SWOT ANALYSIS

This week, we learnt SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is about the strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. I think that is pretty interesting. And i would love to apply SWOT analysis to easy jet case study.

Speaking to the strength, i think easy jet has many strengths which can make it become one of the biggest budge airlines in the UK. Firstly, easy jet has a strong reputation and brand awareness. This is because that easy jet has been fruitful as it enjoys broad recognition around Europe ane especially in UK. Secondly, easy jet has low cost and low fares as well. Easy jet always keeps costs low by eliminating the unnecessary costs and 'frills' which characterise 'traditional' airlines. For instance, they will provide online booking to reduce distribution costs. Moreover, they will maximise the utilisation of airport and aircraft. Furthermore, they will not provide the free lunch as well in order to lower their fares,  Thirdly, easy jet has a wide range of destinations in Europe. Lastly, they provide speedy and flexible operations as well.

Talking about the weakness, i think easy jet has limited departure airports which means that the main airport for easy jet is Luton airport. Although easy jet flights to any Europe big cities such as Paris, Rome, Milan, it still misses some important airports to stay just like London Heathrow airport. For most people who live in London, this is a very inconvenient point. That will cost more money for the customers. However, the flight fees are cheaper than other airlines, they need to pay extra money to go to Luton airport.  Moreover, they provide the online booking service, but for some elder people or the people who do not use the internet, it is inconvenient to book on line.  Therefore, they should better to add some telephone line services to give more help to some people who need help.

And the opportunity for easy jet, i think they have a large market to expand. For example, European deregulation 'open skies' has transformed the industry restructuring of major airlines frees slots in airports and resource, which makes easy jet more easily to expand their business bases more throughout UK and mainland Europe.  And as the new markets, besides in Europe, easy jet could find out more potential markets, such as Asia. This is because Asia is becoming a flourishing travel place, there must be more and more tourists and residents want to travel around by air. This is a big potential market for easy jet. Moreover, the internet revolution will also helps easy jet as more and more people are using the internet service, the booking system of easy jet is more accessible to the customers.

When talking about the threat, easy jet is facing the increasing competition as well. There are more and more competitions bring saturated market and more low-fare new entrants are affecting easy jet. On the other hand, the developing IT will affect easy jet too as the new technology on telecommunication will possibility lead to the decline of frequency on business trip, more and more companies are using long distance meetings. Therefore, it will influence the business flight for easy jet.  Furthermore, the increasing fuel price will also influence easy jet as the group fuel risk management policy aims to provide protection against sudden and significant increases in jet fuel price while ensuring easy jet may also benefit from price reductions. Lastly, the high bargaining power of suppliers will also affect easy jet.

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Final blog ---Globalisation & CSR

Time is elapsing so fast, our first term is almost finish. During these two months, I gained a lot in different aspects.  Not only in my study, but also in my personal developing.

In the business and management lessons, we learnt something about globalisation and CSR. I found that very interesting as it is very close to our daily life. It is already be a trend and is going to invade all over the world. 

This is a funny but meaningful video that i want to share with you: 

For the globalisation, it is no longer be the new topic anymore as economic globalisation is everywhere nowadays. No matter the food, service, products, information, technology or labour are already become almost the same. There are serval reasons that make this happen includes political, technological, market and costs, rising real living standards and competitive.

Globalisation can be seen as a positive, negative or even marginal process. However, some may argue that globalisation is not a positive tendency as it will lead to the problem of lack of characteristic which means that everywhere will be the same. I agree with this opinion as I think that globalisation is a good thing somehow, but if over-globalisation it will become negative in contrast. For instance, whenever and wherever we go to any country or city, from China to Africa, we can find a McDonald's or Starbucks very easily as they are already spread throughout the rest of the world. When we go shopping in a shopping mall, we can always see the same brands such as TOP-SHOP, LV, PRADA, GAP everywhere includes in Asian counties like singapore, Japan or Thailand, in Western countries like Sweden, France or Spain. 

shopping centre in Lyon France 

 shopping centre in Bangkok

I think this is not a healthy situation as the brands are slowly to monopolise our world. The problem of globalisation is that we are losing some special and featured local boutiques because they cannot competitive with the commercial companies. I had read an article which is about the globalisation of economic and I think that is very interesting, the book called Jonathan Perraton, David Goldblatt , David Held & Anthony Mcgrew (1997) The globalisation of economic activity, New Political Economy, 2:2, 257-277.

Talking about CSR which means that corporate social responsibility, it divided to two parts internal and external responsibilities. In the internal responsibilities, it's about the business itself should bear the responsibility to make sure pay equally and fair to the every employee and do not use child labour. But nowadays, still have some companies are using child labour which is really unethical and inhumanity. For instance, NIKE is one of the companies who using the child labour. Nike is using child labour in the production of its soccer balls in Pakistan. But with the problem of child labour, did we really look into the matter of this problem? No, we didn't! Even the government in Pakistan, they didn't take enough actions to combat this serious situation. And other organisations such as WTO, did they do enough to solve this problem? Yes, but it's really inadequate. They do try to boycott NIKE, but it does not helpful. I think that we should really aware of the problem that child labour and cheap labour. 

http://www1.american.edu/TED/nike.htm

When talking about the external responsibilities, we should bear the responsibility on protect the environment and avoid animal cruelty. But tracing back to the reality, did we really do that? The answer is obviously----NO! Most of the people are just care about the profits but not the environment! Therefore, we should really support the company who will protect the environment. For example, Rockwood Lithium company which is doing some special metals, they will use anhydrous lithium hydroxide which can remove carbon dioxide from closed air circulating systems. Other examples are Oxsilan, Gardobond and Naftoseal. These companies will aware about the importance of protect the environment. We should give more support to those companies who will support the environment. I think that is not only the government's responsibilities, but also everyone's responsibility as we all living in the same globe, that is our collective responsibilities.  

http://www.rockwoodspecialties.com/rock_english/she/she_companies.asp

PESTLE anaylis

Last week, we learnt the micro environment in the business and management lessons. It's about Porter's five forces including the threat of new entry, the threat of substitution, buyer power, supplier power and competitive rivalry. And this week, we learnt the macro environment which including political, socio-cultural, economic, legal, technological and environmental. Micro and Macro analysis are both in order to identify whether new products, service or business have the potential to be profitable or not. But the fundamental difference between them is that we cannot do much to change the macro environment except to develop the strategy. In contrast, micro environment is much easier to change and control the situation. But we should both look into the matter when we decide to do business.

I would like to use the example of HSBC bank to discuss about how the macro environment affect the hospital organisation. 

In the political factors, there are many situations will affect the bank. For instance, the government changes its legislations like increasing the taxation. It will directly influent the bank as they might need to hand in more taxes. Therefore, their profits will be decreasing. Moreover, government stability will also affect the bank as if the political situation is not stable, citizens will lose their confidence to invest and it will also stop the potential investors to invest the UK market. 

In the socio-cultural aspect, people's changes in lifestyle and their attitudes to work can also affect the bank. For example, people are having more free time and leisure time in the UK nowadays, they might have more time to study the finance and do some investments. Furthermore, the distribution of income will also affect the bank. According to The Economic Times news on 7th November, it shows that the UK proposes reduced protections for final-salary pension schemes which means that they might decline the pensions in the coming future. It will affect the bank as people will be more conservative on spending money. Therefore, less people will do the investments. 

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-07/news/43776303_1_new-pension-schemes-inflation-protection-retirement

In the economic aspect, consumer activity, confidence, spending patterns will also affect the bank. If the consumer have more confident and willing to spend money on investment, it can helps the bank a lot. For instance, there was a piece of news from BBC News on 4th November 2013 which is talking about how the profit surge 30% because of the strong performance in the UK and Hong Kong.  And it can also shows that the importance of the economic relationship with the potential markets as Hong Kong continues to benefit from its close economic relationship with mainland china. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-2480079

And the variable business costs will also affect the business. For example, according to the BBC News on the 29th August 2013, HSBC increased its charges for 700,000 small business customers, many of them losing their free banking service. It will also affect the HSBC Bank.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23890694

In the legal aspect, changes in law will affect the bank as well. As the example above (HSBC increased its charges for 700,000 small business customers, many of them losing their free banking service), it will be a reason that affect the business. Besides, the employment and safety law will also affect the business. The video in the following ground is talking about the HSBC bank plans to cut 14,000 jobs in order to reduce the costs.

In the environmental aspect, green issues, energy consumption, renewable or green energy will affect the organisation as well.  

http://youtu.be/hvtB2459kRw This video is talking about how to building a Low Carbon Britain and the policy to attract green investment to the UK. 

The fifth week

As time goes by, it's mid-term this week which means that we will have a one-week holidays. Study life is getting more and more busy these days.

In this week, we learned a lot about the five forces of Porter's which including the supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, threat of substitution and threat of new entry. I am very interested in Porter's theory. I think it can be very helpful for those people who want to start a business as he will clearly analysis about the different situation about the business. It can identify whether the new products , services or business have the potential to be profitable or not.

I used to think that running a business is not as difficult as what it is, Now, after the lessons for  this week i figured out that running a business is a very hard job which we need to manage a lot of people, keep in touch with the local markets and have the good relationships with the suppliers etc.

I would like to talk about the Primark. Primark is the lagest clothes and popular retailer in the UK as their low price, they attract lots of customers. And they provide variety clothes to women and men as well.



classical economics predicts that revalry between companiese should drive profits to zero. This is partly down to the threat of substitutes. Take Primark as an example, there are many similar types of clothes retailer in the UK such as H&M, Newlook, Topshop, Jackwills and so forth. But the point is this kind of threatens cannnot hit the Primark as they have a strong point to compared with other retailers. The lower price and they have plenty of choices. They use very cheap labour costs to produce their products in order to decrease the retail price to attact the customers. But it also bring another problem out, poor labour environment. The news in the following is talking about the poor labour conditions about Primark.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24646942

Talking about the bargaining power of buyers, buyers can choose whatever they want if they think is not reaonable to buy.In other words, customers are price sensitive. They can afftect the business directly. For Primark, they will also need to bear the bargaining power of buyers, therefore, they did a lot to save their customers and attract the potencial customers such as always have pomotions and try to lower the price as much as possible.

And the bargaining power of suppliers, there are many suppliers of a particular product. Suppliers switching costs relative to firm switching costs. Primark has enough potential suppliers as they can find some cheap factories in the third countries to produce such as India.
   

The entry of competitors,  it is not a easy job for some new companies to enter the clothing industry, there are many cut-throat competition in nowadays. The barries to entry are including the brand quity, customer's loyalty to the brand etc. Primark has advantages in this area as they provide a cheap price but good quality products to customers. Therefore, it would not be a problem for Primark because they gained enough trust from their customers and the reputation is really good always.

I think Porter's five forces are very useful, it can not only help us to analyse the possibility to run a company, but also can know about the profitability. 

The fourth week

Time is elapsing so fast, arrived here for a month already. People always say that happy time is always too soon, that's actually quite true.  


During this week, we learnt some major contributors and some important theories as well. I would like to discuss two of the contributors, they are Frederick Taylor and Max Weber and their ideas are quite similar. 

 Frederick Taylor believed the way to achieve business is to ensure each worker reached their state of maximum efficiency. In other words, the primary goal of this method of management was to improve economic efficiency and particularly to improve labour productivity. He urged scientific management which was also knowns as "Taylorism" and there are 5 principles in his classical theory. Some people might think that this theory is ceased to be in today's society as it already outdated, however, it still appear in nowadays. I think the best examples to represent scientific management are Burger King, McDonalds hamburger chain or call centres as their management structures are as same as what Taylor think. They need to ensured discipline and functioning business. 
I agreed the people who support this management structure as i think that is the most efficient way to manage a large company. If we select the best person to do the job which he or she is very good at that, it can not only minimise the time and money, but also enhance the productivity. Take Mcdonald's as an example, it is popular everywhere in the world, that's the best evidence to show us the management structure is still working no matter how old fashion it is. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxeYXGNG5Uc

Speaking to another contributor Max Weber who thinks that Bureaucracy is very important, i think this structure is suitable for some modern state or capitalism society. This type of structure allows workers to specialize in the functional area in which they work, such as Finance and Marketing. Every level and line of the authority is clearly divided. For instance, the manager is above the supervisor, the supervisor is above the normal employer. People cared about the levels which is high or not and everyone need to follow the formal rules and regulations in order to achieve the maximum productivity.  The most classical main characteristic is division of labour which means that each person just assigned to do one task only. They believe that it can help them to be more productive because workers are doing the same task everyday, it can minimise the chance of mistakes. But actually i think it will both have the positive and negative effects. Workers might feel too bored when they doing the same task everyday, they might become lass competent and fell unhappy or lose the sense of accomplishment. It will affect the productivity level as well. Therefore, using the tide control or not is all about the different style or scale of the company. It depends on the company is big or small, it's more suitable to use this tide control to manage a big company. 

finance

marketing

    I think after reading the text books and some other related books and videos, I knew more about the different types of management strategics. It is really interesting and make me fallen in love with this subject.

The third week

Hi, blog, haven't see you for a week already, kind of miss you! This week was so enjoyable and fun for me i did and learned a lot.

Speaking of my group project for Business and Management, it was great and i think we all did a great job. We chose Hollister co. for our presentation topic. In order to make our project perfectly we all tried our best and gained a lot during this project. It is my idea to choose this organisation as i used to work for Hollister during the summer holiday in Hong Kong, therefor, i can know more about the organisation which will help us a lot when doing the project. And another two of my group mates agreed me a lot because they are also the fans of Hollister as well. I feel so lucky that we have the same ideas.

This is the logo of Hollister

This picture was the last summer i work in HK  

They are my colleagues

 preparing before the presentation!  we all dressed in Hollister style 

colleagues 

After the project, i think i have more concepts about an organisation. For instance,  how does the company run, what is the challenges that they might face, how does the organisation add value to its resources and how is the management of the organisation structured. I used to think that running an organisation is not as difficult and complicated as it, but now i know that is not easy to run a business. And another main point that i leant is how to cooperate and coordinate with my group mates. We did face some difficulties when doing the project such as we are not good at using the prezi, therefore we need to learn it as quickly as we can. Furthermore, we need to find a suitable time for everyone in order to do the project and need to keep to an agreement of our ideas. I think team spirit is very important for everyone as we need to work in a team now or even in the future.


Moreover, we leaned about organisational structures. There are many key terms we need to remember, such as about the informal and formal structures. After the lesson i just noticed that informal structures like network of relationships, the grapevine and communication are that important for an organisation. That's very interesting for me. We also learned about the purpose of structures and different structures including Tall, Flat, Matrix, Mechanistic and Organic. And some other important terms of span of control, chain of command, centralisation and decentralisation etc.

I found that Silo Culture is quite interesting, therefore i did some research about it. I figured out that silo culture can occur in an organisation that when a team or department shared common tasks but derives their power and status from their group. They are less likely to share their resources or ideas with other groups or welcome suggestions as to how they might improve due to the reason that every group thinks  they are the best. And silo culture is very popular in the business and organisational communities.

My second week

Time flies, it's already the second week for me already! It makes me love Sussex University this big family very much! Everyone enjoying the time here, studying, living, having fun together.

We will hold some house party sometimes, like hot pot! All of us have dinner together and have fun! It actually not only can get to know each other better, but also can train us the ability of managing a gathering, such as how to separate the jobs and how to spend the money and get the best food. Business and management are always happen in our daily life. If we can master it, we can definitely master well our life! 

They are my lovely classmates! We are having fun together always!

We had Hot Pot last night! We all enjoy it very much!

This is the hot pot! 

This week's business lesson, i learned a lot of basis concepts. For example, we learned about what is  management, what is the principles of management, and some important people of management. They are Mintzberg, Herzberg, Henry Fayol and Frederick Taylor. I'm kind of interested in each of them and i will do some research about them as well. 

Henry Mintzberg

Henry Fayol------Principle of Management

Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Taylor -----Classical school of management

I would like to talk about the best management approach to the company's development. I think is Mayo's human relations. Human relations approach is a school of management that emphasises the importance of social processes at work. The reasons are in the followings.

First, Mayo cared about the relationships between employees and employers. He thinks that employees will directly affect the company's profits. It is very important for managers to interact and communicate with the employees, know about what they need and what they want. Take Google as an example, they provide a very good working environment to their employees such as gyms, nice restaurants and they can provide a free working place for them which means they can choose the project they like and want. I think that is the reason why Google nowadays is one of the best company in the world.

i agree with Mayo's theory. I think is very important to have a good relationship with employees as they are a part of the company.

                                                         
                                                         
And we joined the small group this week and we will study in group for this whole year!
And we are working hard on our first presentation which will hold on next Monday! I'm looking forward to that! Hope we can have a awesome presentation.

They are my business group mates! Victor & Vivian