Case Study: Seinfeld Ad Campaign by Amex

American Express is a global, diversified financial services company headquartered in New York. The company is over 150 years old, founded in 1850. It is best known for its credit card, charge card, and travelers check business, but has numerous ancillary operations that are profit centers. On of the key factors in the improvement of American Express in the market is the continual thrust of its brand. Beginning in the 1960s American Express distinguished itself for two decades with several highly acclaimed campaigns. Advertising Age included two 1970s American Express campaigns (‘‘Do You Know Me?’’ and ‘‘Don’t Leave Home without It’’ featuring Karl Malden) on its list of the ‘‘50 Best Commercials.’’ The 1988 print campaign featuring photos of famous card members by Annie Leibovitz was a finalist for the book Advertising’s Ten Best of the Decade 1980—1990. But in 1990 AT&T Corp. disrupted the general purpose credit card market Continue reading

Concept of Organizational Effectiveness

Organizational effectiveness is defined as an extent to which an organization achieves its predetermined objectives with the given amount of resources and means without placing undue strain on its members. Sometimes efficiency and effectiveness are used as synonyms. However, there exists a difference between the two concepts. Therefore, it is important to explain the difference between the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency to understand why organizations may be effective but not efficient, or efficient but not effective. Effectiveness is a broad concept and takes into account a collection of factors both inside and outside an organization. It is commonly referred to as the degree to which predetermined goals are achieved. On the other hand, efficiency is a limited concept that pertains to the internal working of an organization. It refers to an amount of resources used to produce a particular unit of output. It is generally measured as the ratio Continue reading

Wage Differentials – Definition, Causes and Types

Wage differentials have a great economic and social significance; they are directly related to the allocation of the economic resources of a country, including manpower growth of the national income, and the pace of economic development. Social welfare activity depends, in a large measure, on such wage differentials as will: Cause labor to be allocated among different occupations, industries and, geographical areas in the economy in such a manner as to maximize the national product. Enable full employment of the resources of the economy to be attained; and Facilitate the most desirable rate of economic progress. Wage differentials reflect difference in the physical and mental abilities of workers, differences in productivity, in the efficiency of management and in consumer preferences, and act as sign posts for labor mobility. By providing an important incentive for labour mobility, they bring about a re-allocation of the labor force under changing circumstances. Under competitive Continue reading

Case Study: The Collaboration Between Sony and Ericsson

Nowadays, it’s very common for companies from different countries and sector to work together. In 2001, a joint venture company – Sony Ericsson Mobile communication has been established by a Japanese electronics company Sony Corporation and Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. The aim of this cooperation is to produce the mobile phone with multimedia communication solution to customers all over the world. The initial for this collaboration is to associate the Sony’s multimedia consumer electronics expertise and Ericsson’s technical knowledge in telecommunications. Once Sony Ericsson established, both of the companies stopped their individual mobile business. The Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications is a London-based 50:50 joint venture business. Before the collaboration, Ericsson ran its mobile business in the market for years and obtained 10.7% in the handset market in 2000. It has a great loss when faced the cheaper mobile phone producer as Nokia. Mobile phone is one of the core businesses Continue reading

Types of Demand

Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of a market economy. generally resulting in  market equilibrium  where  products  demanded at a price are equaled by products supplied at that price. Demand depends on the  price  of the commodity and refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers. The quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price; the relationship between price and quantity demanded is known as the demand relationship. Read: Concept of Demand in Managerial Economics The different types of demand are; i) Direct and Derived Demands Direct demand refers to demand for goods meant for final consumption; it is the demand for consumers’ goods like food items, readymade garments and houses. By contrast, derived demand refers to demand for goods which are needed Continue reading

9 Important Elements of a Quality Culture

Indeed, quality culture starts with top management. There need to be top management leadership to drive this culture of quality across the organization. For this to happen, business leaders and managers must have the commitment in setting up quality control programmes, strategic planning for quality and provide resources for quality. In addition, top management leadership role is also a distinguishing element of a quality culture. Adopting a democratic leadership style where workers are not punished for errors and failures and that continuous learning is what prevails in the organization. Management attitudes should be towards treating employees as members and remove barriers of superiors or subordinates. This suggests to everyone that the work of all members of the company is important and adds value to the final outputs. Members of the organization should focus on the purpose for which they are all here to get better and better at creating that Continue reading