...external environmental scan of Unum, perform an internal environmental scan, and assess the company’s competitive position and possibilities. According to "Unum Group To Present At The JP Morgan Insurance Conference" (2015), “Unum Group (www.unum.com) is a leading provider of financial protection benefits in the United States and the United Kingdom. Its primary businesses are Unum US, Colonial Life and Unum UK. Unum’s portfolio includes disability, life, accident and critical illness coverage” (About the Unum Group). The Unum group has three campuses: Portland, Maine, Chattanooga Tennessee, and Columbia South Carolina. External Environmental SWOT Analysis |Strengths |Weaknesses | | | | |Nationwide Business |- Nationwide Brand Recognition | |Product Line | | | | | | | | | ...
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...2011 Table of Contents I. Introduction a. A hypothetical business description. b. Introduction to the actual paper and the issues to be covered. II. Background c. Geographical location, including talking about recent events that have occurred and have affected the Japanese market. d. The current situation in Japan, after the natural disasters and how it has affected the business world. III. Japan v United States – Cultural Differences e. Comparative study of the Japanese culture vs the U.S. culture, and its impact on the business world. f. Importance of individuals to understand the cultures, customs and traditions of the region in order to function properly. IV. Strengths and Weaknesses g. Strengths of having a business in this region. h. Possible threats in this region i. Cyber-terror threats and the advancement in technology’s affect on security. V. Reducing the risk j. Ways to reduce the regional risk. k. Possibility of unionization, and labor protection VI. Conclusion VII. Bibliography Business Forecasting for Coastal Regions: Post-Tsunami I. Introduction In early March of 2011, thousands of individuals were killed by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in many coastal regions, but mainly Japan. Coastal regions are unique when it comes to business in the fact that not only do they have many dangers in the way of cyber-terrorism, corporate theft, and...
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...[pic] Executive Summary The following report is an examination of the Far East Asian country of Japan. This report includes a look at the past, present, and future of Japan’s economic stance, cultural values, and business opportunities. Our group examined the relations between the Georgia-based insurance company AFLAC, and their Japanese counterparts. This report explains AFLAC’s strategic motives and successes they have found in doing business in Japan. It also identifies some of the weakness and threats that are in the near future if current practices are not altered. With over 70% of the revenue coming from the Japanese market, AFLAC should be concerned with any changes in economic forecasting for the country as it will be sure to have a direct effect on the future of AFLAC U.S. Japan has long been, and continues to be a major ally to the United States in terms of business relationships and cultural influences. Our report serves to outline some of the noteworthy things to consider when conducting business with the Japanese. Through an examination of AFLAC’s individual experiences in Japan, this report demonstrates the need for professional businesspersons to be aware of the countries cultural, personal, and business preferences. With the increase in the age gap of Japan’s population, in addition to the change of workforce demographics, it is becoming increasingly more important for U.S. businesses to consider expanding their products and/or services...
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...Table of Contents Index to Financial Statements UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 10-K (Mark One) x ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011 or ¨ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 For the transition period from to Commission File Number: 001-07434 Aflac Incorporated (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) Georgia (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) 58-1167100 (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 1932 Wynnton Road, Columbus, Georgia (Address of principal executive offices) 31999 (ZIP Code) Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: 706.323.3431 Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: Title of each class Common Stock, $.10 Par Value Name of each exchange on which registered New York Stock Exchange Tokyo Stock Exchange Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. None Yes ¨ Yes ¨ No No Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities...
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...VIDEO GUIDE Advertising: Principles and Practice, 8th Edition Moriarty/Mitchell/Wells Segment 1: AFLAC Summary That wacky, quacky duck brought AFLAC to a high spot among most-recognizable ads and brand names. The insurance company is growing quickly as a result of this greater name recognition. It achieved 89 percent brand recognition in a relatively short time, resulting in $10 billion in sales and about a 25 percent compound growth rate. AFLAC had spent millions of dollars on advertising with little or no effect and almost no market awareness. Clearly, the current strategy was not working. This led the management team to decide to try something bold to increase market awareness. The advertising agency came up with many different ideas, but one crazy one—a duck. AFLAC tested the ad concepts and, as we know today, the duck yielded the highest results. The goal of advertising is to create awareness, while the actual sale comes from the agents selling the complicated insurance products. Discussion Questions 1. What other industries, products, or brands have used humor in advertising to help position themselves in the marketplace? Do you think the strategies have worked? Where wouldn’t humor work? Humor wouldn’t work all that well with serious purchases (e.g., health), but one might think it wouldn’t have worked with something as serious (boring?) as insurance. Might that be because the humor is associated only with the name and not the insurance company’s attributes...
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...throughout the modules of the course. These milestones are the initial product idea (Module One), Part One (Module Two), Part Two (Module Four), Part Three (Module Seven), Part Four (Module Eight) and the full marketing plan (Module Nine). Main Elements of Final Product Marketing Plan Elements (Ten Sections) I. Product or Service Description Describe for the reader what it is that you wish to bring to market. If it is a product, describe the product, its functionality, and how it works. If it is a service, describe the service offering so that the reader understands what they would receive. It is suggested that you create a product or service on your own. Please do not attempt to write a marketing plan for Google or Aflac, as that is beyond the purview of this course. Your description should be complete, including: • Where your company is located • The problem your product/service solves – as seen by the target market (not you) – and to which the target market would say, “Yes, that is a problem and no one has solved it”? • The competitive advantages that you offer • The challenges might you face in the marketing of this product or service Ensure that you have adequately described your product or service. By the time your Product or Service Description is written, the reader understands what you want to bring to market. If you have a Service Description, the reader knows where you are located, what your service...
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...Advertising and Public Relations 1) Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor is called ________. A) sales promotion B) direct marketing C) advertising D) personal selling E) public relations Answer: C Diff: 2 Page Ref: 430 Skill: Concept Objective: 15-1 2) A company's total marketing communications package consists of a special blend of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, and direct-marketing tools that the company uses to communicate customer value and build customer relationships. This is also called ________. A) the communications method B) integrated marketing C) the promotion mix D) competitive marketing E) target marketing Answer: C Diff: 1 Page Ref: 428 Skill: Concept Objective: 15-1 3) According to the opening scenario, GEICO has become the fourth-largest insurance company by ________. A) integrating humor and creativity into its minicampaigns B) targeting a niche market of people with exceptional driving records C) offering cost savings directly to customers without sales personnel D) marketing its product through creative print ads in major magazines E) creating a website that is appealing to both young and old drivers Answer: A Diff: 3 Page Ref: 428 Skill: Concept Objective: 15-1 4) All of the following are important decisions during the process of developing an advertising program EXCEPT ________. A) setting advertising...
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...1 CHAPTER 21 VALUING FINANCIAL SERVICE FIRMS Banks, insurance companies and other financial service firms pose particular challenges for an analyst attempting to value them for two reasons. The first is the nature of their businesses makes it difficult to define both debt and reinvestment, making the estimation of cash flows much more difficult. The other is that they tend to be heavily regulated and the effects of regulatory requirements on value have to be considered. In this chapter, we begin by considering what makes financial service firms unique and ways of dealing with the differences. We then look at how best we can adapt discounted cash flow models to value financial service firms and look at three alternatives – a traditional dividend discount model, a cash flow to equity discount model and an excess return model. With each, we look at a variety of examples from the financial services arena. We move on to look at how relative valuation works with financial service firms and what multiples may work best with these firms. In the last part of the chapter, we examine a series of issues that, if not specific to, are accentuated in financial service firms ranging from the effect of changes in regulatory requirements on risk and value to how best to consider the quality of loan portfolios at banks. Categories of financial service firms Any firm that provides financial products and services to individuals or other firms can be categorized as a financial service firm. We...
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...1 Valuing Financial Service Firms Aswath Damodaran April 2009 Valuing banks, insurance companies and investment banks has always been difficult, but the market crisis of 2008 has elevated the concern to the top of the list of valuation issues. The problems with valuing financial service firm stem from two key characteristics. The first is that the cash flows to a financial service firm cannot be easily estimated, since items like capital expenditures, working capital and debt are not clearly defined. The second is that most financial service firms operate under a regulatory framework that governs how they are capitalized, where they invest and how fast they can grow. Changes in the regulatory environment can create large shifts in value. In this paper, we confront both factors. We argue that financial service firms are best valued using equity valuation models, rather than enterprise valuation models, and with actual or potential dividends, rather than free cash flow to equity. The two key numbers that drive value are the cost of equity, which will be a function of the risk that emanates from the firm’s investments, and the return on equity, which is determined both by the company’s business choices as well as regulatory restrictions. We also look at how relative valuation can be adapted, when used to value financial service firms. 2 Banks, insurance companies and other financial service firms pose special challenges for an analyst attempting to value...
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...Chapter 8 PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND BRANDS: BUILDING CUSTOMER VALUE MARKETING STARTER: CHAPTER 8 Nike: Building Deep-Down Brand-Customer Relationships Synopsis Marketing is all about creating brands that connect with customers, and few marketers have done that as well as Nike. During the past several decades, Nike has built the Nike swoosh into one of the world’s best-known brand symbols. During the 1980s, Nike revolutionized sports marketing. It powered its way through the early 1990s, aggressively adding products in a dozen new sports, including baseball, golf, skateboarding, wall climbing, bicycling, and hiking. In the late 1990s, however, Nike stumbled and its sales slipped. Nike needed to rekindle the brand’s meaning to consumers. To turn things around, Nike returned to its roots: new-product innovation and a focus on customer relationships. This time, Nike shifted toward cutting-edge digital and social marketing tools to interact with customers to build brand experiences and community. Nike is now building communities of customers who talk not just with the company about the brand, but with each other as well. Thanks to efforts like Nike+, along with a host of other new digital and social media approaches, Nike has built a new kinship and sense of community with and between the brand and its customers. The company’s outstanding success results from much more than just making and selling good sports gear. It’s based on a deep-down connection between the iconic Nike brand...
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...OTHER BOOKS BY D. A. BENTON Lions Don’t Need to Roar How to Think Like a CEO The $100,000 Club Secrets of a CEO Coach HOW TO ACT LIKE A 10 Rules for Getting to the Top and Staying There CEO M C G R AW- H I L L SAN FRANCISCO LISBON WA S H I N G T O N , D. C . MADRID AU C K L A N D D. A. BENTON N E W YO R K B O G OT Á MILAN C A R AC A S LONDON NEW DELHI MEXICO CITY SINGAPORE MONTREAL S A N J UA N SYDNEY T O K YO TO RO N TO McGraw-Hill abc Copyright © 2001 by Debra A. Benton. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-137459-0 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-135998-2. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps. McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. For more information, please contact George Hoare, Special Sales...
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...SIXTH EDITION STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN ACTION Mary Coulter Missouri State University Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montréal Toronto Delhi Mexico City São Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo Editor in Chief: Stephanie Wall Senior Acquisitions Editor: April Cole Editorial Project Manager: Claudia Fernandes Director of Marketing: Maggie Moylan Senior Marketing Manager: Nikki Ayana Jones Marketing Assistant: Gianna Sandri Senior Managing Editor: Judy Leale Production Project Manager: Kelly Warsak Senior Operations Supervisor: Arnold Vila Operations Specialist: Cathleen Petersen Creative Director: Blair Brown Senior Art Director: Kenny Beck Text Designer: LCI Design Cover Designer: LCI Design Cover Art: Svetoslav Iliev/Shutterstock.com Permission Specialist: Brooks Hill-Whilton Media Project Manager, Production: Lisa Rinaldi Senior Media Project Manager, Editorial: Denise Vaughn Full-Service Project Management and Composition: Integra Printer/Binder: RRD/Willard Cover Printer: Lehigh-Phoenix Color Text Font: 10/12, Times LT Std Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on appropriate page within text. Copyright © 2013, 2010, 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. All rights...
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...Part 1: Defining Marketing and the Marketing Process (Chapters 1–2) Part 2: Understanding the Marketplace and Consumers (Chapters 3–6) Part 3: Designing a Customer-Driven Strategy and Mix (Chapters 7–17) Part 4: Extending Marketing (Chapters 18–20) After examining customerdriven marketing strategy, we now take a deeper look at the marketing mix: the tactical tools that marketers use to implement their strategies and deliver superior customer value. In this and the next chapter, we’ll study how companies develop and manage products and brands. Then, in the chapters that follow, we’ll look at pricing, distribution, and marketing communication tools. The product is usually the first and most basic marketing consideration. We start with a seemingly simple question: What is a product? As it turns out, the answer is not so simple. Chapter Preview 8 Products, Services, Building and Brands Customer Value Before starting into the chapter, let’s look at an interesting brand story. Marketing is all about building brands that connect deeply with customers. So, when you think about top brands, which ones pop up first? Perhaps traditional megabrands such as Coca-Cola, Nike, or McDonald’s come to mind. Or maybe a trendy tech brand such as Google or Facebook. But if we asked you to focus on sports entertainment, you’d probably name ESPN. When it comes to your life and sports, ESPN probably has it covered. W The ESPN Brand: Every Sport Possible—Now Television: From its original...
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...INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING Background Marketing. Several definitions have been proposed for the term marketing. Each tends to emphasize different issues. Memorizing a definition is unlikely to be useful; ultimately, it makes more sense to thinking of ways to benefit from creating customer value in the most effective way, subject to ethical and other constraints that one may have. The 2006 and 2007 definitions offered by the American Marketing Association are relatively similar, with the 2007 appearing a bit more concise. Note that the definitions make several points: * A main objective of marketing is to create customer value. * Marketing usually involves an exchange between buyers and sellers or between other parties. * Marketing has an impact on the firm, its suppliers, its customers, and others affected by the firm’s choices. * Marketing frequently involves enduring relationships between buyers, sellers, and other parties. * Processes involved include “creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings.” Delivering customer value. The central idea behind marketing is the idea that a firm or other entity will create something of value to one or more customers who, in turn, are willing to pay enough (or contribute other forms of value) to make the venture worthwhile considering opportunity costs. Value can be created in a number of different ways. Some firms manufacture basic products (e.g., bricks) but provide relatively little value above...
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...[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] | INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING [pic] [pic] | | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | |[pic] | | | |[pic] |[pic] | Lars Perner, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Marketing Department of Marketing Marshall School of Business University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-0443, USA (213) 740-7127 INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING Background Marketing. Several definitions have been proposed for the term marketing. Each tends to emphasize different issues. Memorizing a definition is unlikely to be useful; ultimately, it makes more sense to thinking...
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