Leadership in the Workplace

Leadership is a necessary trait that a manager must carry and demonstrate. Different types of leadership are required for different situations. The different types of leadership are: coaching, super, and servant.

Coaching Leadership

Coaching leadership instructs followers on how to meet special organizational challenges they face. This type of leadership identifies inappropriate behaviors and suggests to the subordinate how they should change them. As the name indicates, this approach is much like a coach.

Super Leadership

Super leadership although it sounds like the best way to lead, it is not always the appropriate type. Super leadership is leading others by showing them how to lead themselves. A manager must teach them to think on their own, eliminate negative thoughts, and build self-confidence. If a manager does those things, the subordinate is more likely to lead her/himself.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is placing more value on helping followers achieve aspirations and fulfill personal needs. This type of leadership has been around the longest. A servant leader has multiple traits such as; a good listener, persuasive, empathetic, and consider themselves a steward of human resources.  Research has shown that this type of leadership has a lot of potential to lead an organization to success. 

Works cited:

Brown, Paul. "Leadership." Management 320. Barry Hall, Fargo. 2 Dec. 2015. Lecture.

Giving Tuesday

An annual event took place yesterday called Giving Tuesday. This event occurs every year on the tuesday following Thanksgiving. Local and national businesses partook in this event by raising money for charities around the country. Many companies use this as a strategy of Public Relations to create a positive company image. In Fargo companies like Valley Imports and Others Fair Trade Boutique. Valley Imports said they would match donations up to $5000 and donate those funds to Sharehouse.
Philanthropic type activities generated by corporations and business have a positive effect on the companies image. This can be used as a marketing strategy to generate the interest of consumers by creating awareness of a company and perhaps giving them a competitive advantage over companies who don't partake in philanthropic activities. Giving tuesday became an internet sensation yesterday by creating hashtags and by generating the interest of social media users. Many companies gained recognition by their donations. These donations  not only created a good reputation for the company  but also boosted sales with their donations.





Works cited:
Olson, Dave. "Inside Business: Groups Get behind Giving Tuesday Movement." INFORUM. N.p., 02 Dec. 2015. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct marketing is one form of selling a product. This form of marketing gives the marketers a good amount of control over what information and impression the customer is getting. Direct marketing can come in many forms, Mail order, M-commerce, Telemarketing, and Direct Response Advertising.
Mail order can come in two forms, catalogs and direct mail. Catalogs are collections of products offered for sale and described in book form, usually consisting of product descriptions. An example of this would be the Sunday catalogs that department stores like Macys and Herbergers send out on an ongoing basis. Direct mail is a brochure/pamphlet offering a specific good/service at one point in time. An example of direct mail would be like the flyers Direct TV sends out to people that promote their prices.
Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing over the telephone. We have all experienced the annoying telemarketers that call the same time every day trying to sell the same product. A disadvantage of using this technique is nowadays there are "Do Not Call" lists.
Direct response advertising allows consumers to respond by immediately containing the provider with questions or an order. Direct response TV is an example of this with products such as Pay-per-view features on TV. Another example is Informercials which are segments that demonstrate and inform the audience about a certain product and often times will offer special prices if people "call within the next 20 minutes!".
M-Commerce is a promotional and other e-commerce activity that is transmitted over mobile phones/devices. An example of this would be SMS text messages that reach out to customers.

The technique that marketers choose to use is not always the same. There is no one definite way to market every product. The type of technique depends on the size of the audience and the product/service being sold.



works cited:
Pillai, Rajani. "Trade Promotion, Direct Marketing, and Personal Selling." Marketing 320. Barry Hall, Fargo. 1 Dec. 2015. Lecture.

Getting Paris Back on Track

As you recall last week I wrote a blog about the economic repercussions of the Paris attacks, now I am following up with how Paris should go about getting back on track. You can probably imagine tourism has slowed down significantly since the attacks in Paris. Tourism accounts for over 7% of France's GDP. Two weeks later Paris is still seeing sparse lines at stores, less traffic, and early Holiday sales in hopes to attract customers. The 4th quarter was not so great for the people who do business in France because of the attacks, long-term planning on the political and business fronts will likely increase the countries economy. Last week a survey was completed which involved American Business people who have conducted business in France and the results showed that France is actually perceived less bad as years before. France especially now relies on business people around the world to continue doing business in France because of the downfall of the economy. The survey results look hopeful for the French economy and the likeliness of long-term effects on the attacks are slim. If the percentage of people with a negative perception of the French Market continues to decrease, France will likely see better days ahead.








Works Cited:
Karabell, Shellie. "Paris Now: How to Get Business Back on Track." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 28 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Black Thursday & Cyber Sunday

By the looks of the title of this blog you must have thought I had the name wrong. Not this year! More and more stores are opening on Thursday (Thanksgiving) evening and allowing shoppers to shop. However stores have actually started to begin their "black friday sales" almost a week before actual Black Friday. Well-known stores like Herbergers and Macys have begun their Black Friday festivities nearly one week ago.
Cyber Monday also has been promoting the early bird sales that begin on Sunday instead of Monday. Walmart announced big sales will hit its website everyday in November leading up to Cyber Monday.  More than likely we will see both Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday sales continue weeks after the actual days if stores don't sell out of the products they intended to.
Although Black Friday is still an eventful day for shoppers, with continued extended sales offered by stores, we will start to see less and less popularity of just the Friday after Thanksgiving. Businesses seemed to have a hold on their prices in order to offer such large sales for such an extended period of time so it is likely we will see this trend continue into the next few years until the demand for Black Friday decreases.
The newest Holiday to add to the bunch is Small Business Saturday. As the name mentions, this is to promote shopping at small businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Small businesses are the only category of this infamous trifecta that are less likely to extend their sales weeks before and after the actual day. Now we have Thursday-Saturday to take care of all of our holiday shopping!

Works cited: "Friday Favorites - JK Style." JK Style. N.p., 20 Nov. 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Freenomics

According to marketingbinder.com, Freenomics s a business model that encourages giving products away for free because of the increase in profits that can be achieved by getting more people to participate in a market. We as consumers don't quite grasp how a company can be successful by giving away products and services for free. The example that comes to mind when I think of freenomics is the free music app called Pandora. Pandora is a great example of how freenomics works. Although there is the option for subscribers to purchase ad-free listening for $4.99 per month, that is not how Pandora makes their profits. Pandora, and other freenomic operating businesses make their money because they have the ears of so many consumers listening to their streaming that advertisers will pay big bucks to get their advertisement streamed to listeners on pandora. Essentially, the more people that listen to Pandora the bigger the market gets which means the bigger the audience get which ultimately leads to higher priced advertisements. By offering free music services Pandora has earned profit into the millions in recent years. Freenomics turns out to be a win-win situation for consumers and Pandora.  This new business model has show quite the success over the last few years and will continue to grow as we enter into more and more technology driven markets.


works cited:
"Freenomics." Marketing Binder. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Science behind Black Friday

Black Friday has become the holiday after the Thanksgiving holiday. Driven by massive sales in nearly all retail store, consumers have cut their holiday of giving thanks short. Ironically they cut the thankful holiday short in order to get greedy in retail stores around the country. How are these companies able to offer such discounted prices year after year and still make a profit?
This diagram demonstrates how a typically company will operate on black friday:

As you can see the retailer will typically sell the product for double the money they paid for it. On black friday they will sell it for 1.5 times the money they paid for it instead of double. By doing this they end up selling almost 5 times more of the inventory which generates over double the amount of profit. So next Friday when you are out black friday shopping, ask yourself if you are really getting the deal you think you're getting. Chances are most marketing departments in companies won't set prices to match cost or lost money therefore they are still making a profit on your purchase.



Works Cited:
"Black Friday By The Numbers - The Accounting Degree Review." The Accounting Degree Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.