Extreme icecream
Here is a headline in the BBC Business news that made me stop and read it twice - ‘Baby Gaga breast milk ice cream seized for safety tests’. And yes, it is a true story, and its only the 1st of March, not April.
The ice cream was introduced by ice cream parlour Icecreamists in Covent Garden, London, last month, and is served with a rusk and an optional shot of Calpol or Bonjela. But Westminster Council officers removed the product to make sure it was “fit for human consumption”.
Icecreamists founder Matt O’Connor is quoted in an earlier report as saying that “Some people will hear about it and go yuck - but actually it’s pure organic, free-range and totally natural.” - although he added that the ice cream was not certified organic.
With a price set at £14 for a single serving, I can see some good application for the marketing mix here - and predict that many students will, indeed, hear about it and ‘go yuck’! They may also enjoy the quote from the producer of the main ingredient - “What’s the harm in using my assets for a bit of extra cash?”
Is there anything relevant for CSR here? I can’t quite decide if this fits with any of AQA’s research bullet points or not…......
The Politics bit of PEST analysis
When most students try to think in a PEST framework, they are usually pretty confident when it comes to the bit on social and technological trends. Economics is a bit more tricky (to begin with) but the really hard part seems to be politics. It shouldn’t be really – politics is going on all around us, often in the form of changes to the legal and regulatory environment. Sometimes it’s on an even bigger scale than that, especially on an international level.
read more...»Protecting a business idea - its child’s play
A neat little news story here to help illustrate the concept of trademark protection….
read more...»British exports - what does the government do to help?
Following on from Jim’s blog on Wednesday about exports (Exporting – no thanks – we’re British, there have been some interesting reports in the last couple of weeks emphasising the ways in which government tries to encourage exports, which could be the source of some investigation work for students around the the theme of The Relationship between Businesses and the Political Environment, and political decisions affecting trade and access to markets.
read more...»Corporate Social Responsibility priority? Increase profits…
This of course was the view most famously expressed by one of the 20th century’s most important economists, Milton Friedman. A battle has since raged between those like Friedman who think that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” and other groups taking a wider view, including many top firms (and the UK parliament in 2006 who passed the Companies Act).
read more...»Government and the Economy lesson plan
This lesson plan and associated resources, which are produced by the Citizenship Foundation, explain the credit crunch and also the Chancellor’s annual Budget. They are a great way to introduce students starting on AQA unit 4 to the thankless task that a Chancellor of the Exchequer has in trying to decide the best way to raise tax revenue and cut spending.
read more...»Advertising standards and misleading claims
Coca-cola is the latest in a (very) long series of firms to have been caught out by what you can say/what you can’t say in an advert. This is a classic constraint on UK business which operates within a reasonably rigid legal framework. Here are a few links to recent relevant cases and where you can go to find out more.
read more...»Business ethics: tax evasion
Here’s another business ethics example to think over. It’s attracted lots of media attention (not all of it justified) in recent weeks. But it’s worth reflecting that on average, over the last few years, there have been 250 annual prosecutions for benefit fraud (which costs about £1bn a year). There have been roughly 50 annual convictions for tax credit fraud (which costs about the same) but there have been precisely 0 convictions for tax evasion using offshore accounts (which costs vastly more than all forms of social security fraud put together).
Do UK firms have an ethical case to answer?
read more...»‘Green Audits’ may be helpful for firms
Environmentalism has moved on such a long way in just a couple of years, with the current focus of debate very firmly fixed on practical, rational and achievable objectives. The concept of ‘sustainability’ is something that most A2 students will have considered, as firms anxiously assemble their strategies, because, in the words of Unilever’s boss “retailers and consumers demand it and it saves us money”.
There’s a very interesting BBC piece about how firms can benefit from doing an environmental or ‘green audit’ – with research suggesting that the process can help them cut costs.
read more...»Recession-proof production at Fiat
Fiat’s Polish plant bucks the trend to post record production levels in the recession. Can they perform another miracle and resurrect Lancia?
read more...»Raising finance: GM in colossal sale of shares
General Motors (GM) – for decades the world’s biggest carmaker – have broken the record for the largest ever sale of shares, raising a whopping £12.6bn. Their shares rose 7% to $35.99 in early trade in New York, having been priced at $33 by the company. The sale marks what looks like an astonishing turnaround after the firm had to be rescued by American taxpayers in 2008.
read more...»Effective staff training - a cracking example
Retail businesses have to keep up with new laws that affect sales of goods to customers, particularly when there are regulations about the minimum age of customers who are allowed to buy certain goods. Thus, as every teenager is well aware, ID is needed to buy many goods, from cigarettes and alcohol to knives and fireworks. Sales of both indoor and outdoor fireworks to under-16’s are now banned, following the Pyrotechnics Articles (Safety) Regulations introduced this year which reinforced laws banning the sale of explosive items to children. As a result, retailers will have had to ensure that their staff were fully aware of the regulations, and what to do in the event that a customer who appears too young, tries to buy those goods that are included in the ban.
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Should employers be able to sack people more easily?
This is a very tough question that the BBC are exploring on Radio 4’s Sack ‘Em programme.
Some believe that employment law is now so complicated and slanted towards employees that employers end up “paying off” people they should be sacking. Other people are much more worried about the huge power firms already have over workers’ lives and think that staff need even more protection. Both arguments have some merit.
read more...»Royal Family’s favourite water: Malvern to be axed, but wind farm harvest to come from the sea
Last week Coca Cola announced that it is closing the bottling plant for the Queen’s favourite, Malvern Water. A spokesman said that the plant cannot operate with enough economies of scale to compete: “Modern bottled water plants are around ten times the size of Colwall (the site of the plant near Malvern) and can often produce more water in a day than we do in a month.” Malvern Water is supplied to the Royal Household, having been first tried by Elizabeth 1 over 400 years ago and sold at the Great Exhibition in 1851. It is suffering from price pressures due to falling demand in the bottled water sector, as consumers become concerned that it is an “environmentally damaging” luxury.
However, the royal family could turn their attention to sea waters - not to drink, but as a source of income, as they are expected to benefit from the development of offshore wind farms within UK territorial waters. The sea bed is owned by the Crown Estates, who have announced today their intention to work with the government to develop offshore facilities to deliver up to a quarter of the UK’s energy requirements by 2020. And one of the announcements in last week’s Spending Review was that the Civil List, which provides state income to the Royal Family, is to be replaced in the next few years with a proportion of the profits generated by the Crown Estates. Creation of wind farms is bound to cause environmental controversy - there will be much debate about the ethics involved, but fossil fuels have to be replaced with reliable renewable energy somehow, and could help to provide collaboration with the private sector in clean technology and a National Infrastructure Plan, announced by David Cameron at the CBI conference today.
From public sector to private sector - will outsourcing take-off?
As the public sector prepares for the savage cuts in government spending, many firms in the private sector are looking forward to exploiting the opportunities provided by greater outsourcing by the public sector. This excellent short video by the BBC’s Robert Peston is packed full of useful insights for economics & business students alike. Are we likely to see a privatised fire service, or greater private sector provision of policing and health services?
External influences - local authority spending
As A2 students start to broaden their thinking about the influences on a business’s decisions, they have to learn about local and national government revenue raising and spending. I often find that they don’t know the different roles of local and national government, but an interactive device which the Local Government Authority is about the roll-out to all councils websites might help with that. The idea is to ask the public to play the role of council leaders in deciding where to make cuts in spending, changes in employees pay and in the fees charged for various services, in order to achieve the required cuts and keep any rise in council tax to less than 5%. It has been trialled by Redbridge local council in London, and you can see it in operation on their website.
Private sector or public sector: what is the future for the Royal Mail?
Many students will be thinking at the moment about ways of ‘classifying’ business. One crucial distinction is between the public and private sectors of the economy. It looks like the Royal Mail is about to be privatised – and start a new life as a private sector organisation.
read more...»The Social Network - the Facebook Business Story
Coming to cinemas later this year - The Social Network - tells the story of Facebook and the challenges faced by Mark Zuckerberg along the way.
The trailer below gives you some idea about the style of the film. Looks like it could be helpful for teaching protection of intellectual property at the very least!
read more...»How much do you earn? How much should you earn?
I think it’s likely that after the recession, the subject of pay will stay in the news. Here are a couple of links: one to an Economist debate about whether the government should try to regulate the pay of top executives and another about pay rates in general.
read more...»Politics and Business
You will have noticed that a General Election is coming. But before you start to consider the extent to which firms will be affected by a change in government, stop to consider the significant change in the relationship between politicians and business over the last couple of years around the world.
The BBC’s Robert Peston has picked up on 5 quick examples: very helpful when you’re working through that PEST analysis.
read more...»“The Tesco” – a new unit of measurement!
Baffled by billions? Dazzled by the scale of government debt? Stupefied by spending figures? According to an amusing BBC article government ministers increasingly struggle to get their heads round the national finances. For most of the numbers in public argument have gone enormous too. Billions, trillions? Too many zeros. What better way to understand them than with a new unit of measurement? From now on the Treasury will measure the economy and public spending in: The Tesco.
read more...»kulula.com ambushes the World Cup
Fifa is very protective of its image rights and trade marks around the World Cup, and with less than three months to go to kick off on June 11th they have objected to a South African budget airline’s advertising. The advert featured pictures of the stadiums, national flags, vuvuzelas (South African plastic trumpets) and the delightful tag line ‘Unofficial National Carrier for the You-Know-What’. Kulula is know for its quirky adverts and aircraft designs; the one shown above is, they say, part of their ongoing strategy to demystify air travel, and the one below helped them to raise over half a million rand for the charity CHOC (Children’s Haematology Oncology Clinic Childhood Cancer Foundation of South Africa).
Ireland asks for your help on St Patrick’s Day
It’s hard to take this one seriously, but perhaps you should give it a try. The Irish president, Mary McAleese, has launched a website asking for your views and ideas that could be developed into new businesses with the aim of creating jobs and “bringing back the feel-good factor” to the struggling country.
Maybe it’s worth a few minutes of business studies time to consider both the nature of Ireland’s problems and to take a strategic view of possible ways forwards. And there is €100,000 for the best ideas…..
The tax on companies
Anyone following the news knows that tax and government spending are the main issues facing firms and households in the forthcoming general election. The bottom line: spending is likely to fall and taxation is likely to rise. Whilst most of us can get our heads around income tax and VAT – mainly effecting households - what are the main tax issues facing firms?
read more...»Government support for apprenticeships
Offering apprenticeships is one way that businesses can go about training new employees in practical skills. However they are also often criticised as simply a cheap way of hiring labour for a couple of years, with no guarantee of employment for the apprentice at the end of the training period. The government is trying to increase the number of apprenticeships on offer as one way of tackling youth unemployment and the skills gap that we have in the UK economy, by offering grants to small businesses who take on an apprentice. This video report looks at the history of apprenticeships, with some lovely footage from the sixties, and the benefits that the scheme could bring, along with the fact that there is still no guarantee of a full-time job at the end of it, and so could be useful for students of both unit 2, looking at recruitment and training, and unit 4 looking at the relationship between business and government.
read more...»Common sense in recruitment gives way to political correctness gone mad
The Sunday Times carried this story yesterday - does it make you laugh or despair? An agency trying to recruit a hospital cleaner approached Jobcentre Plus - the government offices run by the Department of Work and Pensions to help the unemployed to find work. The agency asked them to advertise the vacancy and to add that applicants ‘must be very reliable and hard-working’. But Jobcentre Plus have refused to display the advert because the phrase may discriminate against unreliable applicants.
Isn’t that the whole point??
External influences - supermarkets reducing promotions on alcohol
The Grocer magazine reports that major supermarkets have fewer promotions on alcohol this January than they did a year ago. The trend was most noticeable at Asda, where alcohol makes up 13% of all promotions compared with 26% last year, and on average the proportion has fallen from 26% to 22%. Meanwhile promotions on fruit and vegetables have risen from 11.5% a year ago to 14% now (and in Morrsons, from zero to 2%). Last week the proposals to limit pubs in the number and type of promotions that they were allowed to offer to encourage drinkers (women drink free, all you can drink for £10 and so on) were criticised because they applied to pubs and clubs only and would have no effect on cut-price promotions from retailers of alcohol. Perhaps the supermarkets are opting to cut the number of price promotions that they offer in order to try to avoid regulation being applied to them - last week, Health Secretary Andy Burnham hinted the government was considering minimum pricing to tackle “ludicrously cheap booze”.
Google in China: Business ethics, business sense or both?
A fascinating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issue for the internet titan Google, whose business mission statement is stated simply as ‘Don’t Be Evil’. China offers enormous potential as a profitable marketplace, and its poor human rights record shows some sign of gradual improvement as the country engages with the outside world. But the Chinese government has reminded all companies that they must abide strictly by state controls of the country’s cyberspace. Recent events have lead Google to say ‘no’, and they are threatening to pull out. Why?
read more...»Where Does Your Money Go?
An interesting new website has just been launched which provides detailed information about government spending. Although currently a prototype “Where Does My Money Go?” provides a free interactive tool that provides a detailed break down of government spending.
read more...»Health & safety in action - the 1 million stroller recall
Bad news for British manufacture Maclaren. Maclaren are having to recall around 1 million pushchairs and buggies in the USA because of 12 reports of fingertip amputations after children caught their hands in the hinge mechanism.
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