Political Environment of International Business

Political factors constitute an important environment factor in International Business. Actually politics and economics are inter-related as one influences the other. That was the reason for early writers of Economics preferred to caption their work as Political Economy. Political system, political parties in power, political parties in the opposition, political maturity of the parties, number of political parties, political awareness of people, political stability and the like have great impact on the business environment in a country. The economic policies pursued by a Government are to a great extent the by-product of political environment that impacts businesses very often.

Basic Political Ideologies

Political ideology refers to, ‘the body of ideas, theories, aims and means to execute the ideas, adapt the theories and fulfill the aims that constitute a sociopolitical programme for action’.… Read the rest

Why Integrated Marketing Communication is Important?

For marketing communication to be successful, sound management decisions must be made in the other three areas of the marketing mix: the product, service or idea itself; the price at which the brand will be offered; and the places at or through which customers may purchase the brand. The best promotion cannot overcome poor product quality, inordinately high prices, or insufficient retail distribution.

Likewise, successful marketing communication relies on sound management decisions regarding the coordination of the various elements of the promotional mix. To this end, a new way of viewing marketing communication emerged in the 1990s. It is called integrated marketing communication; this perspective seeks to orchestrate the use of all forms of the promotional mix to reach customers at different levels in new and better ways.… Read the rest

The Importance of Marketing Communication

Those who practice advertising, branding, direct marketing, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, sponsorship, public relations, sales, sales promotion and online marketing are termed marketing communicators.

The communication process is sender-encoding-transmission device-decoding-receiver, which is part of any advertising or marketing program. Encoding the message is the second step in communication process, which takes a creative idea and transforms it into attention-getting advertisements designed for various media such as television, radio, magazines, and others. Massages travel to audiences through various transmission devices.

The third stage of the marketing communication process occurs when a channel or medium delivers the message. Decoding occurs when the message reaches one or more of the receiver’s senses.… Read the rest

Control in Multinational Enterprises (MNEs)

There are various methods of classification of management control in Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). By levels of control here it is meant whether the parent / corporate level managers or subsidiary/country-level managers are involved. The former might be called higher level and the later lower level control. Depending on the sphere of focus we have two types of control called Strategic control and Operational control. In the MNE’s context, strategic control is the responsibility of parent and operational control is the preserve of the subsidiary.

Another way puts ‘management control, tactical control and transactional control’ as the 3 levels of control respectively carried out by the corporate top management, collectively by corporate & subsidiary management and subsidiary management in the case of MNEs.… Read the rest

The Control Function of Management

Control means, “Some sort of systematic effort to compare current performance to a predetermined plan of objective, presumably in order to take any remedial action required”. This is a very general definition of the term. However, as a management function, it has been defined as “the process by which managers assure that resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in the accomplishment of the organization’s goals”.

Controlling is tool for achieving organizational goals and activities. Control is management’s planning, implementation, evaluation, and correction of performance to ensure that the organization meets its objectives in the short, medium and long terms.… Read the rest

Corporate Parenting Strategy

The complexity of transitional business conditions creates a need for creating value through aggregation of different businesses in complex corporate enterprise, which gives it the character of a multi-business firm. Businesses could be defined as being whatever the enterprise chooses to operate as organizationally separate profit-responsible units. Such business entities are often referred to as Strategic Business Units (SBUs) and they are organized as largely separable businesses with control over the main strategic levers that affect their performance. Besides this organizational definition, the businesses could be defined in economic sense relating to Strategic Business Opportunities (SBOs), which are clusters of product-market transactions able to sustain a successful focused business, with financial independence.… Read the rest