Esame orale di Business English

Unit 1: Branding

Branding

Branding is a process through which a company creates a unique name and an image about the product in the consumers' mind. The goal of branding is to attract new customers and retain loyal customers by establishing a significant presence in the market.

Adjectives for different brands

• Positive Brands Adjectives: Timeless, Fashionable, Sophisticated, Cool, Well-made
• Negative Brands Adjectives: Dated, Unsexy, Unsophisticated, Uncool, Cheaply-made
• Neutral Brands Adjectives: Classic, Expensive/inexpensive

Collocations with product

• Product endorsement: the use of a famous person to advertise a brand (e.g., George Clooney with Nespresso)
• Product placement: the use of a product in a film or TV show (e.g., Sony Computers in James Bond movies)
• Product lifecycle: introduction, growth, maturity, decline
• Product launch: the introduction of a product in the market
• Product range: the set of products made by a company

Collocations with brand

• Brand loyalty: the tendency to always buy a particular brand
• Brand image: the idea that people have in their mind about a brand
• Brand stretching/extension: the use of an existing name on another type of product (e.g., a fashion designer that launches his own perfume)
• Brand awareness: how familiar are people with a brand
• Brand name: the title given to a product by a company that produces it

Collocations with market

• Market leader: the best-selling product in a market
• Market challenger: the second best-selling product in a market
• Market research: collection of information about what consumers want or need
• Market share: the percentage (%) of sales of a company
• Market segment: group of customers of similar age, social group or income

Questions

1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of product endorsement?

Using a famous person to advertise a brand gives credibility to the brand, makes the product more reliable, and helps reach new segments, but it is expensive for companies. Nowadays, celebrities endorse too many products, and their appeal can change over time.

2) How can companies create brand loyalty?

Companies have to understand the desires and needs of customers, engage them, and make them establish an emotional connection with the company’s product. Moreover, the companies should have a good marketing strategy and excellent customer service.

3) Can you give an example of a successful and unsuccessful brand stretching?

Colgate toothbrushes is an example of a successful brand stretching, while Colgate lasagna is an example of an unsuccessful brand stretching.

4) Think of expensive/cheap ideas for a product launch

• Expensive ideas are: sponsorships, TV adverts, big launch parties, billboards…
• Cheap ideas are: the use of social media, blogs, trial offers…

5) What market segments can you identify?

The market can be segmented in different ways: geographic (country, language), demographic (age, income, gender, social status), psychographic (lifestyle, personality), behavioral (purchase habits, product usage).

6) What actions can companies take if they start to lose market share?

If a company starts to lose market share, it can make new advertising and promotions, rebrand, update the product, and conduct market research to get feedback from customers.

Luxury brands

They are exclusive, high quality, and not available to everyone. Bad strategic decisions can cause problems to luxury brands, some examples are:

• Counterfeit products: e.g., a fake Louis Vuitton
• Giving licenses to too many retailers: luxury products need to balance exclusivity and accessibility
• Bad celebrity endorsement: e.g., Kate Moss was a testimonial for a brand, but she was photographed while she was doing drugs, and this damaged the image of the brand.
• Too much brand stretching: e.g., Gucci is also the brand of toilet rolls
• Bad pricing: it damages the customers’ perception of the quality
• Wrong or unclear advertising
• Unethical behavior: e.g., exploit workers

Reading - Sydney Toledano, chief executive in the luxury industries

Who is Toledano and what does he do?

Sydney Toledano is the chief executive of Dior. In his job, he has to balance the demands of shareholders, the need for exclusivity and the need for expansion, the value of a historic brand. Every day he communicates with his boss, Bernard Arnault, who is the main shareholder of Dior, and with a lot of creative people like designers. He always looks for newness, he tries to understand people from different countries and what they want.

Why did he meet Arnault?

Arnault wanted to talk to him because he had bought a small fashion company that was in bankruptcy, and he created the biggest luxury brand in the world, LVMH. Then it expanded all over the world. Toledano thinks that a brand should invest in markets that may not show growth for up to six years.

Unit 3: Change

Change in companies

Companies have to move with the times and adjust their operations according to new competition, technological advances, stakeholders' expectations, and other pressures. Change is a necessary structured and planned process to make a company more efficient and profitable over time.

Employee attitudes towards change

• Employees who like change: stay calm in front of rapid changes, volunteer for projects that will expand their experience, adopt new technologies, suggest new ways of doing things.
• Employees who avoid change: big changes make them nervous, stay with people who work and think in the same way, don’t want to try new technologies, are not interested in career changes.

Important vocabularies about change

Downgrade, decentralise, upgrade, reassess, downsize, deregulate, upsize, redevelop, update, relaunch, relocate, reorganise, restructure, retrain.

Reading: Mercedes

Mercedes is a German automobile brand and a division of Daimler AG. It produces luxury vehicles, trucks, buses, coaches, ambulances. In 2002 Mercedes had a dramatic fall in quality, and its cars kept on breaking down. However, it was able to change so much that the brand became the trailblazer in the luxury car market.

Mr. Zetsche is the person behind this turnaround: he became the boss of Mercedes, and he had a very hard approach because he cut a lot of jobs at the beginning, but then with his excellent management and teamwork, he made Mercedes very successful, and there was a big improvement in quality, and new models of cars were launched.

The debate on reducing the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions could be dangerous for Mercedes, but for now, the brand is launching 20 new fuel-efficient models.

Listening: Anne Deering

Anne Deering is the Head of Transformation Practice at international management consultants AT Kearney. This firm works with more than 4200 people in 40 countries and in a lot of different industries, such as automobile and financial services. The goal of the company is to offer advice to different businesses.

1. AT Kearney helps them understand how to change and how to measure change.
2. It is important to make sure that people are fully engaged in change.

Change is often a problem for companies because it is difficult to make managers and workers engaged and aligned around the change and create passion and enthusiasm about change. For example, they helped Nokia and Siemens to deal with change.

Reading: British Airways

British Airways is the largest airline in the UK. It was created in 1974 from four other companies. It had 215 aircraft and 50,000 employees. In the 1970s, the oil crisis reduced the customer base and a lot of jobs were cut, and there were huge financial losses. The company developed a reputation for terrible service.

In 1981, Lord King became the new chairperson and decided to increase profits:

• He restructured the entire organization, reducing its workforce.
• He eliminated unprofitable routes.
• He modernized the fleet.
• He created a new marketing strategy.

Lord King always communicated honestly with transparency and managed the change successfully.

Unit 4: Organization

Business organization

Business organization refers to how businesses are structured and how their structure helps them to meet their goals. Some businesses focus on generating profit (profit companies), while other businesses focus on improving society (not-for-profit companies).

Basic categories of business organizations in the UK are:

• Sole traders
• Partnerships
• Limited companies

In sole traders and partnerships, individuals are responsible for debts and legal actions; in limited companies, individuals are not responsible for debts or legal actions, and the business is registered.

Company structure vocabulary

• Subsidiary: a company that is half-owned by another company
• Factory/Plant: a large building where goods are made using machinery
• Call Centre: an office where people answer questions and make sales on the phone
• Service Centre: an office where customers can go for help and advice