Case Study: Pfizer’s Strategy Analysis

Business-Level Strategy Pfizer, Inc. has chosen the value creation alternative of differentiation. Differentiation forces Pfizer to increase costs, resulting in an increase in product price, and most importantly an increase in customer perceived value. Pfizer’s differentiation can be achieved by producing high-quality, innovative drugs which require extensive research and development as well as patent protection. For example, Pfizer spent approximately eight billion dollars on 100 research and development projects in 2018.  Furthermore, Pfizer, Inc.’s business-level strategy is known as broad differentiation. This strategy enables Pfizer to serve a large market while still creating value through its differentiation. A key tradeoff associated with a differentiation strategy, although creating a high perceived value of the brand, is the implementation of a high-cost structure. A high-cost structure demands that consumers pay premium prices for its products, which can be unattractive to some. It is near impossible to provide a low-cost yet differentiated product Continue reading

Case Study- “Entry of LIC into Banking: Is it a Wise Decision?”

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is a long-term player with long-term resources garnered at a low cost. It has chosen Corporation Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce, for investments in their equity shares. These two public sector banks have the distinction of turning out superlative performance. The business per employee and intermediation costs for these two banks are the lowest in the industry. So are there Non-Performing Assets. Corporation bank incidentally, is the only public sector bank, where the recent voluntary retirement schemes has not been implemented, as it does not have any excess staff to be sent out. In the Mangalore based Corporation bank are perhaps the biggest gambles over undertaken by the two giants. That, despite the state banks status as one of the best-managed bank in the country. Competition is intense in both domence at last count there were 19 public sectors, 34 private sectors, and Continue reading

Training and Development – Meaning, Definition and Need

Meaning of Training and Development Training typically involves providing the employees the knowledge and skills needed to do a particular task or a job through attitude change. It is concerned with imparting and developing specific skills for a particular purpose. For example, Flippo has defined training as “the act of increasing the skills of an employee for doing a particular job”. Thus, training is a process of learning a sequence of programmed behavior. This behavior, being programmed, is relevant to a specific phenomenon, that is, a job. The term development refers broadly to the nature and direction of change induced in employees, particularly managerial personnel through the process of training and educative process. National Industrial Conference Board has defined development as “Managerial Development is all those activities and programmes when recognized and controlled, have substantial influence in changing the capacity of the individual to perform his assignment better and in Continue reading

Emotional Quotient (EQ) Vs. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) – Which One Is More Important?

Intelligence is a term that is difficult to define, and it can mean many different things to different people. Intelligence is often defined as the general mental ability to learn and apply knowledge to manipulate your environment, as well as the ability to reason and have abstract thought. In education, Intelligence is defined as the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or challenging situations. In psychology, it is the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria; for example IQ test. It is thought from deriving a combination of inherited characteristics and environmental such as developmental and social factors. General intelligence is often said to comprise various specific abilities like verbal ability, ability to apply logic in solving problems. There are two types of intelligence quotients: emotional and intelligence quotient. Emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ) is Continue reading

Case Study: The Rise and Fall of Enron

Background on the History of Enron Enron was an American Gas Company that was originally called Natural Gas Company in the early 1930s. InterNorth was a holding company that was located in Nebraska and in 1979 purchased Natural Gas Company. In 1985, Enron was born following the merger of InterNorth and Houston Natural Gas. Following the merger, in 1987 Enron discovered that oil traders in New York have overextended the company’s account by $1 billion dollars, which they were able to work down to $142 million. This put Enron in massive debt. For the new company to survive, Enron needed new, innovative, and strategic business plans to generate profits and improve cash flows. In 1988 Enron opened its first overseas office in England. “Come to Jesus” was a gathering by the top heads at Enron to come up with a new strategy to get the company out of debt and Continue reading

Application of Economics to Business Management

Managerial economics is the discipline, which deals with the application of economic theory to business management. Managerial Economics thus lies on the margin between economics and business management and serves as the bridge between the two disciplines. The application of economics to business management or the integration of economic theory with business practice, as Spencer and Siegelman have put it, has the following aspects : Reconciling traditional theoretical concepts of economics in relation to the actual business behavior and conditions: In economic theory, the technique of analysis is that of model building. This involves making some assumptions and, drawing conclusions on the basis of the assumptions about the behavior of the firms. The assumptions, however, make the theory of the firm unrealistic since it fails to provide a satisfactory explanation of what the firms actually do. Hence, there is need to reconcile the theoretical principles based on simplified assumptions with Continue reading