This isn't what it was cracked up to be," sit back and analyze. Is the core of the work something you love? Can you rearrange the downside in any way?

No job or career field will be doing what you love to do 100% of the time, but are you getting to do it most of the time? And are the odd things that come with it tolerable enough? If not, could you make a few tweaks? Change to a smaller or larger office? Hire or fire someone? Find something closer to home or in another state? Refuse to do something, or request to do something?

If you're very lucky, you'll find something so natural and enjoyable to you, you'll talk like Satchel Paige, who said, "I ain't ever had a job, I just always played baseball."

If you're working at something you're passionate about, all of it becomes seamless - the good and the bad. It becomes what you are, as much as what you do, and it is not what others call "work." It's well worth finding and I encourage you to.

11 Questions To Kickstart Your Dream

What's most important for you to experience, explore or embrace this time around? Until you answer this question, your life goals will be off purpose. Unaligned with your inner passion, your intentions will lack the power to attract the people and situations necessary to become a reality.          

Get clued into your true joy. What activities turned you on as a child? What are your hobbies now? When your goals are aligned with your soul purpose, synchronicity kicks in to guide you to your target. When you intuit and own your unique essence and calling, assistance will flow to you from every earthly and heavenly source.
Are your goals your own choice, or what others think you should strive for? Do you want to look back in your old age and wish you had followed your passion? Will you regret having "played it safe?"

Is it selfish to go after your own dream? What joy can you give to others if you haven't given it to yourself first?

You have a divine right to listen to your heart. You have a social obligation to follow your dream. Only then can you fulfill your destiny and make the earthly contribution you were born to make.Are you resigned to accepting less than your full share of love, health and success this lifetime? Have you compromised and sacrificed your dream to death?

Anything short of living your true passions will never make you happy. Do you want to arrive at the Pearly Gates with the regret of not marrying that one captivating person, starting that fun business, or seeing that exotic part of the world you always wanted to visit?

Market Analysis: Your Plan for Profits

Before investing any money in your business, you must gather information about your potential customers and the demand for your product of service.

This information, or market analysis, is a necessary part of planning a profitable business.

Invest time in this crucial step now and reap the rewards of a successful business.

BENEFITS OF MARKET ANALYSIS
       
1) Faster Cash Flow
Knowing who your customer is, what they need, and where to find them is vitally important. Targeting the right people is crucial for generating cash flow in the shortest time possible.

2) Greater Market Share
An examination of current market conditions tells you who your competition is, the size and location of the market, current competitor pricing and promotional strategies, and types of market niches which are underdeveloped.

Positioning your product for greatest exposure, while creating an image of quality and value for your product, allows you to become a serious player.

3) Reduced Expenses
A leading cause of business failure is lack of capital - the business runs out of start-up funds before becoming profitable. It's important to make every penny count. You reduce expenditures by trying to predict outcomes before taking action. There is always a certain amount of risk with any business venture, however, analyzing your market reduces that risk.

Sistema Shyam Teleservices reports Rs.666.4 crore net loss

Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), the joint ventures of Russia's Sistema and Shyam group of India, Tuesday reported a net loss of Rs. 666.4 crore during the quarter ended March 31, owing to increase in operational costs following its expansion across all circles.
The revenue, however, grew 201 percent at Rs. 236 crore against Rs. 78.6 crore during the like period of the previous financial year.

Lanco Infratech net profit plunges 2.72 percent during FY2010

Infrastructure firm Lanco Infratech Monday reported a 2.72 percent decrease in its consolidated net profit for the fiscal ended March 31 at Rs. 446.07 crore as against Rs. 458.55 crore during the like period of the previous fiscal. The net operating income also tumbled 4.89 percent at Rs. 7,783.73 crore during the period under review as compared to Rs. 8,184.04 crore during the like period of the previous financial year.

Liva delayed by two months

In order to meet pending orders, Toyota has delayed launch of first compact car Liva by at least two months. This decision comes at a time, when Toyota is working hard to meet orders of its Etios in India.
Etios was launched in January in India, and soon after its launch, the car received upper hand from customers resulting in a booking of 26,500 cars in a short span of time. These booking orders made a big gap of supply and demand resulting in a waiting period of 6 months for few customers. So the company, not willing to increase waiting period of new customers, decided to postpone the launch of Liva.

Tata Motors global sales up 11% in May

Tata Motors said its global sales increased by 11 per cent in May to 88,251 units driven mainly by commercial vehicles and Land Rover.
Sales of luxury brands from Jaguar Land Rover were at 22,296 units during May, up 17 per cent from the same month last year, Tata Motors said in a statement.
While sales of luxury sedans of Jaguar brand declined by by 18 per cent last month to 4,221 units, Land Rover sales grew 30 per cent at 18,075 units, it added.

India, China fuels global aviation market

Growing air traffic in India, China and Latin America has led to a rebound in the global aviation market which grew by 16.5 per cent in April, despite the high oil prices, the Iceland volcanic eruption and Japan tsunami that hit air travel.
Over the last five years, Indian domestic market expansion has been the "strongest with a tripling in size", a latest report of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said here.
In spite of such "significant" growth in demand, the profits of the airline industry were being squeezed by a series of crises and shocks that have marked the first four months of this year, it said.
"Their impact on demand will continue to ease as we move into the second half (of this year)," IATA chief Giovanni Bisignani said here. 

Full news at http://www.indianexpress.com

China's farm produce prices drop

The prices of China's farm produce continued to fall in the week ending May 8, but at a slower rate than that of the previous week, the Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.
During the week of May 2 to 8, the average wholesale prices of 18 types of vegetables dropped 3.1 percent from the previous week, the ministry said in a statement on its website. The decline rate was 1.1 percentage points lower than that of the previous week, it said.
The price of onions and peppers slid by 11.6 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, last week from a week earlier, while the price of celery and Chinese cabbage rose 15.8 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively, from the previous week, the statement said.

What is Business Plan

A Business Plan can be written anyway you want it. This design works for both tiny and large business:

• Mission Statement 
• Objectives
• Milestones
• Budgets

Mission statement, in my book, is one precise single sentence stuck in the brain, like "I shall be the leading supplier of Widgets for the mass market in my State".

Mission clarity and precision makes all future decisions much easier. Any issue at hand either fits the Mission or it doesn't. For example, the above Mission says "mass market" so product quality is hardly an issue - all that really matters in the mass market is price. Having a clear simple Mission statement eliminates time wasting thoughts. A generalised Mission of "I am going into the import business" is a recipe for doom. 

Difference between Marketing and Sales

"Marketing" is not "Sales". It's critical to know the difference.

 

Broadly, Marketing creates the atmosphere to make it easy for sales to happen. Marketing consists things like:

• Marketing Strategy: your product must be aimed at consumers in one only of the Mass Market, Mid-Market or High End (only one product in the entire history of marketing has ever succeeded in all three of those consumer areas). Aiming your product at all three in a shotgun approach confuses consumers resulting in your business going broke.
• Target Market: strategy includes identifying a specific group of consumers (age bracket, etc) within your one Mass, Mid or High End market area. The better we identify our target group, the easier it is to make sales.
• Research your competitors - "know your enemy".

Marketing and Business Planning

In doing business on the internet we must rely on much more than our normal trusty "sixth sense". Some say anything less than "extreme care" is a certain way to lose money when dealing with a potential supplier (or buyer) over the internet.

The internet is plagued with resourceful criminals who will spend months building a relationship under cover of professional looking websites complete with sending high quality samples they do not actually sell. They even steal the passwords of genuine suppliers' websites. So, at times, you don't know who you are really talking with on the other end. And, these criminals have been known to set up temporary real offices to give you the comfort of a real street address and phone number when you cross-check. Or, they copy the name and address of a real registered company onto a fake website, and so on. Variations in the criminal mind are endless in sophisticated schemes to steal your money.

What is Market risk

Market risk is the risk that the value of your investment will decrease due to moves in market factors. The four standard market risk factors include:

• Equity risk, or the risk that stock prices will change.
• Interest rate risk, or the risk that interest rates will change.
• Currency risk, or the risk that foreign exchange rates will change.
• Commodity risk, or the risk that commodity prices (i.e. grains, metals, etc.) will change.

Customer satisfaction in Services

The purpose of this thesis “A Context Analysis of Customer satisfaction in Services“, is to examine selected elements, which have influence on customer satisfaction in services. The investigation is conducted bot from a theoretical and empirical point of view. The theoretical analysis considers four dimensions. The first dimension is concerned with the service company’s internal services, which have an indirect influence on the overall customer satisfaction. It focuses on internal services which involves an analysis of operations, processes, and activities which influence the behavior of employees within service companies, e.g. internal marketing decision making processes, management styles, communication patterns, empowerment, and employee motivation.

The Captive Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus): Nutritional Considerations with Emphasis on Management of Cystinuria

The intent of this project was to investigate options for improvement of a commercially manufactured prescription diet designed to reduce manifestation of clinical disease secondary to cystinuria in captive maned wolves in the United States. Diets high in plant-based protein, independent of sulfur amino acid content, resulted in an increase in average urine pH as well as a decrease in urine cystine crystal formation and cystine excretion in maned wolves.

How to measure potential market risk

The difference between market risk and potential market risk is emphasized and a measure of the latter risk is proposed. Specifically, it is argued that the spectrum of smooth Lyapunov exponents can be utilized in what we call (l, s2)-analysis, which is a method to monitor the aforementioned risk measures. The reason is that these exponents focus on the stability properties (l) of the stochastic dynamic system generating asset returns, while more traditional risk measures such as value-at-risk are concerned with the distribution of returns (s2).
Introduction: Financial market risk reflects the chance that the actual return on an asset or a portfolio of assets may be very different than the expected return.

Euro money market prices hide restructuring stresses

Money markets widely expect the European Central Bank to keep providing unlimited cash to banks for as long as needed, and short-term interest rate traders have largely disregarded its warnings of "catastrophic" effects from any restructuring.
Spreads between Libor euro interbank offered rates and overnight index swaps, a widely-used gauge of interbank stress, have been mostly steady at 20-25 basis points throughout May, much lower than peaks at over 110 bps in late 2008.