Case Study of Rolls Royce: Innovating for the Future

Rolls Royce is a market leader in propulsion and distributed energy systems for both the defense and civil aerospace markets. Their commercial markets cover nuclear, gas turbine, and diesel technologies to power everything from small planes and trains to entire cities. The aerospace applications for innovation are where Rolls Royce has made significant investments and reaped interesting rewards. On the defense side of their business, they have over 16,000 engines in service. In the civil aerospace side of their business, they provide engines to airlines, private business and engines for helicopters. Major Changes in Industry The nature of the aerospace industry has relatively high barriers to entry as the cost for entry is high and requires specific skills and expertise. Nonetheless, the industry has been experiencing growth as the demand for flights increases resulting in the rise of aircraft manufacturing. Several factors have contributed to uncertainty in the aerospace industry Continue reading

Benefits of Advertising

Basically advertising is an economic institution. Advertising performs important economic function for the advertiser, affects economic decisions of audience and is an integral part of the entire national and international economic system. Information. One cannot debate the importance of information for consumers about various products, services and organizations to make advantageous economic decisions. The decisions made in the absence or with insufficient information may produce negative and undesirable consequences. Because of ignorance the consumer may purchase inferior product or pay higher prices and may not even know that the product exists. Through ads the information reaches a large number of audience in the shortest possible time. Brand image building. There is hardly any disagreement on this issue. Advertising plays an important role in building the brand image. Consumers develop mental images of brands that may appeal to different market segments. These images may have their root in real or assumed Continue reading

What is Corporate Communication?

By corporate communication we mean the corporation’s voice and the images it projects of itself to the various stakeholders. This includes areas such as corporate reputation, corporate advertising, and employee for communications, government relations and media management. We shall be discussing them at a later stage one by one. These days most of the bigger organizations have departments of corporate communication which appeared on the organizational chart along with traditional functions like marketing or accounting. The addition, corporate communication is also the processes accompany uses to communicate all its messages to key constituencies – a combination of meetings, interviews, speeches, reports, images advertising, and online communication. Ideally, corporate communication is an attitude of toward communication or a set of mental habits that employees internalize. The result is good communication practices that permeate an organisation and are present in all its communications with constituencies. Corporate communications are defined as the products Continue reading

Positioning and Differentiation of Services

Services firms are not identifying their key market segments and then determining how they wish consumers to perceive both their company and its products and services. Positioning is of particular significant in the services sector as it places an intangible service within a more tangible frame of reference. Thus the concept of positioning stems from a consideration of how an organization wishes its target customer to view its products and services in relationship to those of its competitors and their actual, or perceived, needs. “Positioning is concerned with the identification, development and communication of a differentiated advantage which makes the organization’s products and services perceived as superior and distinctive to those of its competitors in the mind of its target customers.” Positioning offers the opportunity to differentiate any service. Each service firm and its goods and services has a position or image in the consumer’s mind and this influences purchase Continue reading

Exchange Rate Pass-Through

According to Bhagawati (1991) the phrase “pass-through” was first used in economics literature by Steve Magee (1973) in his paper while explaining the impact of currency depreciation.   Since then the concept has been widely used in the literature.   In the case of international trade the suppliers of commodities deal with two currencies, the domestic currency against which commodities are procured, and the destination currency, the currencies of the importing country.   Similarly, the importers of the commodities also face two currencies.   With the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System in 1973, the international financial system opted largely for the flexible exchange rate system.   Along with this world has witnessed an increasing degree of volatility.   When a particular currency depreciates vis-à-vis US dollar, then the prices of traded goods denominated in the depreciation currency will increase. Suppose the depreciating currency is the Indian rupee and the Continue reading

Differences Between Management Control and Operational Control

Meaning of Operational Control Operational control or task control is the process of assuring that specific tasks are carried out effectively and efficiently. The focus of operational control is on individual tasks or operations. For instance, it is concerned with scheduling and controlling individual jobs through a shop rather than with measuring the performance of the shop as a whole. It involves control over individual items for inventory rather than the management of inventor as a whole. Operational control is concerned with activities that can be programmed. For instance, if the demand for an item, the cost of storing it, its production cost and production-time, and the loss involved in not filling an order are known, then the optimum inventory level and the optimum procurement schedule can be prepared. Automated plants, production scheduling, inventory control, order processing, payroll accounting, cheque handling, etc are examples of activities that are susceptible to Continue reading