Шпора 4
English
topics
1. Ukrainian economy and Ukraine in the world economy
Following a decade of economic decline, Ukraine gradually turned to a steady growth path. Macroeconomic stabilization and favorable external conditions contributed to rapid economic recovery. After an impressive economic performance, Ukraine's economic growth slowed as external conditions deteriorated. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian economy demonstrated one of (he highest growth rates during the last years. Strengthening domestic consumption, a gradually improving external environment and continuing investment expansion contributed to 5% GDP growth. The major sectors that drove, economic growth were industry, wholesale and retail trade and agriculture.
Relatively rapid expansion of capital investments and continuous growth of foreign direct investment inflow provided evidence of positive development of the real sector. Although the overall level of FDI (foreign direct investment) attracted into Ukraine's economy was one of the lowest in the region, its sustained growth since the financial crisis of 1998 pro veil that the Ukrainian economy became more attractive for foreign investment. On the other hand, an increase in foreign direct investment inflow was more than offset -by massive portfolio outflows, driven mostly ivy political instability and some legislative deficiencies.
The current account surplus increased significantly, driven by strong exports and a high level of transfers, and international reserves continued to accumulate. Constant interventions by the National Bank of Ukraine contributed to the stability of the national currency against the US dollar, and to a rapid growth, of monetary aggregates that accommodated high money demand during the following years. The growing working capital needs of the real sector were partly satisfied by a marked increase in commercial bank lending. At the same time, the cost of loans and their maturity structure were not conducive to wide use of loanable funds to finance long-term investment projects of enterprises.
Good harvest was the main reason for a substantial decline in inflation. Consumer price followed a deflationary path that, in combination with a sizeable shortfall in privatization revenues, led to fiscal expenditure cuts and an increase in government borrowing in order to avoid substantial fiscal deficit. Ukraine placed a new Eurobonds issue and resorted to additional borrowing from domestic creditors to satisfy its financing needs. As a result, the consolidated budget posted small surplus and the stock of Ukraine's public, debt increased. Nevertheless, the country's debt to GDP ratio remained relatively modest at 34% of GDP.
Although the following years brought about positive economic and political developments, as the external environment remained favorable, the gradually unfolding presidential election campaign contributed to a generally cautious investor attitude towards Ukraine. Among the achievements of Ukraine were the following: 1) an impressive 7.5% GDP growth; 2) real household incomes continued to grow, indicating an improvement in living standards; 3) adoption of the new tax laws reflected the government strong intentions to proceed with structural reforms; 4) sound, external debt management led to successful Eurobonds placement, which followed an increase in the country's international investment ratings; 5) the favorable external environment drove foreign trade surpluses, which allowed for the National Bank's international reserves to reach record high levels; 6) improvement of the country's international image following cancellation of sanctions and warming relations with the US government.
Even though Ukraine's macroeconomic performance was improved significantly over the last several years, a number of economic risks are still in place. Despite the fact that, inflation accel-erated to almost 0%, monetary policy remained loose.
Renewal of suspended adjustment lending from the international financial institutions remains uncertain as the government has yet to demonstrate its ability to cope with outstanding problems, such as reduction of VAT refund arrears and abolishment of tax privileges.
2. What is marketing and the marketing concept?
Marketing is an activity that surrounds our daily lives. Everywhere you look on your way to school or work you will see the impact of marketing. You will undoubtedly pass billboards advertising goods or services, you will pass retail establishments, or you may see trucks or trains transporting merchandise. Each of these is an important part of the marketing system.
Marketing is a complex process, and marketing experts often disagree on what marketing is and what it consists of. To avoid this controversy, we will use the official American Marketing Association definition of marketing.
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchange that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
Note several things about this definition. First, marketing is viewed as a process of planning and executing, which suggests that marketing is a managerial process. Second, this managerial process involves conception (i.e., thinking of or deciding what idea, goods or service to market) and the pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services. Third, the managerial process is directed at creating exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
A key point about this definition of marketing is that it views marketing as an exchange process. For exchange to occur, five conditions are necessary:
1. There must be two parties.
2. Each party must have something that could be of value to the other.
3. Each party must be capable of communication and delivery.
4. Each party must be free to accept or reject the offer.
5. Each party believed it is appropriate or desirable to deal with the other party.
When these five conditions are met, a potential exchange relationship has been established.
Marketing is part of our society. Its influence on society is more than economic. Marketing has a cultural influence on society. As a cultural phenomenon it can help shape our wants and desires. Marketing is also important to an organization because it helps that organization create successful exchange relationships with potential buyers. For this to take place, the right products must be first to be produced and then correctly distributed, promoted, priced. Note that these tasks relate to our definition of marketing.
Marketing is important to each of us because it allows us to specialize. To better appreciate this, imagine a society in which each person must hunt, cook, and make his or her own clothing, shelter, and tools. Predictably, not everyone in this society would be equally proficient at all these activities. In fact, if the test hunter concentrated on hunting, the best toolmaker on making tools, and soon, then the society could create a higher level of wealth. However, this system would only work if everyone could exchange their surpluses for the goods and services they needed. By establishing a marketing system, people are given the freedom to specialize.
The Marketing Concept
Now that we have introduced you to what marketing is end why you should study it, let's examine how organizations should practice marketing. During the 1950s, a philosophy for the practice of marketing emerged known as the marketing concept. The marketing concept viewed the consumer as the focal point of all marketing activities. Organizations that practice the marketing concept study the consumer to determine consumer’s needs and wants then organize and integrate all activities within the firm toward helping the consumer fulfill these needs and wants while simultaneously achieving organizational goals. There are three pillars to the marketing concept: (1) consumer orientation, (2) integrated or total company effort, and (3) achievement of organization goals.
Consumer orientation
The consumer orientation dimension of the marketing concept argues that a firm can be more successful if it determines what the consumer needs and wants before it decides what product to produce and/or sell. In the past many firms would produce what they were good at producing. This practice allowed them to turn out numerous products, many of which were of extremely high quality however, these products often were difficult to sell because they did not meet a consumer needs.
Integrated Effort
A second pillar of the marketing concept is the principle of integrated effort, in which departments within their organization work together toward the common goal to satisfy the customer. Integrated effort is a systems point of view, in which all departments recognize they are interdependent parts of an organization. Because they are interdependent, they must cooperate to enable the firm to achieve its objectives. Cooperation is often difficult because one departments goals may conflict with those of another deportment and with the organizations overall objectives.
Organization goals
The final pillar of the marketing concept states that the organization should engage in exchanges based on their potential for helping the organization achieve its goals. Organizations do not
participate without expecting something in return, and what they receive should help them achieve their objectives.
3. Marketing management and strategic planning
Strategic marketing management is the analysis, strategy, implementation, and control of marketing activities to achieve the organization's objectives. The two main components of strategic marketing management process are planning and execution - key terms in our definition of marketing. Planning is deciding today what to do in the future and consists of analysis and strategy. Execution is essentially making things happen and consists of implementation and control.
The first step in the strategic marketing management process is analysis. It consists of identifying the firms Strengths and Weaknesses as well as Opportunities and Threats. Note that the first letters in each of these words compose the acronym. SWOT. A SWOT analysis consists of studying a firm's performance trends, resources, and capabilities to assess a firm's strengths and weaknesses, explicitly stating a firm's mission and objectives, and scanning the external environments to identify opportunities and threats facing the organization.
A firm's strengths and weaknesses can be identified, and analyzed by studying performance trends, resources, and capabilities. Past performance typically is measured in financial terms, each as sales and profits. Profits act as prophets, in a sense. For example, yearly increases in profits are a sign of strength, while a steady decline in profits indicates that the firm has a problem. Current resources and capabilities also help to determine a firm's strengths and weaknesses. Resources and capabilities refer to various things: special talents (i.e., the company has one of the most creative advertising departments in the country), areas of expertise (i.e., the company is a beer producer and is the industry leader in developing new brewery technologies), unique assets (i.e. the company holds 12 patents on new products or tins $ 50 million in available cash), or any other advantage that can be drawn on for support (i.e., a pharmaceutical company may have excellent working relationships with retail druggists).
Opportunities and threats can be identified by stating the organization's mission and objectives and engaging in the process of environmental scanning.
A mission is a firm's overall justification for existing. The marketer can more easily identify opportunities and threats when the firm's mission has been clearly stated, because the mission provides a lens through which the external environments can be viewed. Defining what constitutes a threat – and an opportunity - depends on the nature of the firm's mission.
More specific direction is obtained by the statement of a firm's objectives, since objectives are specific, quantifiable results that a firm wants to achieve in a given period. Most firms, even nonprofit enterprises, develop financial objectives, which are objectives stated in monetary or economic terms.
The marketer wants to identify market opportunities that exist because there is an unmet or unsatisfied need or want in the marketplace and for which the firm has an interest in and capability to satisfy. At the same time the marketer should try to convert threats into opportunities. For example, toy industry marketing managers should view the decline in birth rates as an opportunity to broaden their market base to appeal to adults by developing more sophisticated toys and games.
Once the SWOT analysis has been completed, the marketer can develop a marketing strategy to pursue a market opportunity. The two primary elements of a marketing strategy are selection of a target market and development of a marketing mix to offer to the target market. A marketing mix consists of product, distribution, promotion, and price decisions.
4. Marketing mix
MARKETING - MIX - concrete combination ("displacement") instruments of marketing for achievement of the purposes, delivered by firm, (for example, magnifying of the profit or growth of sales volumes). Select four instruments of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion - four "p".
The marketing mix is generally accepted as the use and specification of the 4 Ps describing the strategic position of a product in the marketplace. One version of the origins of the marketing mix starts in 1948 when Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. This version continues in 1953 when Neil Borden, in his American Marketing Association presidential address, took the recipe idea one step further and coined the term 'Marketing-Mix'. A prominent person to take centre stage was E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960; he proposed a four-P classification which was popularised. Philip Kotler describes the concept well in his Marketing Management book (see references below)
Definition
Although some marketers have added other Ps, such as personnel and packaging, the fundamental dogma of marketing typically identifies the four Ps of the marketing mix as referring to:
• Product - An object or a service that is mass produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units. A typical example of a mass produced service is the hotel industry. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system. Typical examples of a mass produced objects are the motor car and the disposable razor.
• Price – The price is the amount a customer pays for a product. It is determined by a number of factors including market share, competition, product identity and the customer's perceived value of the product.
• Place – Place represents the location where a product can be purchased. It is often referred to as the distribution channel. It can include any physical store as well as virtual stores on the Internet.
• Promotion – Promotion represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. Promotion has four distinct elements - advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale. A certain amount of crossover occurs when promotion uses the four principle elements together, which is common in film promotion. Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from television and cinema commercials, radio and Internet adverts through print media and billboards. Public relations are where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word of mouth is any apparently informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals, satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum. Sales staff often play an important role in word of mouth and Public Relations (see Product above).
Broadly defined, optimizing the marketing mix is the primary responsibility of marketing. By offering the product with the right combination of the four Ps marketers can improve their results and marketing effectiveness. Making small changes in the marketing mix is typically considered to be a tactical change. Making large changes in any of the four Ps can be considered strategic. For example, a large change in the price, say from $129.00 to $39.00 would be considered a strategic change in the position of the product. However a change of $129.00 to $131.00 would be considered a tactical change, potentially related to a promotional offer.
Criticisms
Peter Doyle (Doyle, P. 2000) claims that the marketing mix approach leads to unprofitable decisions because it is not grounded in financial objectives such as increasing shareholder value. According to Doyle it has never been clear what criteria to use in determining an optimum marketing mix. Objectives such as providing solutions for customers at low cost have not generated adequate profit margins. Doyle claims that developing marketing based objectives while ignoring profitability has resulted in the dot-com crash and the Japanese economic collapse. He also claims that pursuing a ROI approach while ignoring marketing objectives is just as problematic. He argues that a net present value approach maximizing shareholder value provides a "rational framework" for managing the marketing mix.
Against the four Ps, some claim that they are too strongly oriented towards consumer markets and do not offer an appropriate model for industrial product marketing. Others claim it has too strong of a product market perspective and is not appropriate for the marketing of services.
5. Banking in the United States
United States Banking began in 1781 with an act of United States Congress that established the Bank of North America in Philadelphia. During the American Revolutionary War, the Bank of North America was given a monopoly on currency; prior to this time, private banks printed their own bank notes, backed by deposits of gold and/or silver.
Robert Morris, the first Superintendent of Finance appointed under the Articles of Confederation, proposed the Bank of North America as a commercial bank that would act as fiscal agent for the government. The monopoly was seen as necessary because previous attempts to finance the Revolutionary War with paper currency had failed; after the war, a number of banks were chartered by the states under the Articles of Confederation, including the Bank of New York and the Bank of Massachusetts, both of which were chartered in 1784.
The Bank of North America was succeeded by the First Bank of the United States, which the United States Congress chartered in 1791 under Article One, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, after the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the foundation of American government. However, Congress failed to renew the charter for the Bank of the United States, which expired in 1811. Similarly, the Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 and shuttered in 1836.
The era of free banking
Prior to 1836, a bank could only be chartered by a legislative act. It has been speculated that this led to many abuses, with proprietors lacking connections in their legislatures being effectively barred from establishing banks. The dissoluting of the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 lead 18 states to establish clear rules for incorporation -- any individual or group that met a certain financial requirement was permitted to issue bills of credit.
This led to many a period of fiscally irresponsible of Wildcat banking in many states, which partially destabilized the system of financial intermediation, and lead in part to the massive panic in 1837-1838 in Michigan.
During this period, bills were not redeemable at face value, but could be cashed according to certain common discount rates, which reflected the reputation and solvency of the issuing banks. These bills were commonly called "scrip."
The dual banking system
In 1863, Congress passed the National Bank Act in an attempt to retire the greenbacks that it had issued to finance the North's effort in the American Civil War. This opened up an option for chartering banks nationally. As an additional incentive for banks to submit to Federal supervision, in 1865 Congress began taxing any issue of state bank notes (also called "bills of credit" or "scrip") a standard rate of 10%, which encouraged many state banks to become national ones. This tax also gave rise to another response by state banks -- the invention of the demand deposit account, also known as a checking account. By the 1880s, deposit accounts had changed the primary source of revenue for many banks. The result of these events is what is known as the "dual banking system."
The dual system of banking has survived to this day. New banks may choose either state or national charters (a bank also can convert its charter from one to the other). Until 1989, banks with national charters (national banks) were required to participate in the FDIC, while State Banks either were required to obtain FDIC insurance by state law or they could voluntarily join it (usually in an attempt to bolster their appearance of solvency). After enactment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1989 ("FDICIA"), all commercial banks that accepted deposits were required to obtain FDIC insurance and to have a primary federal regulator (the Fed for state banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System, and the FDIC for "nonmembers").
