New Products and Brand Extensions

When a firm introduces a new product, it has three main choices as to how to brand it: It can develop a new brand, individually chosen for the new product. It can apply, in some way, one of its existing brands. It can use a combination of a new brand with an existing brand. A brand extension is when a firm uses an established brand name to introduce a new product. When a new brand is combined with an existing brand, the brand extension can also be called a sub-brand. An existing brand that gives birth to a brand extension is referred to as the parent brand. If the parent brand is already associated with multiple products through brand extensions, then it may also be called a family brand. In line extension, the parent brand is used to brand a new product that targets a new market segment within a Continue reading

Multinational Corporations (MNCs) – An Overview

Multinational Corporations (MNCs) are businesses that extend outside of their own country, whether they are located throughout the world or only in a couple other countries, they are considered multinational. The value adding activities which are owned by these companies are used to produce tangible goods or intangible services or the combination of both. There are many reasons as to why firms become multinational and there are various strategies for a firm to become multinational. The immediate motives of the Firms can be to expand business, to seek new market, or for additional profits and revenues. It may also be to concentrate on the economics of scale that a larger international demand can bring. The motive behind market seeking activities is strong among firms who have some advantage related to technology or brand which gives them a competitive advantage over domestic rival. Another reason for firms to become multinationals is Continue reading

Poverty Trap

Poverty trap is a situation where an unemployed person receiving social security benefits not encouraged to  seek work because his or her after €tax earnings potential in work is less than the benefits currently  obtained by not working. The poverty trap occurs due to benefits such as income support, housing benefit, single parent allowance and family tax credit. Given that social security benefits represent the ‘bottom line’ (that is, the  provision of some socially and politically ‘acceptable’ minimum standard of living), the problem is how  to reconcile this with the ‘work ethic’. For example, consider the case of a low-skilled person in the UK. He is unable to get a high-paid job because he doesn’t have the right skills, training or experience. He has two options. First one is to get a low-paid job or second option is to claim unemployment benefits. If he  gets a low paid job he Continue reading

Gordon Growth Model or Constant Growth Model of Common Stock Valuation

Common stock represents ownership of the corporation. So the common stockholders are the owners of the firm. They elect the firm’s board of directors, who in turn appoint the firm’s top management team. The firm’s management team then carries out the day-to-day management of the firm. A share of common stock is more difficult to value in practice than a bond, for at least three reasons. First, with common stock, not even the promised cash flows are known in a advance. Second, the life of the investment is essentially forever, since common stock has no maturity. Third, there is no way to easily observe the rate of return that the market requires. Nonetheless, as we will see, there are cases in which we can come up with the present value of the future cash flows for a share of stock and thus determine its value. Stock valuation is the process Continue reading

Factors Affecting Organizational Change

Change is inevitable in the life of an organization. In today’s business world, most of the organizations are facing a dynamic and changing business environment. They should either change or die, there is no third alternative. Organizations that learn and cope with change will thrive and flourish and others who fail to do so will be wiped out. The major forces which make the changes not only desirable but inevitable are technological, economic, political, social, legal, international and labor market environments. In very simple words, we can say that change means the alteration of status quo or making things different. “The term change refers to any alterations which occurs in the overall work environment of an organization. When an organizational system is disturbed by some internal or external force, change frequently occurs. Change, as a process, is simply modification of the structure or process of a system. It may be Continue reading

Social Loafing in Organizations

Social loafing is antithesis of synergy in team-work which suggests that people working together on a common task may actually decrease their individual efforts; team-work does not necessarily spurt group efforts. A simple phenomenon of social loafing may be observed in a group assignment to students during their study. In such an assignment, students find that one or two students do not put their weight for the completion of the project. These students may be called loafers (not attaching the same connotation which is attached with the term loafer in our social phenomenon) who frequently miss the project group’s meetings, fail to perform their assigned tasks, and so on. They rely on the fact the more reliable members will complete the project without their help, and still expect to share the credit and obtain the same marks from the professor since he will be concerned with determining who worked and Continue reading