...announcement of a technical fix for its sticky gas pedals – which can lead to sudden acceleration problems - is not likely to bring a quick end to the company’s current recall nightmare. Having already halted sales and production of eight of its top-selling cars in the U.S. - and recalled more than 9 million cars worldwide, in two separate recalls – Toyota faces the prospect of billions of dollars in charges and operating losses. The Toyota brand, once almost synonymous with top quality, has taken a heavy hit. While all the facts are not yet in, it’s clear that Toyota’s crisis didn’t emerge full-blown overnight. Fixing the problem and ensuring that something like it doesn’t happen again will require an all-out effort, from assembly line to the boardroom. Even then, there are no guarantees. Maintaining a good corporate reputation in the 21st century is tricky business indeed. Toyota’s case offers a number of valuable lessons for other business people and companies to consider. Here, for starters, are five: Aggressive growth can create unmanageable risk. Toyota’s desire to supplant General Motors as the world’s number-one car-maker pushed it to the outer limits of quality control. “The evidence that Toyota was expanding too much and too quickly started surfacing a couple of years ago. Not on the company's bottom line, but on its car-quality ratings,” writes Paul Ingrassia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Ingrassia, who has just authored...
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...announcement of a technical fix for its sticky gas pedals – which can lead to sudden acceleration problems - is not likely to bring a quick end to the company’s current recall nightmare. Having already halted sales and production of eight of its top-selling cars in the U.S. - and recalled more than 9 million cars worldwide, in two separate recalls – Toyota faces the prospect of billions of dollars in charges and operating losses. The Toyota brand, once almost synonymous with top quality, has taken a heavy hit. While all the facts are not yet in, it’s clear that Toyota’s crisis didn’t emerge full-blown overnight. Fixing the problem and ensuring that something like it doesn’t happen again will require an all-out effort, from assembly line to the boardroom. Even then, there are no guarantees. Maintaining a good corporate reputation in the 21st century is tricky business indeed. Toyota’s case offers a number of valuable lessons for other business people and companies to consider. Here, for starters, are five: Aggressive growth can create unmanageable risk. Toyota’s desire to supplant General Motors as the world’s number-one car-maker pushed it to the outer limits of quality control. “The evidence that Toyota was expanding too much and too quickly started surfacing a couple of years ago. Not on the company's bottom line, but on its car-quality ratings,” writes Paul Ingrassia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Ingrassia, who has just authored...
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...international presence in over 170 countries worldwide. It manufactures cars, pickups, minivans, and SUVs include models such as Camry, Corolla, 4Runner, Land Cruiser, Sienna, the luxury Lexus line, and full-sized pickup trucks. It has huge financial strength, a sales turnover of 131,511 million for 1997 and sales growth of 29.3%. It is the second largest car manufacturer in the world, after General Motors. Some of the key reasons for its success include: Successful brand - Toyota has developed a trusted brand based on quality, good performance and for being environmentally friendly. Innovation - Toyota is at the forefront of car manufacturing innovation. It was the first car manufacturer to embrace lean manufacturing (known as Toyota Production System) which is a faster, more efficient process which leads to less waste compared to the traditional batch and queue method of manufacturing. It also applied JIT (Just in Time manufacturing) and smart automation. Product Development - Key to the success in the car market is new models which stimulate demand and loyalty to the Toyota brand. Toyota has reputation for producing cars which are greener, more fuel efficient, and of good performance. Toyota has sought to meet government requirements (for reducing the impact on the environment), economic changes (as prices of fuel - oil continues to rise) through the development of hybrid fuels. Toyota was the first car manufacturer to market hybrid (gas and electric) fuel, with the launch...
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...Multimethod Approach for Creating New Business Models: The General Motors OnStar Project Vince Barabba General Motors Corporation, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, 400 Renaissance Center, P.O. Box 400, Detroit, Michigan 48265 Chet Huber • Fred Cooke General Motors Corporation, OnStar Headquarters, 1400 Stephenson Highway, Troy, Michigan 48083 Nick Pudar General Motors Corporation, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, 400 Renaissance Center, P.O. Box 400, Detroit, Michigan 48265 Jim Smith General Motors Corporation, OnStar Headquarters, 1400 Stephenson Highway, Troy, Michigan 48083 Mark Paich Decisio, 320 West Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906 vince.barabba@gm.com • chet.huber@onstar.com • fred.cooke@onstar.com • nick.pudar@gm.com • jim.smith@onstar.com • m.paich@att.net We developed a multimethod modeling approach to evaluate strategic alternatives for GM’s OnStar communications system. We used dynamic modeling to address some decisions GM faced in 1997, such as the company’s choice between incremental and aggressive marketing strategies for OnStar. We used an integrated simulation model for analyzing the new telematics industry, consisting of six sectors: customer acquisition, customer choice, alliances, customer service, financial dynamics, and dealer behavior. The modeling effort had important financial, organizational, and societal results. The OnStar business now has two million subscribers, an 80 percent market share of...
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...GMAT GRADUATE MANAGEMENT ADMISSION TEST McGraw-Hill’s 2008 Edition James Hasik Stacey Rudnick Ryan Hackney New York | Chicago | San Francisco | Lisbon London | Madrid | Mexico City | Milan | New Delhi San Juan | Seoul | Singapore | Sydney | Toronto Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 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. 0-07-151120-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-149340-9. 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, at george_hoare@mcgraw-hill.com or (212) 904-4069. TERMS OF USE This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (“McGraw-Hill”) and its licensors reserve all rights...
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...conduct. To act in an ethical way is to confirm to accepted standards or moral behavior. It is true that all people like to behave ethically but when person have to make difficult choice between person interest and social interest the problem of ethics becomes dominant. Marketing Managers have to face challenges of balancing the best interest of the consumers, organization and society and has to distinguish between what is ethical and what is unethical and act accordingly Your text here Your text here Your text here Your text here A company’s Managers play an important role in establishing its ethical tone. If Managers behave as if the only thing that matter is profit, employees are likely to act in a like manner. A company’s leaders are responsible for setting standards for what is and is not acceptable employee behavior. Managers to play an active role in creating a working environment where employee are encouraged and rewarded for acting in an ethical manner. Marketing Ethic Is an Area that deals with the moral Principles behind marketing. Ethics in Marketing applies to different spheres such as in product, pricing, placing, and promotion ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS IN PERFORMANCE * The World’s Third Largest auto manufacturing company. * Situated in United State with its Head Quarter at Detroit, Michigan. * About 209, 00 People are employed in the Company in Major Region Ethical Dilemma Basic elements of ethical decisions related to Individual’s...
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...MIS Mini-cases -- 1 of 30 Cases for Use in Management Information Systems MIS Mini-cases -- 2 of 30 MIS Mini-cases -- 3 of 30 Case 01 -- Freeway Ford You are a management consultant working for Franklin Absolom, the majority stockholder for a group of 10 automobile dealerships. He has asked you to spend several days at Freeway Ford, a dealership that is not performing up to its potential. You are not to go ―looking for trouble‖: instead, your assignment is to find ways to help management at the dealership take advantage of opportunities. One day while you are talking with James Kahler, the sales manager for Freeway Ford, you realize that the dealership only uses transaction processing systems—it is not realizing the full potential of the information it has gathered for managerial decision making. For example, Freeway Ford knows the purchase date and owner of every car it sells, but it never contacts owner about routine maintenance. Freeway Ford know that people who purchase a new car generally trade it in for another new car 3 to 4 years later, but the dealership does not contact these previous customers. Another opportunity comes from used car purchasing and sales. Every car has a vehicle identification number (VIN), and the dealership uses this number to check for known problems with a used car before it makes a purchase. A data bank of car insurance claims histories and major repairs is kept on a set of CDs that is sent to the dealership each month. At the...
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...rambles on and on. Without clear paragraphs, this review will likely lose your interest, and you may skip the movie altogether! When you are the writer, it is helpful to position yourself as a reader. Ask yourself whether you can focus easily on each point you make. Effective writers use a single paragraph for each new idea they introduce. Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable, and distinct units. Each paragraph focuses on only one main idea and presents coherent sentences to support that single point. Because all the sentences in one paragraph support the same point, a paragraph may stand on its own. Each paragraph is shaped by Purpose: the reason why the writer composes the paragraph. < Tone: the attitude the writer conveys about the paragraph’s subject. < Audience: the individual or group whom the writer intends to address. < Content: the written material in the paragraph. < 174 WRITING FOR SUCCESS To create longer assignments and to discuss more than one point, writers group together paragraphs and link them together with transitions. The assignment’s purpose, audience, and tone dictate the content, which determines what paragraphs cover and how each will support a main point. The main point of the paragraph is the message you want to share with the...
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...Evaluation Chapter Fifteen: Direct Response 476 Chapter Sixteen: Sales Promotion, Events, and Sponsorships 508 Chapter Seventeen: Public Relations 542 Chapter Eighteen: Special Advertising Situations 576 Chapter Nineteen: Evaluation of Effectiveness 610 INTRODUCTION Welcome to the Test Item File for the Wells/Moriarty/Burnett Advertising: Principles and Practice, 7th edition text. This test bank was designed with the student and instructor in mind. All questions in this manual are drawn directly from the master text. APPLICATION QUESTIONS: New to the seventh edition of the Test Item File is a section dedicated entirely to application questions. This section, available in each chapter of the test bank, offers real-life situations that take students beyond basic chapter concepts and vocabulary covered in the General Content section, and asks them to apply concepts covered in the chapters. Each chapter in the Test Item File contains 150 questions, with the following breakdown: 110...
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...readings 1. It pays to give Allowing consumers to set their own prices can be good for business; even better if the firms give some of it to charity http://www.economist.com/whichmba/it-pays-to-give?fsrc=nlw|mgt|01-12-2011|management_thinking [pic]IN OCTOBER 2007 Radiohead, a British rock group, released its first album in four years, “In Rainbows”, as a direct digital download. The move drew a fair bit of attention (including from this newspaper) not only because it represented a technological thumb in the eye to the traditional music industry, but also because the band allowed listeners to pay whatever they wished for it. Some 60% of those who seized the opportunity paid nothing at all, but the band seemed pleased with the result; one estimate had it earning nearly $3m from the experiment. One group outside the music industry taking an interest was a trio of professors then at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego: Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy and Leif Nelson (who is now at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley). Inspired, they designed a series of experiments to gauge whether pay-what-you-want pricing would work for other businesses. Their most recent experiment, co-authored with Amber Brown of Disney Research and published in Science, also stirred in a new element: would it make any difference if firms donated some of the pay-what-you-want fee to charity? The authors set up their pricing experiment at the exit...
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...concepts in the study of consumer behavior. Introduction Why is it difficult to market any product to consumers? The reason is simple: Consumers are complex and constantly changing. Not only is it difficult to figure what marketing program will work but also what worked yesterday may not work today. Thus marketers must constantly improve their understanding of customers. Understanding consumer behavior and knowing your customers is never simple. Customers may say one thing but do another. They may not be in touch with their deeper motivation. They may respond to last minute influences. Some companies like Kenya Airways, Equity Bank, Microsoft, Coca-Cola e.t.c have stood to profit from understanding how and why their customers buy. On the other hand not understanding your customer’s motivations, needs and preferences can hurt. In Kenya, companies like Elliott’s and Sang Yong Motors failed. Consider also the case of Kodak when it introduced its Advantage camera and proudly marketed it as a high-tech product but to a generation (usually referred to as middle-aged baby comers) for which the bells and whistles of new technology had lost their appeal. It was a costly bust. Basic definitions and concepts Marketing: Just to remind ourselves we can say that marketing is typically seen as the task of creating, promoting and delivering goods and services to consumers and business. The aim of all marketing is to meet and satisfy target customer needs and wants. Activity: Students...
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...Philadelphians. But Steven E. Landsburg...is one economist who fits the bill. In a wide-ranging, easily digested, unbelievably contrarian survey of everything from why popcorn at movie houses costs so much to why recycling may actually reduce the number of trees on the planet, the University of Rochester professor valiantly turns the discussion of vexing economic questions into an activity that ordinary people might enjoy." —JOE QUEENAN, The Wall Street Journal "The Armchair Economist is a wonderful little book, written by someone for whom English is a first (and beloved) language, and it contains not a single graph or equation...Landsburg presents fascinating concepts in a form easily accessible to noneconomists." —ERIK M. JENSEN, The Cleveland Plain Dealer "...enormous fun from its opening page...Landsburg has done something extraordinary: He has expounded basic economic principles with wit and verve." -DAN SELIGMAN, Fortune "An ingenious and highly original presentation of some central principles of economics for the proverbial Everyman. Its breezy tone conceals the subtlety of the analysis. Guaranteed to puncture some illusions and to make you think." —MILTON FRIEDMAN CONTENTS Introduction I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT The Power of Incentives: How Seat Belts Kill - 3 Rational Riddles: Why the Rolling Stones Sell Out - 10 Truth or Consequences: How to Split a Check or Choose a Movie - 20 The Indifference Principle: Who Cares If the Air Is Clean? - 31 The Computer Game of Life:...
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...Needs Theory 29 18.0 Goal-setting Theory in Toyota 30 19.0 Impacts Goal-setting Theory 32 20.0 Conclusion 33 21.0 References 34 1.0 Introduction One of the most important human activities is managing . Ever since people began forming groups to accomplish aims they could not achieve as individuals . Managing has been essential to ensure the coordination of individuals efforts . As society has come to rely increasingly on group effort as many organized groups have been grown larger , the task of managers have been rising in importance . The term management drives from latin word “Manu agere” which means to lead by hand . Lead by hand means , giving directions . It also implies that the leading person first goes where he or she wants to send the followers (Shied, 2010) . According to Drucker (1974) management is the activity of getting things done with the help of others peoples and resources . It means that management is a process of accomplishing work with the help of other people . According to Weijrich and Koontz (1993) “Management is process of planning , leading , organizing and controlling people within a group in order to achieve goals . It is also the guidance and control of action...
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...Think Strategically This page intentionally left blank T H I N K STRATEGICALLY Xavier Gimbert Associate Professor, Business Policy Department, ESADE Business School © Xavier Gimbert 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and...
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...Reciprocation: The Old Give and Take…and Take 3 Commitment and Consistency: Hobgoblins of the Mind 4 Social Proof: Truths Are Us 5 Liking: The Friendly Thief 6 Authority: Directed Deference 7 Scarcity: The Rule of the Few Epilogue Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments About the Author Cover Copyright About the Publisher v 1 13 43 87 126 157 178 205 211 225 241 INTRODUCTION I can admit it freely now. All my life I’ve been a patsy. For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fundraisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some of these people have had dishonorable motives. The others—representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance—have had the best of intentions. No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I have always found myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to the sanitation workers’ ball. Probably this long-standing status as sucker accounts for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance? I wondered why it is that a request stated in a certain way will be rejected, while a request that asks for the same favor in a slightly...
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