Case Study on Entrepreneurship: Larry Page

Business Analysis

The Boundaryless Career: Modern Contemperory Perspective on Career

Human Resource Management

Concepts of Throughput Accounting and Theory of Constraints

Financial Management

Gantt Charts – Tool for Project Planning and Scheduling

Project Management

Kaizen – Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

Operations Management

Business Level Strategies – Cases of Wal-Mart, Apple, Zara and Ikea

Business Level Strategy is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It relates to strategic decisions about the choice of products, identifying and fulfilling the needs of customers, building competitive advantages over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc. Business level strategies are essentially positioning strategies whereby businesses tend to secure for themselves an identity and position in the market. The aim here is to increase the business value for the corporate and stakeholders by increasing the brand awareness and value perceived by the customers. They can either focus on pricing or product differentiation to increase the perceived customer value. Customers are the foundation of successful business-level strategy – Who will be served by the strategy? What needs shall the strategy satisfy? How will the strategy satisfy those needs? The low cost strategy emphasizes having the lowest costs, not necessarily the lowest price, in a Continue reading

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Purchase Management – Meaning, Importance and Objectives

Purchase Management is a function of materials management in a company. Their basic function is procuring the inputs for production function. This function encompasses suppliers in the market external to the organization and several internal to the organization. Till recently, the purchasing process simply involved placing an order with the supplier who offered the lowest price. Nowadays, increase in competition and market demand and scarcity of resources have forced organizations to reexamine their purchasing activities. The purchasing department functions have expanded considerably and include activities such as verifying the credentials of suppliers, inspecting the quality of the material to be purchased, ensuring the timely delivery of the material, etc. While the value of purchased items varies from industry to industry, it adds up to more than fifty percent of sales in all industries. Purchase management is regarded as a significant activity in many organizations because of the high cost involved Continue reading

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Types of Plans Commonly Used in Management

The term plan refers to a course of action determined in advance by the management. It has always a time frame in other words it is a package of decisions to make efforts to achieve some results in a specified term of period. Goals (Target): goal is a desired state of affairs, which an organization wants to achieve. Overall goals are the collective ends for which the whole organization makes efforts to achieve. Goals may be of short term or long term in nature. E.g. goal of an automobile company may be to provide low cost and higher quality of automobiles to the public. Objectives: objective is the ends towards which activity is aimed. In other words it is desired and end result of an activity. There must be a time frame for the achievement of predetermines objectives. Objectives may differ from one organization to another. E.g. business organization will Continue reading

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Business Model Analysis of Starbucks

Starbucks Coffee company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It began in 1971 with just one retail store at Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. Now it has become the leading brand and retailer in the world. Starbucks went public on June 26, 1992. The main aim of Starbucks is to become the leading brand and retailer of finest coffee in each of its target markets nationally and internationally by selling the best quality coffee and related products, and by providing high class customer service. Starbucks purchases and roasts a high quality whole bean coffees to sell them with fresh, rich-brewed espresso beverages, different varieties of pastries and coffee related accessories and equipment’s. Moreover Starbucks also sells coffee and tea products strategically through other channels such as supermarkets and non traditional retail channels such as United Airlines, Marriott International, Barnes & Noble bookstores and Department stores. More than quality coffee, Starbucks features Continue reading

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Case Study: Success of Starbucks Mobile Payment Application

Starbucks redefined highly competitive coffee shop business and successfully created an uncontested market by turning the simple coffee drinking experience into a way of life experience by drastically redefining the coffee shop environment by adding music, Wi-Fi, relaxed seating and luxurious interiors. Till Starbucks disrupted the traditional coffee shop market most of the focus was on the price, location and quality of coffee shops. Starbucks innovative value proposition includes wide variety of mostly coffee based menu along with other types of drinks that catered to wide range of audience who are willing to pay top buck for the luxurious and relaxed interiors that are perfect environment for socializing with friends and relax. Another important aspect that Starbucks focused was on the quality of customer service with an exclusive aim of maximum customer delight and they meticulously recruited and trained the best talent in the industry that has added huge value Continue reading

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Stratified Random Sampling in Research

In the example of choosing a simple random sample of twenty employees out of a thousand in a factory, suppose they include 100 supervise and 900 workers. A simple random sample comes by mere chance and it possible that among the twenty chosen, all may be supervisors or none may be. If the researcher feels that he should study both the subgroups, it would be me sensible to take a random sample from each subgroup (stratum) after separate lists for the two strata.   Such sampling is called stratified random sampling. Stratification may be done in business research on differ characteristics like sex, age (e.g. young, middle-aged, old), race, religion, occupation, education, residential area (e.g., rural, urban) ownership of (e.g., public sector, private sector), size of business or income. The  stratification  may be proportionate or disproportionate. In the sampling of twenty employees from a factory described above, if 2 supervisors Continue reading

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