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Give Russian/ Belarusian equivalents to the following terms.
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1) 4 P’s
2) advertising
3) automation
4) brand
5) branding
6) control system
7) customize
8) differentiator
9) distribution channel
10) equity
11) flexibility
12) incompatible
13) lead time
14) market challenger
15) market follower
16) market share
17) marketing
18) marketing mix
19) marketing strategy
20) niche
21) operational capability
22) operations management
23) personal selling
24) planning system
25) product life-cycle
26) product reliability
27) production management
28) promotional tool
29) public relations
30) publicity
31) research and development (department)
32) return on assets
33) sales forecasting
34) sales promotion
35) sales promotion campaign
36) service company
37) staff motivation
38) staff training
39) target market
40) trademark
Read texts 1-5.
3. Study the following, paying attention to the terms and their contextual usage:
a)what management is;
b) what marketing is;
c) what marketing strategies and promotional tools include;
D) how to define brand and branding.
Pick out the idiomatic expressions and give their Russian/ Belarusian equivalents.
Pick out the abbreviations from the following texts and give their Russian/ Belarusian equivalents.
Text 1
Production and Operations Management
Manufacturing companies require three basic functions: finance, production or operations, and marketing. Finance raises the capital to buy the equipment to start the business, production or operations makes the product, and marketing sells and distributes it. Operations management is also of crucial importance to service companies.
The objectives of the production department are usually to produce a specific product, on schedule, at minimum cost. But there may be other criteria, such as concentrating on quality and product reliability, producing the maximum possible volume of output, fully utilizing the plant or the work force, reducing lead time, generating the maximum return on assets, or ensuring flexibility for product or volume changes. Some of these objectives are clearly incompatible, and most companies have to choose between price, quality, and flexibility. There is an elementary trade-off between low cost and quality, and another between low cost and the flexibility to customize products or to deliver in a very short lead time.
Production and operations management obviously involves production plants and factories or service branches, and the equipment in them, parts (raw materials or supplies), processes (the steps by which production or services are carried out), and planning and control systems (the procedures used by management to operate and monitor the system). But it also involves people — the personnel or human resources, who will always be necessary in production and operations, despite increasing automation. People are particularly important in organizations offering a service rather than making a product. Such organizations exist to serve the customer, but it can also be argued that they have to serve their workforce, because workers will often treat the public the same way that management treats them, so staff training and motivation are clearly important.
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Manufacturing companies all have to decide how much research and development (R&D) to do. Should they do fundamental or applied research themselves, or use research institutes, universities, and independent research laboratories, or simply license product or service designs from other organisations as necessary? Companies are faced with a 'make or buy' decision for every item, process or service.
Decisions about what products to make or what services to offer have to take into account a company's operational capability, and labour, capital and equipment requirements. Introducing new products obviously requires accurate sales forecasting. If it is necessary to construct a new plant or facility, decisions have to be made concerning its location, its size or capacity, the floor layout, the hiring of staff, the purchase of equipment, the necessary level of inventory of parts and finished products, and so on.
Text 2
Marketing Strategies
A company's marketing strategies - sets of principles designed to achieve long-term objectives -obviously depend on its size and position in the market. Other determining factors are the extent of the company's resources, the strategies of its competitors, the behaviour of the consumers in the target market, the stage in the product life-cycle of the products it markets, and the overall macro-economic environment.
The aim of a market leader is obviously to remain the leader. The best way to achieve this is to increase market share even further. If this is not possible, the leader will at least attempt to protect its current market share. A good idea is to try to find ways to increase the total market. This will benefit everyone in the field, but the market leader more than its competitors. A market can be increased by finding new users for a product, by stimulating more usage of a product, or by exploiting new uses, which can sometimes be uncovered by carrying out market research with existing customers.
To protect a market share, a company can innovate in products, customer services, distribution channels, cost reductions, and so on; it can extend and stretch its product lines to leave less room for competitors; and it can confront competitors directly in expensive sales promotion campaigns.
Market challengers can either attempt to attack the leader, or to increase their market share by attacking various market followers. If they choose to attack the leader, market challengers can use most of the strategies also available to market leaders: product innovation, price reductions, cheaper or higher quality versions, improved services, distribution channel innovations, manufacturing cost reduction, intensive advertising, and so on.
Market followers are in a difficult position. They are usually the favourite target of market challengers. They can reduce prices, improve products or services, and so on, but the market leader and challenger will usually be able to retaliate successfully. A market follower that takes on a larger company in a price war is certain to lose, given its lesser resources.
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In many markets, market followers fall in the middle of a V-shaped curve relating market share and profitability. Small companies focusing on specialised narrow segments can make big profits. So can the market leader, with a high market share and economies of scale. In between come the less profitable market followers, which are too big to focus on niches, but too small to benefit from economies of scale
One possibility for followers is to imitate the leaders' products. The innovator has borne the cost of developing the new product, distributing it, and making the market aware of its existence. The follower can clone this product (copy it completely), depending on patents and so on, or improve, adapt or differentiate it. Whatever happens, followers have to keep their manufacturing costs low and the quality of their products and services high.
Small companies that do not establish their own niche - a segment of a segment — are in a vulnerable position. If their product does not have a "unique selling proposition," there is no reason for anyone to buy it. Consequently, a good strategy is to concentrate on a niche that is large enough to be profitable and that is likely to grow, that doesn't seem to interest the leader, and which the firm can serve effectively. The niche could be a specialised product, a particular group of end-users, a geographical region, the top end of a market, and so on. Of course unless a nicher builds up immense customer goodwill, it is vulnerable to an attack by the market leader or another larger company. Consequently, multiple niching - developing a position in two or more niches - is a much safer strategy
Text 3
Promotional Tools
Marketing is often defined as a matter of identifying consumer needs and developing the goods and services that satisfy them. This involves developing the right product, pricing it attractively, and making it available to the target customers, by persuading distributors and retailers to stock it. But it is also necessary to inform potential consumers of the product's existence, its features, and its advantages, and to persuade them to try it. There are generally several stages involved in a consumer's decision to buy a new product. A well-known acronym for this process is AIDA, standing for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. According to the familiar "4 P's" formulation of the marketing mix - product, price, place and promotion - attracting attention, arousing interest, and persuading the consumer to act are all part of promotion. Marketing textbooks conventionally distinguish four basic promotional tools: advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling, which together make up the marketing communications mix.
For consumer goods, the most important tool is generally advertising. As well as advertising particular brands, companies also carry out prestige or institutional advertising, designed to build up the company's name or image. Advertising is often combined with sales promotions, such as free samples, coupons and competitions.
For industrial goods, particularly specialised ones, the most important tool is often personal selling. Sales reps can build up relationships with company buyers, and can be very useful in persuading them to choose a particular product.
The fourth promotional tool is public relations (frequently abbreviated as PR): activities designed to improve or maintain or protect a company's or a product's image. Public relations includes things like company publications, most notably the annual report, sponsorship, community relations programmes, the lobbying of politicians, and the creation of news stories, all designed to get publicity for the company or a particular product. Unlike paid advertising, publicity is any (favourable) mention of a company's products that is not paid for, in any medium received by a company's customers or potential customers. Companies often attempt to place information in news media to draw attention to a product or service. Quite apart from financial considerations, the advantage of publicity is that it is generally more likely to be read and believed than advertising. It can have a great impact on public awareness that could not even be achieved by a massive amount of advertising.
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Within the limits of their budget, marketers have to find the optimal communications mix of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, and publicity, without neglecting the other elements of the marketing mix, i.e. the possibility of improving the product, lowering its price, or distributing it differently.
Text 4
A Short History of Brands
The word brand comes from the Old Norse brandr, meaning to burn, and from these origins made its way into Anglo-Saxon. It was of course by burning that early man stamped ownership on his livestock, and with the development of trade buyers would use brands as a means of distinguishing between the cattle of one farmer and another. A farmer with a particularly good reputation for the quality of his animals would find his brand much sought after, while the brands of farmers with a lesser reputation were to be avoided or treated with caution. Thus the utility of brands as a guide to choice was established, a role that has remained unchanged to the present day.
Some of the earliest manufactured goods in "mass" production were clay pots, the remains of which can be found in great abundance around the Mediterranean region, particularly in the ancient civilisations of Etruria, Greece and Rome. There is considerable evidence among these remains of the use of brands, which in their earliest form were the potter's mark. A potter would identify his pots by putting his thumbprint into the wet clay on the bottom of the pot or by making his mark: a fish, a star or cross, for example. From this we can safely say that symbols (rather than initials or names) were the earliest visual form of brands.
In Ancient Rome, principles of commercial law developed that acknowledged the origin and title of potters' marks, but this did not deter makers of inferior pots from imitating the marks of well-known makers in order to dupe the public. In the British Museum there are even examples of imitation Roman pottery bearing imitation Roman marks, which were made in Belgium and exported to Britain in the first century ad. Thus as trade followed the flag - or Roman Eagle - so the practice of unlawful imitation lurked close behind, a practice that remains commonplace despite the strictures of our modern, highly developed legal systems.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the elaborate and highly sophisticated system of trade that had bound together in mutual interdependence the Mediterranean and west European peoples gradually crumbled. Brands continued to be used but mainly on a local scale. The exceptions were the distinguishing marks used by kings, emperors and governments. The fleur-de-lis in France, the Hapsburg eagle in Austria-Hungary and the Imperial chrysanthemum in Japan indicated ownership or control. (Interestingly, the chrysanthemum signifies death in Korea, intermittently over the centuries a Japanese colony.) In a similar fashion the cockleshell, derived from the legend attached to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostella in north-west Spain, a favourite medieval centre of pilgrimage when the holy places of Palestine were closed to pilgrims by the Muslims, was widely used in pre-Renaissance Europe as a symbol of piety and faith.
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In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the volume manufacture of fine porcelain, furniture and tapestries began in France and Belgium, largely because of royal patronage, factories increasingly used brands to indicate quality and origin. At the same time, laws relating to the hallmarking of gold and silver objects were enforced more rigidly to give the purchaser confidence in the product.
However, the widescale use of brands is essentially a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The industrial revolution, with its improvements in manufacturing and communications, opened up the western world and allowed the mass-marketing of consumer products. Many of today's best-known consumer brands date from this period: Singer sewing-machines, Coca-Cola soft drinks, Bass beer, Quaker oats, Cook's tours, Sunlight soap, Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal, Kodak film, American Express travellers' cheques, Heinz baked beans and Prudential Insurance are just a few examples.
Hand in hand with the introduction of these brands came early trade mark legislation. This allowed the owners of these brands to protect them in law (indeed, the Bass "Red Triangle" trade mark was the very first registered in the UK in 1876, and the beaming Quaker, who adorns the pack of the eponymous oats, is now well into his second century). The birth of advertising agencies such as J Walter Thompson and NW Ayer in the late 19th century gave further impetus to the development of brands.
But it is the period since the end of the second world war that has seen the real explosion in the use of brands. Propelled by the collapse of communism, the arrival of the internet and mass broadcasting systems, and greatly improved transportation and communications, brands have come to symbolise the convergence of the world's economies on the demand-led rather than the command-led model. But brands have not escaped criticism. Recent anti-globalisation protests have been significant events. They have provided a timely reminder to the big brand owners that in the conduct of their affairs they have a duty to society, as well as customers and shareholders.
Text 5
Elements of the Brand
Brands are intrinsically striking and their role is to create an indelible impression.
Intrinsically striking
The visual distinctiveness of a brand may be a combination of any of the following: name, letters, numbers, a symbol, a signature, a shape, a slogan, a colour, a particular typeface. But the name is the most important element of the brand as its use in language provides a universal reference point. The name is also the one element of the brand that should never change. All other elements can change over time (Shell's famous logo has evolved significantly from the early line drawing and Pepsi-Cola switched to all-blue livery a few years ago), but the brand name should be like Caesar: "as constant as the northern star".
This is not to say that brands achieve true visual distinctiveness through their names alone. Nike without its tick-like swoosh, Camel cigarettes without "Old Joe", the supercilious dromedary, Michelin without exuberant Monsieur Bibendum, McDonald's without its Golden Arches would be paler properties indeed. Brands like these - and many thousands of others - rely for their visual distinctiveness on the harmonious combination of these elements and the consistency with which this is maintained.
This said, in certain markets where the use of branding is highly developed and consumers are particularly sophisticated, these rules are sometimes tested. In the fashion-clothing market, for example, brands like Mambo and Diesel have experimented with the use of completely different logos; Diesel even changed the name for a season (although all other visual aspects of the brand remained the same). The success of such tactics depends upon the awareness of the consumer. These two brands enjoy almost "cult" status, and the loyalty with which they are followed by their devotees has assured success.
Name changes of products and services are rare; they are uncommon too among companies, but perhaps a little more frequent. With products and services, the main reasons for change are either to extend the appeal of a brand to new markets where the original name may not be optimal, or to standardise the company's international trade mark portfolio. The Lucky Dog Phone Company, an at&t subsidiary, changed its name to Lucky Guy in the United States because no counterpart to the lucky dog exists in the American Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets, all important targets. Mars changed the Marathon name to Snickers in the UK to bring the product's name into line with the rest of the world.
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Companies generally change their names either because their function or their ownership has changed, or because their name is in some way misleading. Sometimes they revert to initials: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing became 3m, a name that is both handier and more flexible strategically. Sometimes they combine the names of the merging companies: GlaxoSmithKline. Sometimes they opt for an entirely new name: Altria is now the name of the tobacco, beer and foods group once known as Philip Morris. There is no right or wrong way of renaming businesses; it is as much a matter of what the company feels comfortable with and what it feels it can make work. The key is commitment and good communications.
Sometimes these rules are not observed as faithfully as they should be. When Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan the holding company adopted the name Diageo. Shareholders were not impressed, thinking that the decision to adopt a meaningless, foreign-sounding name, when perfectly good names like Grand Met or Guinness were available, amounted to corporate treachery. At the extraordinary general meeting held to approve the new name outbursts of booing enlivened the proceedings at each mention of "Diageo".
Name changes following mergers can be highly charged events, and closer communication with all stakeholder groups - particularly private shareholders, who may also be pensioners of the firms involved - may help ease the transition. In the case of Diageo, a name that has now "bedded down", the company should have explained why it had decided to adopt a neutral name for the new holding company and issued firm reassurances regarding the famous trading names - particularly Guinness - that it would continue to use.
Diageo, like Aviva, an insurance business, and Altria, mentioned above, is strictly a holding company name (as was the unfortunate Consignia, a name briefly adopted by the Post Office and now consigned to history). These names are not intended for "public consumption" -although a mischievous press made great play of post offices becoming "consignias" - so clarity is paramount; the rationale for change must be communicated to - and understood by - all stakeholder groups.
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