World Running out of Food?

When we look at the headlines, gold and oil price is soaring. But when it comes to needs for basic human survival, wheat, soybeans, rice and corn, spotlight is taken away.

But we need to be aware of how much of a complication and social havoc it results. We have witnessed food riots in several countries. Food rationing was introduced in Russia and Pakistan. To conserve declining stocks, India has prohibited the export of rice, and other big rice-eating countries, particularly the Philippines, are talking of a “rice crisis.”

Is the world running out of food? I hope not. But we are at the starting point of some serious trend that could upset the international system with increasing costs and potential scarcity in the time to come. According to the UN’s World Food Program, the reason for today’s higher price is rising energy costs. We’ve gone from competing with our animals for grain to competing with our cars.

It is expected in the larger centers of the developing world to face food shortage. The world’s poorest people will now have to spend a larger portion of their income on food or do without. This is the new face of hunger. There is food on shelves, but people are priced out of the market.

Entry 8. 20601002

HP Korea – Flying the American Flag

HP Korea diversifies products and achieves record share of domestic hardware and software market.

  

       According to the statistics, in 2006, HP Korea’s total sales amounted to 1.4873 trillion won and total sales in 2007 had grown by about 10 percent compared to the previous year. The growth was recorded especially because of the improved business conditions in Korea and many big projects in the market.

President Choi remarked, “HP has diverse products that can be offered to customers. It has all the products needed for the establishment of an IT environment, ranging from personal PC’s to servers for corporate use. It constructs all the IT infrastructures needed by customers, together with services and consulting.” HP Korea has been recording number one or number two market shares in all the areas, including PC’s, notebook PC’s, servers, etc. And it has been exerting its utmost efforts for customer satisfaction. In 2005, the Personal System Group of HP Korea achieved the record of surpassing 10 percent in terms of the market share of the entire PC market. It sold over 100,000 PC units per quarter.
          In 2006, HP Korea plans to strengthen its radio frequency identification (RFID) business, which has been newly introduced to the service business and market of the company. For cost reduction on the part of corporations, HP had begun the total printing management (TPM) business. A printer, fax machine, scanner, photocopier, etc., are bundled as an HP network printer which is used on a turnkey contract basis.
           With regard to HP’s contribution to Korea’s exports through the HP head office’s purchases of Korean firms’ computer parts, it is expected that this will amount to billions of dollars in future. As for the export items, there are PC monitors, TFT-LCD’s, D-RAM’s, Mask ROM’s, semiconductors, printed circuit boards (PCB’s), CD-ROM’s, hard disk drives (HDD’s), etc.

       HP’s adaptive enterprise strategy brings forward cost reduction effects by achieving excellent results through little investment through the enabling of the stability and efficiency of business and real-time business agility. It helps enterprises predict diverse requirements of new markets, respond speedily, and create and seize new opportunities..

      HP has the ‘HP Global Method’ and also the experiences of applying this method. When HP’s client companies in the world proceed with a system integration (SI) project, HP applies and utilizes this method.

“HP has been strengthening its global delivery organization. HP Korea has been positively considering the strengthening of not only its domestic organization and manpower but also the global delivery organization, keeping in pace with requirements of the customers and the global trend, from the fiscal year 2006. And it has been actively examining the use of overseas manpower and other such measures for providing efficient price structures and quality for SI projects of customers.

     ENTRY NO 7,

BY 20700796

20600794-Entry-7: Web 2.0 Series #4: Wiki

What is wiki? Inspired by a name Wiki Wiki shuttle bus in Honolulu airport, wiki is way to create an online content by everyone. This means anyone can change, modify and create a content a certain web page. It gives a lot of dynamics and updates to web pages. A good example of this kind of web page as we all know www.wikipedia.org.

But how does wiki can be used in a business. There are certain ways. I

- f a company enters a market it can enter its information into the popular wiki pages, they are mostly free. People these days mostly refer to wikipedia or wiki pages when they look for information. Even it’s not that reliable, it gets refreshed often. Also wiki pages are mostly free to use.

- If company creates a brand or product, it can open that brand’s wiki page, so people can actually write about that product, their experiences and problems. So it can be a good way to get feedback from users. There are many brands that use wiki as a user feedback center. For example, game brand called World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment (one of the biggest video came makers in the world). World of Warcraft or WoW in short has a huge fan base and Blizzard has a official wiki website for WoW users so that users can freely update and change, create information about WoW. It is a useful way to improve its product.

There are many other ways to use Wiki as business tool. For Business Strategy using new technology and new trends like Wiki as early as possible would actually give a good position in that aspect later on. For example, Wikipedia is one of the pioneers of wiki pages and now it’s the biggest. Even it’s a non-profit organization, many people are employed in there. Millions of people use it, so it can be used as a business tool later on.

Four Companies that Conquered America

Accounting for almost 30 percent of world GDP, the United States is the world’s largest and most demanding market for almost everything from oil to microprocessors to premium coffee. Companies around the world aspire to do business in the U.S., or at least with U.S. companies in their home markets. By doing so, they learn much about the latest management practices, they can be closer to the cutting edge of innovation, and they can boost their reputations by supplying well-known U.S. firms.

The market size of the U.S makes it an important target but, in addition, foreign companies often feel they have to crack the U.S. market in order to gain respect. No CEO can lead a global company if that company does not have a strong presence in the USA.

So how do you penetrate the U.S. market? The annals of business are littered with foreign companies that have never quite succeeded in the USA. But here are four companies that have. Each carries a special lesson.

1. Royal Bank of Scotland. This company built up a strong retail market share in the U.S., not under the RBS brand, but through a series of acquisitions of regional (not national) banks. RBS is adding value for its shareholders by letting these banks retain their individual brand identities, by focusing on improving back office efficiencies, and by having the highly respected CEO of one of the acquired entities lead the combined U.S. organization. Meanwhile, RBS is building its B2B brand with institutional clients on Wall Street.

2. IKEA. IKEA offers a furniture retailing value proposition and experience unparalleled in the U.S. market. There are no national furniture retail chains, making market penetration easier. IKEA’s location selection expertise and their established global supply chains enable them to offer exceptional category-killer prices that are further keys to success.

3. ING. The Dutch bank converted its weakness (no retail branches in the U.S.) into a strength. Following a successful Canadian market test, ING gave its entrepreneurial general manager the green light to offer retail banking services to U.S. consumers but exclusively on an online basis. Taking advantage of its low no-bricks-and-mortar cost structure, ING was able to offer generous rates on certificates of deposit. Just four years on, ING is the third-largest holder of consumer CD investments in the U.S.

4. Dyson. The British home appliance maker earned a break when it managed to get a Best Buy buyer to take one of its vacuum cleaners home to test. The buyer was impressed. Fortunately for Dyson, Best Buy became the first U.S. retailer to stock Dyson vacuum cleaners—other U.S. retailers invariably follow Best Buy’s lead. Electronics retailing in the U.S. is concentrated (10 chains control 60 percent of the market) and tough to penetrate. But Dyson could not have succeeded had its products not been superior to other vacuum cleaners already in U.S. stores.

A current case, well worth watching, is the effort of Tesco, the British retailer, to enter the U.S. market with the new Fresh & Easy chain of discount grocery stores. Avoiding geographies where Wal-Mart is entrenched, Tesco has so far opened 50 stores in the growth markets of California, Nevada, and Arizona. The question is whether Tesco’s assortment and value proposition will be appreciated by enough consumers fast enough for weekly store sales to reach profitable levels.

20753001 entry 7.

About SONY profit

Summary: Sony is on its way to reviving itself, through effectice buziness decisions its road to recovery is made realistic. The game industry has been the star for Sony in generating the revenue. The company also got unexpected fortune for its life insurance unit and its stocks gained in Japense market. The increase in stocks which is the highest in last years are also marked up my other products such as Vaoi PCs and recent LCD’s Tv.s

 

The gain in the profits didn’t came easy the company had to go throught whole lot of reshuffling and restructuring. In 2005/06 it closed down several of the factories who were unproductive to avoid losing money. It also sold its financial assests and cut down 10,000 jobs to increase its financial leverages. .

   Sony is also trying to cut a deal to control of music giant by buying 50% from its joint venture German media company. The music business is slowly eroding, maybe because of all of the stealing that has gone on before. Getting publishing rights and creative rights to one’s music is more of a legal issue.

 

My Opinion: Price wars with competitor’s -Devaluation of the product
-High-Maintenance Energy/Production Cost are some of the main areas Sony had to face. With the corporate obsession for absolute control and over the top management restrictions, they are desperate to regain the leadership and prestige of past glories, as the world passes them by, with newer better and superior technology, unlike the so yesterday, they have been releasing of late products which are not matching up with their competitors! They had already hurt themselves in Artificial Intelligence and had invested heavily on this unproductive segment. Sony and the rest of the monopolistic corporations such as BMG, Time Warner all will continue to use effectively musicians and artists to drive up their obviously dwindling profits to compete with Apple. Pursuing competitiveness and price advantage would allow Sony to recapture its lost market share from Sharp in LCD’s

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By:20700795(Entry 7) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMB Versus Tata in American Market

 

Tata a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India is competing with International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation based in Armonk, New York. Even though IBM is based in America, the evaluation of its sales revenues overseas was 65 percent. In the same situation, Tata collected 51 percent of it revenues from North America last quarter.  The raised question is that: “Who’s more American, IBM or Tata?” Investors have problem that cannot be solved without deep study because Tata stock declined 10% on April 21, but the IBM stock increased up to 25% since mid-February.

IBM’s competitive strategy is to diversify into emerging markets by its services business.  This helps the company to earn the half of its revenue from this strategy. In US, the company cut prices because customers are economizing, but emerging markets to help clients build out their technology infrastructure.  Tata consider US customers as important ones. Even though they are facing little bit a financial shortfall, but they focus on deferring payments by two big customers. “There’s no slackening of demand,” says N. Chandrasekaran, the company’s chief operating officer. “The pipeline is good. We just had some specific situations.”

Tata is taking American market because it recognizes the problems of customers. Americans are facing financial difficulties. It is why Tata improves its services to be designed in the way of helping customers.  Also customers consider the Tata business as more designed with simplicity and help them to save money.  The company sells more aggressively and its plan is not to hire more employees so that they cannot low its margin.

 

 By 20500203 – Entry: 7

Recession Threatened Starbucks!

There is more evidence of potential recession in Starbuck’s profitability. People have started feeling pinched that they are not paying $4.00 for lattes anymore. The company expects its first-quarter earnings per share to be 15 cent, when Wall Street analysts anticipate 21. Starbucks earned 19 cents a share in the same period last year.

Now their expectation for their full-year earnings per share to be little lower than that of the previous year which recorded 87 cents per share. As a result, it would be the first annual decline in profits of the company in eight years. Analysts anticipated a profit of 97 cents per share. The company said sales in stores open at least a year fell in the mid-single-digit range in the U.S., due to a decline in traffic. Restructuring costs also hurt earnings by 3 cents per share in the second quarter. Starbucks shares were down 11 percent in late Nasdaq trading. Shares closed at $17.85. The chain’s 52-week high for its share price is $32.30.

The company executives also stated that the current economic environment has been the weakest in their company’s history, marked by lower home values, and rising costs for energy, food and other products that are directly impacting their customers. Starbucks markets in California and Florida have especially had a hard hit due to steep housing declines.

The executives are trying to shake new life into Starbucks with a new, permanent everyday coffee, couponing, a bit more advertising than the chain is used to, retraining of baristas and new brewing standards. What is left for us? Just wait and see.

Entry 7. 20601002

eBay

Ebay is currently experiencing market saturation. The article explained how they came to this conclusion. They explained that Ebay saw only a 1% growth in new users compared to last quarter when the number of new users jumped up by 10%. In order to keep this company profitable, management decided that they must keep the active customers happy. Basically, their strategy was to keep their current customer base.

 

In order to implement this strategy, last month, Ebay decided to make some major policy and pricing changes. The first part of their plan was to abolish the negative feedback portion that sellers could put on buyers. This is a big change because until last month, Ebay sellers could give negative feedback to customers who would not pay in a timely fashion or other problems that they might create. This plan was put into effect to be friendlier to the buyers. Their basis for this change was that if the buyer was happier, then they would continue to shop on Ebay and the sellers would not be able to ignore the potential sales that they could get by using Ebay.

 

The second part of their plan was to decrease the listing fees for all merchandise and increase the final selling fees for those same products. This was done so that more products could be listed on Ebay and then that could attract more potential buyers to Ebay.

 

In all, this is a great business strategy on the part of Ebay. First, in the policy change, I believe that this change is good for Ebay. If the buyers are happier with the overall process of buying on Ebay, they will continue to come back. Sellers would then have to recognize that there are many potential customers available to them on Ebay and this would bring them coming back to Ebay as well. The second change, price change, is also a good idea. If the listing fee is lower, it would cost less to the sellers to list more items on Ebay. With more items listed, more buyers would be attracted to the site to look for the items they intend to purchase. Then Ebay would make up the difference in price cuts by receiving the final selling cost when the items are purchased.

 

In a saturated market, it is very important to keep customers happy. Many businesses in saturated markets focus a lot on customer service to keep their company on top. Ebay is implementing the same strategy here.

 

 Auditor

 

What Airbus Learned from the Dream liner

As the plane maker finalizes its super light A350, it’s paying close attention to Boeing’s mistakes

In this world of business competition, the growth of a firm or organization depends on the stability in strategies and timing factors as the way we see from Airbus and Boeing. Airbus attempting to learn from its competitor’s mistake and keeping a close eye on the problems Boeing is having will position them in a good position for future career.

      Through learning the mistakes of their rivals, Airbus can’t afford to get this plane wrong. It has already taken a $6 billion profit hit from problems with its most recent plane, the double-decker A380. And the A350, which has won 371 orders from airlines, helps Airbus counter its most urgent financial problem, the euro’s rise against the dollar. While it built past planes largely in Europe, Airbus expects to outsource production of substantial chunks of the A350 to places as far-flung as China and Russia.

A SERIES OF MISSTEPS

Focusing on designing,

 To avoid production glitches, Airbus is giving contractors an unprecedented role in designing the A350. For months, engineers from aerospace companies such as Honeywell International and Thales Group have been working alongside Airbus staff, poring over the design and suggesting changes to simplify manufacturing by taking the advantage of the Being’s mistake.

To give suppliers more time to identify potential production kinks, Airbus doesn’t plan to start A350 assembly until early 2011, more than two years after a scheduled “freeze” of the plane’s design details. Boeing, by contrast, started assembling the 787 about 18 months after completing the design. Taking advantage of the extra time, Honeywell is setting up a testing center in Mexico.

Network supply

Airbus is also simplifying its sprawling supply network. In the past, it awarded contracts to some 250 key contractors on each aircraft. But Klaus Richter, a new procurement chief recruited last. The suppliers, in turn, are expected to assemble their own teams of subcontractors. The challenge will be making sure that those outfits, which account for as much as one-third of production costs, have the technical know how and manufacturing capacity to deliver what Airbus needs. Taking an advantage of being behind Boeing, Airbus are pursuing absolute advantage in terms of economy which will lead them into a good position.

By 20700796, Entry 6.

Samsung Chairman Facing Tax Charges?

As reading through some business news articles, I came across one that talked about Samsung Chairman has been into taxe charges. I thought it was interesting, and wanted to share this news with my classmates.

The chairman of the Samsung Group, Mr. Lee Kun Hee, has been suspected of avoiding taxes on billions of US dollars. He was thought to had hidden the money in stock accounts under the titles of his supporters. Furthermore, it does not seem to be his first charge. As a result of this incident, Mr. Lee’s former criminal charges have been checked again. One of such is the charge of breach of trust, that he was involved in issuing and selling Samsung stock in an unfairly low price to his son making it possible for his son to take over the business empire.

He is not the only Samsung leader who faced criminal charges. Nine other Samsung executives were indicted on similar charges. None of them was arrested or charged any punishment of their wrongdoings with the help of admiration of Korean people for the corporation. Through the history of the corporation, similar incidents took place several times, but the authority did not want to press charge against them thinking that it will endanger the national economy, for the fact that the company is the main player in the country’s economy. Plus, they have ADMITTED their wrongdoings.

The Parliament once conducted an investigation by putting a whistle-blower within the company, and found out that Mr. Lee and his closest supporters kept enormous slush funds, misusing money from Samsung’s subsidiaries and hiding it in stock and bank accounts opened in the name of theirs. Plus, the investigator witnessed that Samsung was involved in a bribery network, giving cash gift to prosecutors, bureaucrats and politicians. However, the officials and executives denied the bribery accusation, and not enough evidence to support this accusation was found.

Was it an example of a wealthy man who could get away with anything that stand on his way?

Entry 6. 20601002