Section 2. Skills focus. Exercise 1. Read the cards

Exercise 1. Read the cards. Identify some famous companies and products from facts about them.

1.

· Microsoft is an American company.

· The number is 501.

· It is the company which designs the CD player.

· It manufactures luxury cars.

· They are known for being extremely comfortable and practical.

· Its distinctively shaped bottle makes it instantly recognizable.

2.

· His name is Bill Gates.

· Its jeans are famous all over the world.

· It produces quality electronic goods.

· She had a Spanish name.

· They have been fashionable since the 1960s in Britain and now sell everywhere in the world.

· Coca Cola is an American company.

3.

· It Designs software.

· Levi Strauss is an American company.

· Its first product was a light bulb.

· Of all automobile manufacturers founded in the nineteenth century it is the only one still in existence.

· Its main products are boots and shoes.

· It may be the world’s best known brand.

4.

• One of its best known products is a computer operating system
• It was founded in California in the nineteenth century.
• It has invented 10,000 products and filed 65,000 patents world-wide.
• It is partly named after the daughter of a racing car driver.
• Dr. Martens is a British company.
• NASA took it along on a trip into the space.

5.

• It was founded in 1980.
• It is a clothing company.
• Philips is a Dutch company.
• It was the first company to introduce crash testing.
• It is a clothing company.
• It is in the food industry.

6.

• Its president is one of the richest men in the world.
• Its most famous product doesn’t have a name: it has a number.
• An average British home contains more than five products manufactured by this company.
• Mercedes-Benz is a German company.
• Their special sole was originated by a German doctor for his own use after a skiing accident.
• Its main product is a carbonated drink.

Task. Write key facts about other well-know companies.

Exercise 2. Answer the following questions and do the task.

1. What does your company do?
2. What is it called?
3. What kind of public image do you have?
4. How many people do you employ?
5. Where are your headquarters?
6. Do you have offices in other countries? If so, where?
7. What is your turnover, market share and net profit? Who is your main competitor?
8. Are you growing, shrinking or holding steady?
9. What are your most promising products and/or markets?
10. What problems are you having and how are you dealing with them?

Task 1. Invent a company. Prepare and give presentation about your company.

Task 2. You may also find the necessary information about some company and present it, using the questions.

Exercise 3. Read the text and answer the questions.

Mrs. Fields Has Recipe for Success.

Debra "Debbi" Sivyer earned a local reputation for herself as 3 teenager baking cookies in her hometown of Oakland, California. She married Randall "Randy" Fields and moved to Palo Alto, where he worked as a financial manager. While enrolled as a student at a local community college, Debbi began to want to run her own business. Her baking background seemed a natural, but everyone including her husband had doubts that it could become a viable endeavor. However, Randy finally agreed to lend her $50,000.

Mrs. Fields located used equipment and furnishings and opened Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chippery on August 13, 1977. The location she chose was near Stanford University in an international food arcade between a delicatessen and a Tibetan restaurant. Her first morning in business she did not sell a single cookie, so in the afternoon she went up and down the street giving away samples. She sold $50 worth of cookies that afternoon. The second day she started giving away samples earlier in the day and sold $75 worth. Over time, she began to acquire a growing group of customers, and her sales increased substantially.

Excited by this success, Debbi and Randy opened another store. When it too succeeded, they opened still another. Today, there are several hundred Mrs. Fields stores in six countries with combined annual sales in excess of $50 million. Debbi's company is now a large corporation based in Park City, Utah.

When Debbi opened her first cookie store, she did everything. She bought the furnishings and equipment, negotiated a lease, baked the cook­ies, sold the cookies, operated the store, and kept the records. As the business grew, she began to hire others to take over parts of it for her. Debbi quickly turned baking and selling over to others in order to give herself time to develop the company and plan for expansion.

Debbi's approach to business has not changed as the company has grown. She argues that a business must be fun in order to succeed. She strongly believes that people who work in the company must be treated with kindness and respect so that they will treat customers with kindness and respect. She has refused to franchise her operations for fear that her ap­proach to business will not be carried out by others. All Mrs. Fields stores, therefore, are company owned and controlled.

A major component of that control is the quality of the cookies that are baked and sold. Debbi insists that all Mrs. Fields' Cookies be made with fresh and high-quality ingredients. Further, because the quality of a cookie is a function of how long it has been sitting before it is sold, she insists that most unsold cookies be removed from display cases after two hours. Those cookies are donated to charity organizations.

More recently, Mrs. Fields found itself in serious trouble. After opening nearly 600 stores, Debbi had to close some and now has less than 500. The public stock offering on the London market led to the purchase of only about 16 percent of the shares. The year 1988 saw enormous losses, and the stock plummeted as investors became concerned about the firm's long-term prospects. Some say that the company's move into the international arena was premature and that the management practice of retaining com­pany control cannot succeed in distant locations such as London and Hong Kong. Indeed, late in 1988, Mrs. Fields yielded control of its European operations to a French company, Midial S.A. However, there were other problems as well. Some of them occurred because of a move to broaden the product line and absorb La Petite Boulangerie.

La Petite Boulangerie consisted of over 100 full-service bakery stores that Mrs. Fields' private, parent company, MF Holdings, acquired from PepsiCo in 1987. The strategy is to integrate the La Petite stores into the Mrs. Field's chain by converting the chain from single-product outlets to combination stores. The combination stores are about three times the size of the older cookie outlets and sell cookies, soups, bagels, and sandwiches. But it is unclear in which direction the company really wants to go. Some of the new stores retain the name La Petite Boulangerie; some are called Mrs. Fields; and others go by the name of Mrs. Fields Bakery Cafe.

Many entrepreneurial firms have problems continuing their success as they grow, especially if growth is rapid. That seems to be the case with Mrs. Fields. Whether the company can plot a consistent strategy and develop a new, slower approach to growth that will enable the current management to continue its success remains to be seen.

Questions:

1. What entrepreneurial characteristics does Debbi Fields display? Why do you think she was not content to operate only one successful store?

2. What are some of the factors that led to the success of Mrs. Fields' Chippery? What dangers did the company face as it began? How were the dangers overcome?

3. As Mrs. Fields expands into the international market, do you think that it will continue to be as successful as it has been in the past? Why or why not?

4. Would you like to be a manager in the Mrs. Fields organization? Why or why not? Would you purchase stock in the company? Why or why not?

Exercise 4. Read the following information about Japan and do the task.

1. In traditional companies new groups of recruits normally all enter the company on the same day of the year (usually April 1).
2. New recruits go through an orientation course. Among other things, they learn the company philosophy, its motto and its song.
3. Most employees receive regular training throughout their career with the company.
4. During recession both workers and top executives sometimes accept salary cuts so that everyone can remain in work.
5. If they are forced to lay workers off, good companies will try to help the person find another job.
6. Individual roles within groups are not clearly defined: everyone does whatever is necessary to accomplish the task.
7. When new problems come up, special teams of managers and workers form to decide how to solve them. They often meet outside company hours.
8. Many ideas originate at the bottom of the hierarchy. As they move through the company they are adapted until they are finally authorized at the top.
9. Employees receive a bonus in summer and a larger one at the end of the year which is equal to two to six month’s pay or, if the company is doing well, even more.
10. If you have an idea you may be expected to give it to the group or to your boss without trying to gain personal credit for it.
11. People are dedicated to the business. They routinely work more than their allotted number of hours and do not take all the holidays they are entitled to.
12. Relationships with suppliers and subcontractors are seen as a long-term human relationship rather than a series of isolated transactions.

Task 1. Present the information about Russia.

Task 2. Discuss the differences between Japan and Russia.

Task 3. Tell about the country you would like to work and live. Give your reasons.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02