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Business Custom Essays Samples
Free Online Research Papers, College Papers, English Papers, Admission Essays, Thesis, Analyzed Essays, Essay Papers, Term Papers, Coursework Essays, Custom Papers, Non-Plagiarized Essays
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|  Business Cycles |
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| What is a business cycle? As one examines almost any business chart which shows graphically such business data as production, sales, prices, or interest rates, one is impressed with the fact of a wavelike movement. There are ups and downs, and, more than that, the ups and downs manifest a considerable regularity. This is merely a graphical expression of the fact that the history of business is a record of recurrent periods of normal activity, booms, and depressions.
Most of the time, business activity in the United States, at least, is found to be either rising from a relatively depressed condition toward a peak or falling from a relatively prosperous condition toward a bottom. This wavelike movement of business has given rise to the theory of the business cycle.
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| Electronic Business |
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| Electronic business, or "e-business", is any business process that is empowered by an information system. Today, this is mostly done with Web-based technologies. The term "e-business" was coined by Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM.
Electronic business methods enables companies to link their internal and external processes more efficiently and flexibly, work more closely with suppliers and partners to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers.
In practice, this involves the introduction of new revenue streams through the use of e-commerce, the enhancement of relationships between clients and partners and improving efficiency from using knowledge management systems. E-business can be conducted over the public Internet, through internal intranets and over secure private extranets.
It is more than just e-commerce. It covers business processes along the whole value chain: electronic purchasing ("e-procurement") and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, customer service and cooperation with business partners. This applies to traditional and virtual organizations. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. |
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| John D. Rockefeller |
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| The story of Rockefeller's life is one of the great romances of American history; but it is not a story which invites swift and easy judgments. For one reason, it is extremely complex; for another, it raises highly debatable economic issues. "Each great industrial trust," writes the English economist Alfred Marshall, in Industry and Trade, "has owed its origin to the exceptional business genius of its founders. In some cases the genius was mainly constructive; in others it was largely strategic and incidentally destructive; sometimes even dishonest." He correctly ascribes the Standard Oil Trust to a combination of exceptional constructive ability and astute destructive strategy. The pages of its history -- some of them very dark, some brilliantly creditable -- show the two elements inextricably mingled. They also show that, as Marshall elsewhere states, "general propositions in regard to either competition or monopoly are full of snares." While some journalists and some politicians will utter sweeping and dogmatic statements upon an industrial aggregation like the Standard Oil, and upon the work of a great business leader like Rockefeller, economists will regard these glib verdicts with distrust. Too many unsolved problems are opened up by such an industrial organization, and too many difficult issues are raised by such an individual career. |
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| Marketing Mix |
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| The marketing mix approach to marketing is a model of crafting and implementing marketing strategies. It stresses the "mixing" or blending of various factors in such a way that both organizational and consumer (target markets) objectives are attained. The model was developed by Neil Borden (Borden, N. 1964) who first started using the phrase in 1949. Borden claims the phrase came to him while reading James Culliton's description of the activities of a business executive:
(An executive is) "a mixer of ingredients, who sometimes follows a recipe as he goes along, sometimes adapts a recipe to the ingredients immediately available, and sometimes experiments with or invents ingredients no one else has tried." (Culliton, J. 1948)
When blending the mix elements, marketer(s) must consider their target market. They must understand the wants and needs (see Maslow)of the market (customer) then use these mix elements in constructing (formulating)an appropriate marketing strategies and plans that will satisfy these wants. The mix must also meet or exceed the objectives of the organization. As Borden put it, "When building a marketing program to fit the needs of his firm, the marketing manager has to weigh the behavioral forces and then juggle marketing elements in his mix with a keen eye on the resources with which he has to work." (Borden, N. 1964 pg 365). A separate marketing mix is usually crafted for each product offering or for each market segment, depending on the organizational structure of the firm. Borden goes on to suggest a procedure for developing a marketing mix. He claims that you need two sets of information; a list of important elements that go into the mix, and a list of forces that influence these decision variables.
The most common variables used in constructing a marketing mix are price, promotion, product and distribution (also called placement). First suggested by Jerome McCarthy (McCarthy, J. 1960), they are sometimes referred to as the four P's. McCarthy said that marketers have essentially these four variables to use when crafting a marketing strategy and writing a marketing plan. In the long term, all four of the mix variables can be changed, but in the short term it is difficult to modify the product or the distribution channel. Therefore in the short term, marketers are limited to working with only half their tool kit. This limitation underscores the importance of long term strategic planning. |
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| Risk Management |
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| Generally, Risk Management is the process of measuring, or assessing risk and then developing strategies to manage the risk. In general, the strategies employed include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk. Traditional risk management, which is discussed here, focuses on risks stemming from physical or legal causes (e.g. natural disasters or fires, accidents, death, and lawsuits). Financial risk management, on the other hand, focuses on risks that can be managed using traded financial instruments. Regardless of the type of risk management, all large corporations have risk management teams and small groups and corporations practice informal, if not formal, risk management.
In ideal risk management, a prioritization process is followed whereby the risks with the greatest loss and the greatest probability of occurring are handled first, and risks with lower probability of occurrence and lower loss are handled later. In practice the process can be very difficult, and balancing between risks with a high probability of occurrence but lower loss vs. a risk with high loss but lower probability of occurrence can often be mishandled.
Risk management also faces a difficulty in allocating resources properly. This is the idea of opportunity cost. Resources spent on risk management could be instead spent on more profitable activities. Again, ideal risk management spends the least amount of resources in the process while reducing the negative effects of risks as much as possible. |
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