Testi Inglese 3 orale (Current Business English)

Inglese 3 – orale – Current Business English 2017

• 1. Alibaba – Clicks to bricks
• 2. Marketing in the digital age
• 3. Fashion retailing – Chicago hope
• 4. Primark – Faster, cheaper fashion
• 5. The motor trade – Death of a car salesman
• 6. China’s labour market – Shocks and absorbers
• 7. Eco-friendly detergents – Green wash
• 8. Fighting counterfeit goods… a tougher battle
• 9. Foreign investment in Africa – A sub-Saharan scramble
• 10. McDonald’s – When the chips are down
• 11. Office communication
• 12. Offshore finance – Trouble in paradise
• 13. Uber – Driving hard
• 14. Walmart and low-wage America – High expectations
• 15. Retailers and suppliers’ rebates – Buying up the shelves
• 16. Crowdfunding – Cool, man
• 17. Money management – Ask the algorithm
• 18. International banking – Slings and arrows
• 19. Peer-to-peer lending – From the people, for the people
• 20. The internet – Reweaving the web
• 21. Chinese consumers – From noodles to poodles
• 22. The imperial CFO
• 23. India’s economy – Two stumbles forward, one back
• 24. 3D printing – Print my ride
• 25. Financial technology – On the move
• 26. Asia’s next tiger – Good afternoon, Vietnam
• 27. Free exchange – The problematic proposal
• 28. Keeping it under your hat – Beautiful minds, wasted
• 29. Measuring companies – The watchers
• 30. Buttonwood – Back in fashion

1. Alibaba – Clicks to bricks

Alibaba is a Chinese firm, considered the world’s biggest e-commerce outfit (= società di e-commerce). In 2015 Jack Ma, the chairman (= capo, presidente) of Alibaba, betted with some American businessmen (= uomini d’affari) that in 5 years’ time he would be selling his company for 1 trillion dollars, doubling the volume of sales on his firm’s online-sales platforms.

But first he needed to win over (= convincere) investors. In the last year the firm’s shares (= azioni) had fallen from their peak of $199 to $74 and even though its quarterly revenue (= fatturato trimestrale) had grown by 28% and profits rose by 23%, investors were still disappointed. So now the firm is planning to invest $4 billion on buy-backs (= riacquisti) to bolster (= rafforzare) its share price.

Buyback: the buying back of goods by the original seller.

Part of the reason why that profit growth (= crescita dei profitti) wasn’t stronger is because Alibaba is investing heavily in areas like mobile internet. The quarterly revenues from mobile services represent a leap of 225% (= balzo del 225%) and they now make up half of the firm’s total e-commerce revenues from China. Alibaba is also trying to develop e-commerce in rural areas because people living there are ready to spend more on online shopping.

Two big American retailers (= rivenditori) - Macy’s and Costco - have agreed to use Tmall Global, one of Alibaba’s online platforms, to sell goods to Chinese shoppers with less delays and customs hassles (= scocciature/problemi) than before, since they will be able to use Alibaba’s warehouses in China’s free-trade zones (= zone di libero scambio).

China is not good in logistic network, so in 2013 Alibaba organised a consortium, Cainiao, that links logistic providers, distribution centres and dispatch points (= punti di spedizione).

Now, Alibaba is investing in warehouses, bricks and mortar (= “negozi fisici”) to keep pace with rivals/competitors, such as JD.

JD has taken an “asset-heavy” approach to e-commerce and spent a fortune developing warehouses and logistic networks to boost its online to offline (O2O) offering, in which costumers choose and pay for goods online but collect them from a shop.

Asset-heavy model = a business owns a lot of its fixed assets outright which are used to generate income.

Online-to-offline (O2O) commerce is a business strategy that draws potential customers from online channels to make purchases in physical stores.

Alibaba made a deal with Suning, one of China’s largest electronics retailers. This deal will enable shoppers to pick up and return their online purchases at Suning’s stores and it will also let the Suning’s delivery network join the Cainiao logistics platform, strengthening it. Another benefit will be that Suning will be less likely to suffer from showrooming when shoppers examine products in its shops but buy them online from another retailer.

Alibaba is also ploughing ahead (= proseguire con) with cloud computing: Alibaba is planning a vast expansion of Aliyun, China’s largest cloud provider, by offering prices that will tempt even the most frugal of small entrepreneurs and by going global.

Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software. As long as an electronic device has access to the web, it has access to the data and the software programs to run it.

Mr Ma also wants to be present in online finance; in fact, he controls Ant Financial, a private company which houses the group’s financial initiatives and Alipay which runs 120m transactions per day.

Ant Financial offers micro-loans and even though it requires no guarantee or collateral (= garanzia), it reports a default rate of below 2%. Since Alibaba has data on the online transactions, several countries are using its credit-scoring system - Sesame - to judge their creditworthiness.

Creditworthiness is the extent to which a person or company is considered suitable to receive financial credit, often based on their reliability in paying money back in the past.

In July Alibaba signed a deal with Unilever, a European consumer-products giant, to help Unilever do digital marketing and boost cross-border sales.

Alibaba is developing from a shopping platform into a broad-based provider (= ad ampio raggio) of online services and this will require heavy investment. Some ventures may succeed, while others may fail due to Chinese regulators. In addition, investors might grumble about (= lamentarsi) the costs involved and the profits deferred.

What is deferred revenue? Deferred revenue, also known as unearned revenue, refers to advance payments a company receives for products or services that are to be delivered or performed in the future. The company that receives the prepayment records the amount as deferred revenue, a liability, on its balance sheet.

If some of these big bets pay off, Mr Ma’s trillion-dollar dream just might come true.

Glossario: Alibaba – Clicks to bricks

Asset-light model: a business has fewer capital assets compared to the value of its operations, it means lower operating costs and risks; the company owns the operating part and outsources any other asset.

Asset-heavy model: a business owns a lot of its fixed assets outright which are used to generate income.

2. Marketing in the digital age – A brand new game

In these days, advertising has become more and more complex, and it has become so much easier for dissatisfied customer to make their voices heard while marketing chiefs struggle to (= faticare) find the right way to reach consumers through the new digital platforms, where consumers spend most of their time. ((The example used to explain these two concepts was a BMW advertising, where the ads of the cars were shown only to the profiles considered potential buyers of expensive cars, while to the others were shown only less expensive stuff such as smartphones.))

Today social media marketing has become a pillar of the advertising industry, going from spending nothing on social media ads to more than $20 billion.

Through social media, advertisers can gather all sorts of data on each user’s age, consumption patterns, interests and so on which means ads can be aimed at them with more accuracy but more importantly social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms have introduced ads with “buy now” buttons to let users complete a sale on the spot.

In the future, social platforms might get paid by advertisers to provide instant-shopping services, making those platforms more useful and therefore pushing users to spend even more time on them.

To target every people accurately on every media, ad agencies now create messages for each social network and customer segment instead of a single, general message that will run across every media.

Marketing chiefs also need to give their brands “online personalities” when communicating with the customers. But in attempting to ride social-media trends, companies can easily fall flat on their faces. In spite of such pitfalls, social platforms are likely to receive an ever-larger part of marketers’ budgets.

But the digital-media business is still young and volatile, and it is hard to predict which social networks are destined to become new-media equivalents of America’s big four broadcast-TV networks.

Old media still don’t seem to suffer from digital rivals as TV advertising has until now kept growing.

But as time goes on, and as TV audiences both decline and shift to services that do not have ads (Netflix), the competition will be more keenly felt. In the end, even if marketers may switch to all these medias, there must be a limit to how much they’ll push on online ads.

3. Fashion retailing – Chicago hope

When Uniqlo, a Japanese firm, opened its first midwestern outlet (= punto vendita) in Chicago, it was expected a rush of excited consumers. Instead, all they received was a restrained reaction. What Uniqlo did in Chicago was taking over an “El” (elevated light-rail) train, decorating it with Japanese lanterns and even bringing over a DJ to pump out Japanese pop.

An elevated railway or elevated train (also known as an el train for short) is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure (usually constructed from steel, cast iron, concrete, or bricks).

The firm is having success in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and also in Europe; however, it has a small presence in America (smaller than rivals as Zara - Spanish - and H&M - Swedish), even if it has been in the country for 10 years. The fact is that Fast Retailing, Uniqlo’s owner, even reported losses in America.

Succeeding in America’s competitive retail market is never easy, for local and foreign firms alike: there are many brands that are having difficulties, like American Apparel that declared bankruptcy, or Gap that is closing a quarter of its shops, or J. Crew that reported slumping sales…

Uniqlo has already scaled back its American ambitions by reducing the number of shops that they wanted to open. The company decided to close shops in suburban American shopping centres and concentrate on city-centre stores.

Takahiro Kazahaya, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, argues that Uniqlo should persevere in America because winning brand recognition takes time. It is doing so well in Asia that it can afford to bear losses in America for a while.

Instead, another analyst, thinks that the company can simply establish a stable foothold in America rather than seeking to conquer it. Uniqlo will bolster its image by positioning its brand in cities most visited by Chinese and Asian shoppers because these people represent Uniqlo’s growth opportunities.

Glossario: Fashion retailing – Chicago hope

Fast fashion: clothing designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to take advantage of trends. The collections are often based on styles presented at Fashion Week runway shows or worn by celebrities.

Fashion retailing: section of business that acts as an intermediary between the manufacturers and customers. It can be defined as the process of “buying clothes from the manufacturer and selling them to the customers”.

4. Primark – Faster, cheaper fashion

Primark is an Irish retailer owned by Associated British Foods (ABF) that now sells more clothes than any other retailer in Britain. In 2006 Primark opened its first store in Spain, then kept marched across the continent, establishing outposts (= avamposto) in the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Austria and France.

Now the company is planning to open its first shop in the US - the biggest clothing market.

Succeeding won’t be easy, American market is no easy deal for foreigners and Americans never heard of it despite its success – but ABF is confident that Primark’s formula of trendy clothes at low prices will work.

The result is a faster kind of fast fashion, which encourages consumers to buy heaps of/bags full of items. This strategy is so competitive that even online dealers such as Asos cannot match their prices – and are in trouble. Primark manages to keep such prices thanks to a great logistic organization, very few marketing expenses and a scale so big that it can obtain good prices for raw materials. They have very tiny margins on clothes and rely on scale (= quantity of sold goods) for profits.

Primark has a winning combination: cool clothes, attractive stores, and rock-bottom prices. For the competitors, such bargains are hard to match.

Primark achieves its low prices thanks to sleek logistics, a meagre marketing budget and its scale, which helps win bargains from suppliers. The company withstands tiny margins making its money on volume.

As tempting as it looks there may be some problems: first of all, the lack of online retailing - Primark’s low prices cannot cover the expedition/shipping costs, so if people start buying more goods through e-channels, Primark might be left behind.

The biggest problem is the fast-fashion industry itself because of social and environmental issues, even though people tend to forget all of it when they see how cheap the products are.

A culture of disposable fashion rattles environmentalists. American threw away 11.1 tonnes of clothes and shoes in 2013 (it amounts to 4.4% of the country’s rubbish). And just as worrying are the conditions in which cheap clothes are made.

Glossario: Primark – Faster, cheaper fashion

“Instagram effect”: fashion-conscious young consumers post snaps of themselves wearing another new outfit on social media.

5. The motor trade – Death of a car salesman

Motor trade = businesses involved in the buying and selling of motor vehicles.

Death of a car salesman = metaphor, it means the reduction or elimination of car dealers in the motor industry.

Technology is reducing/diminishing the role of middlemen, especially the role of car dealers: customers are using the internet for choosing a new car, and more of them are getting loans and insurance online rather than buying them from the dealer who sells them their car.

A century ago, manufacturers tried selling their vehicles at the factory gate, in shops they owned themselves, by mail order and through travelling salesmen. But eventually they settled on a system of franchising, in which independent dealers mostly sell just one maker’s models. Now, almost all motor vehicles sold worldwide cross dealers’ forecourts.

Surveys show that car buyers find the experience of visiting a dealer boring, confrontational, and bureaucratic. This is because car buyers turn up having already decided which model and which options they want/need and, having checked price-comparison websites, how much they will pay.

Almost all cars these days have decent performance and handling, so test drives are less important than ever. Instead styling and branding figure/are more prominently in buyers’ minds.

What consumers want is someone to talk them though all the features that cars come with these days (entertainment systems, navigation services, automated parking, …). Since 2013 BMW has been installing “product geniuses” in some larger showrooms, to talk potential buyers through its cars’ features without pressing them to close a sale. Also Daimler Benz and Kia have begun similar initiatives.

The motor industry has spent more than a century training buyers to expect haggling (= contrattazione), followed by discounts. Customers say having to argue about the price is one of the things that puts them off dealers, so some firms are offering them ways to avoid it.

Ex: Costco sold new and used cars in America last year, using its buying power to get good deals, doing the haggling on beh