Groupon Essay

1. Introduction Groupon is a deal-of-the day Internet start-up company that was launched in 2008 in Chicago. The website offers discounted deals for local as well as national companies. Now operating in more than 150 markets as diverse as the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Brazil, Europe, South America, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, China, Russia and many more. Consequently there is no doubt that this company is a multinational enterprise (MNE). Groupon had 35 million registered users by October 2010 and thus has been one of the fastest growing businesses in the world (Lacrote, 2011). According to Andrew Mason, founder and CEO, Groupon was founded to be the first company to offer the very best deals available. This could only be done by contacting local merchants directly which gave Groupon its competitive advantage. Using this local responsiveness Groupon is able to offer the best deals every day within 24 hours (Cutler, 2010). The aim of this paper is to analyze how successful Groupon’s global strategy can be implemented worldwide. Firstly an overall impression of Groupon’s  business model and organizational structure is given. Secondly a deeper insight in the corporate strategy as well as the global strategy is provided. Furthermore the unsuccessful entry to China is analyzed and evaluated. Finally this paper conducts to what extent Groupon can be considered socially responsible before a conclusion is drawn in the last section. 2. The Business Model Groupon is a multinational start-up company that offers one â€Å"Groupon† per day in each of their markets (Deborah, 2009). In the beginning of the process Groupon congregates with another business to set up a deal for a certain product or service. As a next step, both parties  negotiate a minimum number of participants, which have to sign up for a deal to become available. In the end the price discount of each voucher has to be identified. This price is paid by the end consumer and is usually split equally between Groupon and the merchant. The reason why merchants are attracted to Groupon’s business model is that the high quantity sales of each voucher are very beneficial. In addition, merchants profit from several marketing channels, which are used by Groupon. Thus a win-win situation is created. 3. Organizational Structure Groupon’s top-level corporate management is based in Chicago. CEO, Andrew Mason and the most important worldwide functional managers navigate the global coordination from the headquarters. Top-level corporate managers provide direction and purpose, leverage corporate performance and ensure continuing renewal (Bartlett and Beamish, 2008). Hence, the most important strategic decisions are to be made in the headquarters. Groupon’s Geographic subsidiary Managers are established for certain geographical areas (Organizational Chart Groupon, 2012). Those managers have to interpret cultural differences on the one hand and implement the corporate strategy on the other hand (Bartlett and Beamish, 2008). In order for Groupon to be locally responsive the company is providing small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) from which they can manage their subdivisions in different geographic areas. For Groupon it is important that geographic subsidiaries have a high degree of freedom and thus react quicker and respond to local demand. As a result, Groupon’s subsidiary orientation can be considered geocentric because geographic managers make decisions about local responsiveness while headquarters decide on the overall corporate strategy (Perlmutter, V. 1969). 4. Groupon’s corporate strategy As Groupon is established in many countries of the world, a global strategy has to be pursued on the one hand. This leads to a gain in brand equity, brand awareness and global efficiency. On the other hand Groupon offers national as well as local deals, which caused the business to act locally responsive as well. Groupon, for this reason, can be considered transnational, as the company acts â€Å"more responsive to local needs while capturing the benefits of global efficiency† (Bartlett and Beamish, 2008, p13). Today’s MNEs compete in highly complex, diverse and constantly changing business environments. This is due to globalization of markets as well as acceleration of product and technology life cycles. Most importantly however is the intensification of global competition for Groupon. Most online services are easy to imitate. Therefore it has been of utmost importance that Groupon’s managers take the right actions and develop appropriate strategies. Groupon has access to highly educated international managers that sense and interpret complex and dynamic environmental changes. These managers have developed and integrated multiple strategic capabilities in order to cope with today’s business world. As it was very hard for Groupon to enter foreign markets, Groupon identified several companies that were interested in forming joint ventures. An important part of their global expansion strategy that was centrally managed from Chicago, was developing five pronged strategies that led to global efficiency and competitiveness. First of all, Groupon has introduced a coordination strategy that focuses on an analysis of various goods and services that would be engaging and appealing to the subscribers. Once these goods and services have been identified, Groupon’s managers start the process of initiating, negotiating, arranging, and executing. As soon as the coordination strategy is in place, Groupon discovers a pricing strategy. Due to the high discounts for  customers on the one hand and the provision of highly effective marketing instruments for comp anies on the other hand a win-win deal is created. Groupon sets a fixed price and a fixed deadline when the deal  ends. By doing so, the target group has limited time to purchase the offerings and is therefore under some pressure to buy the product instantly. In Addition, the deal only takes place when a minimum number of buyers are reached. This way the seller obtains full planning certainty for the particular deals. Another important part of Groupon’s strategy is advertisement. Many companies find it interesting to offer products via Groupon because of their heavy marketing activities they undertake. By advertising and selling the company’s products, companies benefit of free marketing as Groupon only charges a fixed percentage of the selling price. Product offering is the fourth of the five strategies they came up with. In this section, they identify possible highly demanded products and undertake a lot of research and carefully examine the preference of the people catering to the local market. Finally, Groupon added a special features strategy in which they market their service as we ll as the products in a unique way. 5. Groupons Global Strategy Joint ventures play an important role for Groupons expansion strategies. As Groupon has successfully started and expanded their business in the United States they quickly realized that there is a high demand for deal of the day business overseas as well. One of the first market entries outside the United States was entering European market. Although well-established companies were already the deal of the day their business model, Groupon was eventually able to benefit from those competitors. Oliver Samwer, founder of Citydeal was the first competitor who interacted with Groupon. Andrew Mason described this meeting as follows: â€Å"After a few days with Oliver [Samwer] and the rest of the Citydeal management team, we realized that they were among the best operators we’d ever metâ€Å" (Chan & Lee, 2011). Afterwards Groupon analysed the situation and realized that Citydeal was already dominating the European market. Competing with them would have been extremely difficult and risky as opening own facilities all across Europe  would have been a substantial investment. As a  result, Groupon was rather interested in a acquisition and bought Citydeal in 2010 for 126 million dollars. This investment enabled Groupon to instantly gain access to the European market. Groupon was providing their experience from America, whereas they received local marketing expertise and well educated employees. When engaging in cross-border collaborations MNEs try to overcome any protectionist barriers as well as overcoming national regulations by having good political contacts. (Bartlett and Beamish, 2008) Nevertheless, those relationships often involve great risk as a substantial amount of capital investment is required. It is often uncertain whether companies can actually benefit from economies of scale and scope as well as arbitrage opportunities. To illustrate the source of forming competitive advantage more precisely this paper introduces the AAA-Framework by Ghemawat, 2005 (Appendix 1). In this model Groupon can be placed close to adaption as they attempt to act locally responsive by supplying their customers with national as well as local deals. Aggregation also plays a vital role because Groupon â€Å"attempts to deliver economies of scale by creating regional (†¦) operations; it involves standardizing the product (†¦) offering and grouping together the development and production processes.† (Bartlett & Beamish, 2011). Moreover, Groupon is trying to make use of arbitrage opportunities, which â€Å"is the exploitation of differences between national and regional markets, often by locating separate parts of the supply chain in different places (†¦)† (Bartlett & Beamish, 2011) However, arbitrage takes an inferior position as Groupon is providing a service and does not have production facilities. 6. Groupons entry to China After successfully expanding business into many markets before, Groupon ran into some difficulties when starting a joint venture in China. Groupon’s general strategy when entering  new markets is aggressively penetrating the market to gain market share very quickly. As competition in the market was a lot more intense than expected, this strategy did not work in China (Chao, 2012). Using a unified entry  strategy in every country without adapting to the differences, which are present in each market, is known as the United Nations Model (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1986). When Groupon entered the Chinese market they were proclaiming to become the biggest online shopping site right from the beginning. This arrogant attitude did not take any strong competitors in the Chinese market into account (Chao, 2012). Competitors knew exactly how to treat customers and vendors according to the Chinese circumstances. One example is that Groupon tried to split the profits with vendors equally. Local competitors were used to charging only ten percent, which gave vendors no incentive to consider Groupon (Chao, 2012). In addition to that, the world leader in the discount deal business did not consider hiring more than 2 Chinese managers in their senior management team. This resulted in very low local responsiveness, as western managers did not know the Chinese culture well enough (Chao, 2012). To overcome cultural difference Groupon startet a joint venture with the Chinese online deal website Tencent (Chan & Lee, 2011). This joint venture gave Groupon the opportunity to adapt a rather local strategy. It would have been easy to learn from Tencent and employ a more responsive strategy afterwards. Again, Groupon did not take notice of the need to learn from this locally established company and hired expats to run operations around the country (Zhu, 2011). Consequently, there is evidence that Groupon’s competence of local organization in China has been very low. Since the Chinese market provides a significant purchasing power, China can be viewed as an environment of high importance for Groupon. A subsidiary that can be characterized by a high strategic importance and a low competence of local organization is called a â€Å"Black Hole† (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1986). Managing once way out of a â€Å"Black Hole† is extremely difficult and Groupon would have to choose the right strategy to do so successfully. Bhattacharya and Michael describe in â€Å"How Local Companies Keep at Bay† that local companies can beat  multinational Enterprises by pursuing several distinguishing strategies (Bhattacharya & Michael, 2008). As strong competition has been one of Groupon’s main problems when entering the Chinese market, in order to gain market share against local companies the MNE has to analyze how locals are able to outperform their global strategies. Afterwards those strategies have  to be used against the local companies (Bhattacharya & Michael, 2008). In the case at hand, Groupon would have to adapt to the locally responsive strategies and pair them with their own expertise. More specifically Groupon would need to start by learning from its venture partner and hiring local managers who know how the Chinese market works. Besides choosing the wrong entry strategy, Groupon’s low local competence was caused by ethical differences. On the one hand Chinese employees felt like they were not treated fairly when Goupon fired around 400 people in 2011 (Chao, 2011). On the other hand Groupon ran an offending advertisement during the Super Bowl in the USA (Chao, 2011). A solution to such a conflict of cultural tradition is for the manager to ask oneself if the company’s practices would be acceptable if the manager’s country were in a similar state (Donaldson, 1996). If Groupon is able to successfully implement those changes the national subsidiary would take the new role of a â€Å"Strategic Leader†. A â€Å"Strategic Leader† is characterized by a high competence of local organization and a high strategic importance of local enviro nment (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1986). 7. An evolving global role Multinational enterprises are more and more responsible for the establishment of a tremendous gap between rich and poor all over the whole world. Using global strategies and exploiting economies of scale and scope can be viewed as very exploitative and irresponsible. To see if Groupon is acting socially responsible one can analyze the level of responsibility by  distinguishing between four MNE postures. Firstly there is the exploitive MNE, which is known to use socially irresponsible opportunities to maximize profits. An exploitive company might take advantage of the cheapest possible workforce it can find by employing children in unsafe environments working long hours. Secondly a transactional MNE is described. This posture is characterized by trying to maximize profits and acting socially responsible on the other hand. Those companies settle at the boarder to being socially irresponsible while not actively engaging in any social efforts. Thirdly there is the responsive MNE. In c ontrast to the transactional MNE the third  posture is characterized by an active engagement into corporate citizenship behaviour. Finally the transformative MNE defines itself by taking responsibility to solve the problems in less developed countries in the world (Bartlett and Beamish, 2008). Applying Groupon to the MNE types, they can be classified as a responsive enterprise. Even though Groupon was criticized by some companies for being harmful to certain industries, a large amount of social responsibility has been shown. Having noticed the ability to raise money from groups of people, Groupon has established charity deals on their website. When customers buy one of those deals Groupon will match the amount and donate everything for example to the Red Cross (Campbell, 2012). 8. Conclusion The Internet deal company Groupon was established in 2008 and became a multinational company in a very short period of time. The corporate structure is made of the main functional managers in the corporate headquarters and geographical subsidiary managers in each location. The fast growing business can be characterized as transnational because it is pursuing a global strategy while having a great focus on being locally responsive. In order to expand as rapidly as Groupon did, the cooperation had to acquire businesses in some countries and start joint ventures in others. As mentioned before, in most European countries  this strategy worked out perfectly well. When Groupon decided to enter the Chinese market, however, some problems arose. Even though Groupon claimed to behave in a responsive manner they were reluctant to adapt locally responsive management practices in China. Consequently, the Chinese competition disabled Groupon from becoming market leader. To answer the problem statement if Groupon’s global strategy can successfully be implemented worldwide a conclusion can be drawn. While Groupon implemented the global strategy very successfully in the European market, there are some major difficulties when using the same strategy in China. To overcome those problems Groupon has to hire more Chinese managers in order to understand how the Chinese system works. Additionally, Groupon should use the  opportunity to learn from their venture-partner Tencent. Finally it is important for Groupon to analyze the competitive advantages of the competition in order to beat the local leaders by using their own methods. Coming back to Groupon’s overall strategy one can identify Groupon as a transactional company since it is actively engaging in corporate socially responsible activities. References Bartlett, C. & Beamish, P. (2011). Transnational Management. New York, USA: McGrawHill Bartlett, C. and Ghoshal, S. (1986) Tap Your Subsidiaries for Global Reach. Harvard Business Review. Bhattacharya, A. & Michael, D. (2008). How Local Companies Keep Multinationals at Bay. Harvard Business Review. Campbell, L (2012,November 18). How Groupon and LivingSocial Are Raising Millions for Charity Using Social Media. Socialmedia Today. Retrieved from: http://socialmediatoday.com Chan & Lee, (2011, February 28) Groupon Enters China, Teams with Tencent. Pedaily. Retrieved from: http://www.pedaily.cn Chao, L. (2012, August 24). Groupon Stumbles in China, Closes Some Offices. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: http://online.wsj.com Cutler, K. (2010, May 7). Groupon CEO: Being in a band made my business rock. Social. Retrieved from http://venturebeat.com/ Deborah, C (2009, June 10). Virtual â€Å"tipping point† leverages group. Reuters. Retrieved from: http://www.reuters.com Donaldson, T. (1996). Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home. Harvard Business School Press Lacrote , V. (2011, June 1). Groupon. Retrieved from http://digitalstrategies.tuck.dartmouth.edu Perlmutter H. (1969). The Tortuous Evolution of the Multinational Corporation. Columbia Journal of World Business Zhu, J (2011, November 4). 4 Mistakes Behind Groupon’s Failure in China. Tech In China. Retrieved from: http://www.techinasia.com

Promote learning and development Essay

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Physical Development The physical development of babies and young children must be encouraged through the provision of opportunities for them to be active and interactive and to improve their skills of coordination, control, manipulation and  movement. They must be supported in using all of their senses to learn about the world around them and to make connections between new information and what they already know. They must be supported in developing an understanding of the importance of physical activity and making healthy choices in relation to food. Creative Development Children’s creativity must be extended by the provision of support for their curiosity, exploration and play. They must be provided with opportunities to explore and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings, for example, through a variety of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role-play activities, mathematics, and design and technology. It is important to remember that these six areas of learning do not work in isolation but are in fact interlinked. Good quality activities will cover more than one area of development. For example, allowing children to access the outdoors will not only support their physical development, but encourage their communication and exploration of their environment. Where a child experiences a delay in one area, it is likely to limit their learning and development in the other five†¦a child with cerebral palsy who experiences hand-eye coordination difficulties is likely to find completing a puzzle difficult therefore hindering her problem solving, reasoning and numeracy. It is therefore vital that settings recognise each child’s individual needs and plan holistically in order to help children achieve their full potential across the six areas of learning. 1.2. Describe the documented outcomes for children that form part of the relevant early years framework. These are the goals and targets for children to meet throughout early years, for example communication language and literacy linking sounds. These are documented through observations that are carried out by their key person through day to day, which they then just to develop children’s development with carrying out different activities and adapting or changing them for an individual needs. 1.3. Explain how the documented outcomes are assessed and recorded. Planning for children’s development start’s with observations in order to find out the child’s previous knowledge, their interests and needs. There are many forms of observations that can be carried out to allow us to collate the evidence we need to plan appropriately for the individual child. Each method of observation has advantages and disadvantages of recording the child’s development, so it is important to use a variety of methods of observation for each child to gain holistic knowledge and understanding of the child’s development. In our workplace we do this when activities are taking place observations to see if the child is meeting their development with the six areas of learning and development and to see how they can help to maintain their learning and development. In our workplace we fill in forms regularly for each activity that meets the outcomes. We change activities regularly so children can progresss according to age. These forms are stored and accessed by keyworkers when doing a child’s progression plan. 2. Be able to plan work with children and support children’s participation in planning 2.1. Use different sources to plan work for an individual child or group of children. OBSERVATION 2.2. Engage effectively with children to encourage the child’s participation and involvement in planning their own learning and development activities. OBSERVATION 2.3. Support the planning cycle for children’s learning and development. OBSERVATION 3. Be able to promote children’s learning and development according to the requirements of the relevant early years framework. 3.1. Explain how practitioners promote children’s learning within the relevant early years framework. Practitioners promote children’s learning within the guidance of the EYFS by offering a balanced of child initiated and adult led play based activities, practitioners will use their own guidance on the age and stage of the child using their knowledge that they have on the children that they care for and decide on the correct balance, however we should realise the amount of time that is already taken up with adult led activities such as registration, lining up, snack time, circle time. We should ensure that the same balance should be applied outdoors as well as indoors. Child initiated means a child that engages on a self chosen activity and is allowed to play freely. The adult led activity is usually a group of children that participate w ith adult support, the activity is chosen by the adult. The  adult would have picked the time and the aspect of a particular topic. This could be sewing as a child originally needs help to achieve this and gradually the adult’s involvement will decrease in time. Organisation and management making sure that we provide opportunities to extend play for children, key worker system is in place for legal and responsibility of learning and development of each child, thinking about to the children use the space indoors/outdoors, observation and planning system which meets individual needs and interests. We have a very good balance of adult and child led play we try for a 50% we follow children’s interests by observations and asking the children what they would like in the planning and what activities they would like to do that day. Sensitive intervention is trying to intervene without disrupting or changing the focus on the play. Watching to see if the child wants you to participate or not, so enhancing play but not taking ownership of the play away from the child. Supporting and facilitating when you have a positive relationship with the children they will seek your help doing something like building dens they might need materials and resources or helping them reach their aim. Modelling when children watch an adult they might try to model that action by repeating actions, words or skills. Coaching children do and learn more when given encouragement and support of an adult by making a child feel confident they might try to do or develop something a little further this is linked to the Vygotsky theory (Core 3.1) of proximal development getting children to do something just outside their comfort range. 3.2. Prepare, set out and support activities and experiences that encourage learning and development in each area of the relevant early years framework. OBSERVATION 4. Be able to engage with children in activities and experiences that support their learning and development 4.1. Work alongside children, engaging with them in order to support their learning and development. OBSERVATION 4.2. Explain the importance of engaging with a child to support sustained shared thinking. Using a topic a child is really interested in can allow for sustained shared thinking it can be talking about something or doing something which encourages conversation like we have done planting with our  children this has really captured their imagination the children are talking about what they think seeds are going to grow into what happens as the plants grows, what might the plant produce. We are getting the children to reach conclusions, and explore concepts at a deeper level. The children are thinking about processes and are making connections to things they have already learnt and new information. Processing the information we have given them making them think. 4.3. Use language that is accurate and appropriate in order to support and extend children’s learning when undertaking activities OBSERVATION 5. Be able to review own practice in supporting the learning and development of children in their early years. 5.1. Reflect on own practice in supporting learning and development of children in their early years. OBSERVATION 5.2. Demonstrate how to use reflection to make changes in own practice. OBSERVATION Reflective account covering observations 2.1 2.3 5.1 and 5.2 While at work I organised an activity for all the children to do cooking. We were making fairy cakes. Before the activity the children chose what they wanted on their fairy cakes and went got this from the Tesco opposite our work. Some children got butter and icing and others got chocolate and smarties there was a variety if things that each children chose. To help the young people do the activity we printed a recipe sheet out and also a sheet with pictures for those young people who cannot read some children needed help with the activity more than others. The children did mixing with electric mixers and some used a whisk. We put the cakes in the oven for 20minutes we then waited for the Cakes to cool. We decorated them with the things we bought from Tesco the children had lots of fun. We have done this activity before  and after reflecting on this I think the children are getting better with mixing the cake mixture and decorating the cakes. If I was to do this again I would do everything the same but do it regularly so the children learn the step by step making of cakes.

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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PORTFOLIO Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PORTFOLIO - Coursework Example Thus, I have always cherished the dream of pursuing an academic career in engineering with some orientation towards electrical engineering. On the other hand, I also value self dependency and supporting myself in my endeavours to the maximum extent possible without having to depend on my family. Therefore, immediately after completing high school, I sought out a job with HSBC Bank, Dubai, as a business development executive. In this position, I was responsible for marketing several products of the bank and I have been effective in this role. Since I had good connection in the region I was instrumental in bringing several new customers to the bank. During my tenure of six months with the bank, I was also able to learn administrative procedures apart from having here had also enabled me to become more organized in terms of settings goals, planning the achievement of targets as well as how to make good the short falls. However, I did not want to entertain the idea of getting strike to a job which did not entirely fit into the frame work of the carrier of my choice. In the meanwhile I realised that global aviation industry is poised for a sea change in the near future, in the aftermath of globalization. Even in Dubai, the developmental activities were in full swing. Similar was the case with Asian and European countries as well as the US. Travel and tourism industry was flourishing on an unfathomed manner. A realisation of the opportunity in aviation management, coupled with my inherent affinity towards a career in engineering, motivated me take up a course in aerospace systems. Thus, I joined Barry College, South Wales, UK, for a 3 year Diploma Course in Aerospace Systems Management. I selected this college because of its popularity as a premier institution in the field of aviation studies and over 9,000 learners pass out from there every year. They provide state of the art aerospace training and development programmes in maintenance, repair and overhauling and th eir courses are approved by the Civil Aviation Authority. Besides, they also have a vast network of institutions in partnership with several colleges that offer a wide range of aircraft engineering courses. The stint I spent in Barry’s campus was a major turning point in my life. The college had an excellent faculty supported by modern equipment and sophisticated infrastructure. It also provided a congenial environment for me to focus on my studies with full involvement both in terms of academic betterment and personal development. My peers and tutors in there were very supportive and encouraging, which helped me in my overall development not only in my academics but in the personal front also, by inculcating in me several values and ethics. My earlier work experience with HSBC had helped me in properly setting my goals and objectives, planning my studies appropriately as well as executing the plans as prescheduled. The main objectives that I set for myself were to achieve im provement in three subjects, which are: mathematics, electrical engineering and practical work (communication skills). Taking cue from my work experience as stated earlier, I was also able to integrate aspects of personal development into my academic schedule, focusing on values and ethics. Thus, I was able to organize my studies in a proper manner, aligning my plans with the objectives I set for myself and executing my plans as per the predetermined schedules. Besides, I had carried out

Operations management for creating competitive advantage Essay

Operations management for creating competitive advantage - Essay Example For instance, locations are first selected keeping in mind the country, then the region and lastly the site. Stakeholders, especially the shareholders are taken care of by maximizing the profits of the company and putting back profits in the betterment of the company only. Some of the recommendations that have been given are that of using mathematical techniques in choosing locations and the starting of slotting fees. The budget that will be used is to hire trained human resources and the huge costs for buying backward links that is suppliers. The innovative recommendation is that of using scent marketing. All in all, the company Tesco is practicing efficient operations management but there is always room for improvement, if they want to sustain their position of market leader. This case study is aimed at applying the theoretical side of the study of operations management to a real world company. Operations management is a very broad term and thus it incorporates within itself many various issues and activities through which an organization’s goods and services are changed and transformed from the inputs that were put to the outputs that are produced. It is about the various operations that are performed on the goods and services from the moment their production starts to the moment the customer receives it. In this report, Britain-based company Tesco has been aimed and its operations management activities have been analyzed. Recommendations on how OM activities can be improved have also been given. The report also evaluates the various financials behind the activities as well as the budget that may be required. The problem faced by Tesco is that of sustaining its market leader position. Competition from Sainsbury and other leading retail stores is a big threat for Tesco and it does not want to lose out on market share to these competitors. Thus, improving on operations management is one of the basic things that it can