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Creating an indelible impression




In developed economies consumers have an astonishing - often bewil­dering - array of choice. There are, for example, dozens of car manufac­turers, hundreds of car models and thousands of different vehicle specifications to choose from; the days when Henry Ford offered "any colour you want as long as it's black" are now long gone. This diversity of choice puts pressure on those making or selling products or services to offer high quality, excellent value and wide availability. It also puts pressure on them to find more potent ways of differentiating them­selves and securing competitive advantage. According to Fortune maga­zine (in 1997):

In the twenty-first century, branding ultimately will be the only unique differentiator between companies. Brand equity is now a key asset.

Much of the skill of marketing and branding nowadays is concerned with building "equity" for products whose characteristics, pricing, distri­bution and availability are really quite close to each other. Take cola drinks, for example. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola are able to dominate the worldwide cola market. The power of their bottling and distribution systems no doubt plays a part in this, but the main factor is the strength and appeal of the two brands to consumers. The strong, instantly recog­nisable names, logos and colours of these two brands symbolise their makers' promise that consumers' expectations will be fulfilled, what­ever the subtleties of these might be.

Brands allow the consumer to shop with confidence, and they pro­vide a route map through a bewildering variety of choices. The cus­tomer does not have to be an expert on the complexities of mobile telecommunications to choose between one service supplier and another. The brand name, the tariff and the method of payment are all that is required to make an informed choice. And as tariffs and methods of payment are largely the same among competing companies, it is the brand - and consumers' appreciation of its underlying appeals - that will ultimately drive the purchase decision. It is the inculcation of these "underlying appeals" - the bedrock of brand equity - that concerns brand owners and has become the subject of unceasing attention and investment. Brands with strong equity embed themselves deeply in the hearts and minds of consumers.

The real power of successful brands is that they meet the expecta­tions of those that buy them or, to put it another way, they represent a promise kept. As such they are a contract between a seller and a buyer: if the seller keeps to its side of the bargain, the buyer will be satisfied; if not, the buyer will in future look elsewhere.

 

 

Match the following terms (Column A) with their definitions (Column B).

A B
1) management a) the sum of activities involved in directing the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers
2) advertising b) a type of product made by a particular company
3) commercial c) eagerness and willingness to do something without needing to be told or forced to do it
4) PR d) someone who starts a company, arranges business deals, and takes risks in order to make a profit
5) marketing e) to change something to make it more suitable for you, or to make it look special or unusual
6) promotion f) the business of making sure that people know about a new product, film etc or what a particular famous person is doing
7) motivation g) the act or skill of directing and organizing the work of a company or organization
8) brand h) a situation in which no one has an unfair advantage
9) outsourcing i) a specific area of marketing which has its own particular requirements, customers, and products
10) customize j) a limited group that a plan, idea, etc. is aimed at
11) niche k) an advertisement on television or radio
12) entrepreneur l) the period of time that it takes for goods to be delivered after someone has ordered them
13) life-cycle m) an attempt to make a product or event popular or successful, especially by advertising
14) publicity n) any visible sign or device used by a business enterprise to identify its goods and distinguish them from those made or carried by others
15) strategy o) the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements
16) target audience p) a series of stages through which something (as an individual, culture, or manufactured product) passes during its lifetime
17) lead time q) the practice of using workers from outside a company
18) trademark r) a range of products or designs
19) portfolio s) the part of an organization’s work that is concerned with obtaining the public’s approval for what it does
20) equity t) a well-planned series of actions for achieving an aim, especially success against an opponent

 

Fill in the blanks by inserting the following; translate into Russian/ Belarusian.

1) analyse; 2) communicate; 3) contribute; 4) divide; 5) form; 6) improve; 7) measure; 8) commercialise; 9) perform; 10) risk; 11) select; 12) train; 13) understand; 14) use; 15) workout

 

Management

Actually, management as we (1)… it today is a fairly recent idea. Most economists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, wrote about factors of production such as land, labour and capital, and about supply and demand, as if these were impersonal and objective economic forces which left no room for human action. An exception was Jean-Baptiste Say, who invented the term "entrepreneur", the person who sees opportunities to (2)… resources in more productive ways.

Entrepreneurs are people who are alert to so-far undiscovered profit opportunities. They perceive opportunities to (3)… new technologies and products that will serve the market better than it is currently being served by their competitors. They are happy to (4)… their own or other people's capital. They are frequently unconventional, innovative people. But entrepreneurship isn't the same as management, and most managers aren't entrepreneurs.

So, what's management? Well, it's essentially a matter of organizing people. Managers, especially senior managers, have to set objectives for their organization, and then (5)… how to achieve them. This is true of the managers of business enterprises, government departments, educational institutions, and sports teams, although for government services, universities and so on we usually talk about administrators and administration rather than managers and management. Managers (6)… the activities of the organization and the relations among them. They (7) … the work into distinct activities and then into individual jobs. They (8)… people to manage these activities and perform the jobs. And they often need to make the people responsible for
performing individual jobs (9)… effective teams.

Managers have to be good at communication and motivation. They need to (10)… the organization's objectives to the people responsible for attaining them. They have to motivate their staff to work well, to be productive, and to (11) … something to the organization. They make decisions about pay and promotion.

Managers also have to (12) … the performance of their staff, and to ensure that the objectives and performance targets set for the whole organization and for individual employees are reached.

Furthermore, they have to (13) …. and develop their staff, so that their performance continues to (14) …. Some managers obviously (15)… these tasks better than others. Most achievements and failures in business are the achievements or failures of individual managers.

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