Brani commerciali inglese - Riassunto esame, prof. Marino

Functional organization and its criticisms

Functional organization is efficient, but there are two standard criticisms. Firstly, people are usually more concerned with the success of their department than that of the company. Secondly, separating functions is unlikely to encourage innovation.

Consequently, most large companies are decentralized, following the model of Alfred Sloan, who divided General Motors into separate operating divisions in 1920. Each division had its own engineering, production, and sales departments, made a different category of car, and was expected to make a profit.

An inherent problem of hierarchies is that people at lower levels are unable to make important decisions but have to pass on responsibility to their boss. One solution to this is matrix management, in which people report to more than one superior.

Products and brands

Marketing theorists tend to give the word product a very broad meaning, using it to refer to anything capable of satisfying a need or want. Thus services, activities, people, places, organizations, etc. can all be considered as products.

and ideas. 2Some manufactures use their name for all their products, e.g. Philips, Colgate, Yamaha. Others,market various products under individual brand names. The major producers of soap powders, are( )famous for their multi-brand strategy which allows them to compete in various market segments. 3Most manufacturers produce a large number of products, often divided into product lines. Mostproduct lines consist of several products, often distinguished by brand names. Several differentitems may share the same brand name. 4Companies whose objectives include high market share and market growth generally have longproduct lines. Companies whose objective is high profitability will have shorter lines.Additions to product lines can be the result of either line-stretching or line-filling. Line-stretchingmeans lengthening a product line by moving either up-market or down-market. Line-filling mightbe done in order to compete in competitors’ niches, or simply to utilize excess production.

The centrally of marketing

Most management and marketing writers now distinguish between selling and marketing. The 'selling concept' assumes that resisting consumers have to be persuaded by vigorous hard-selling techniques to buy non-essential goods or services. The 'marketing concept', on the contrary, assumes that the producer's task is to find wants and fill them.

Marketers are consequently always looking for market opportunities. Market opportunities are generally isolated by market segmentation. Once a target market has been identified, a company has to decide what goods or service to offer. The company must also take account of the existence of competitors, who always have to be identified, monitored and defeated in the search for loyal customers.

Rather than risk launching a product or service solely on the basis of intuition or guesswork, most companies undertake market research (GB) or marketing research (US). They collect and

Persuade them to buy them. The best form of advertising is probably word-of-mouth advertising. Yet virtually no providers of goods or services rely on this alone, but use paid advertising instead. Indeed, many organizations tend to use the services of large advertising agencies.

Agencies often produce alternative ads or commercials that are pre-tested in newspapers, television stations, etc.

How much to spend on advertising is always problematic. Some companies use the comparative-parity method – they simply match their competitor’s spending, thereby avoiding advertising wars. Others set their ad budget at a certain percentage of current sales revenue.

Banking

Types of bank:

1. Commercial or retail banks are businesses that trade in money. They receive and hold deposits, lend money, offer investment advice, and so on. They make a profit from the difference between the interest rates they pay to lenders or depositors and those they charge to borrowers. Banks also create credit, and when

Lending money, they have to find a balance between yield and risk, and between liquidity and different maturities.

Investment banks, often called merchant banks in Britain, raise funds for industry on the various financial markets, finance international trade, issue and underwrite securities, and issue government bonds.

Investment banks make their profits from the fees and commissions they charge for their services.

In some European countries (Germany, Austria) there have always been universal banks combining deposit and loan banking with share and bond dealing and investment services.

Banks lend to blue chip borrowers at the base rate or the prime rate; all other borrowers pay more, depending on their credit standing: the lender's estimation of their present and future solvency.

Borrowers can usually get a lower interest rate if the loan is secured or guaranteed by some kind of asset, known as collateral.

A Eurocurrency is any currency held outside its country of origin. The first

The significant Eurocurrency market was for US dollars in Europe, but the name is now used for foreign currencies held anywhere in the world.