The British Company Management

Текст №4

Market Research

Текст №3

Before selling the goods, you must do a lot of market research first. The information needed can be obtained from embassies of the Russian Federation, consulates, and trade representations, from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and from the Institute for Scientific Market Research, from trade associations and trade journals or from specialized consultant companies (who will do a professional market research job for you for a fee).

The information you are interested in is if there is any demand for your goods, what the market potential is, what sort of competition you will meet, i.e. how the price of your goods differs from the price of other competitive products including those produced locally. Local conditions and preferences, local trading customs and habits, seasonal factors should be taken into account.

But in general marketing covers not only market research, but also planning the selection (assortment) of goods, and consequently the production itself, price policy, advertising and promotion of sales, controlling the sales and post-sales servicing.

So marketing is a system of running all the business activities of a company (organization) in respect of coordinating supply and demand for the goods produced. Originally marketing was meant to help avoid over-production in advanced countries.

Advertising is an important means of promoting the goods that are being produced already as well as new lines in business.

There are specialized firms dealing with advertising. Different kinds of mass media – TV, radio, newspapers, cinema, journals, magazines, and posters – are used for advertising goods. Special leaflets, booklets and other printed matter about the goods may be published for the same purpose.

The management of the company is called the Board of Directors (not Managers) headed by the Chairman, the President. There is usually a Managing Director and in the case of a big company there may be several Joint Managing Directors.

A Manager in British companies is the person who is the head of a department – Sales, Export, Works (Production), Staff etc. so there are Sales Manager, Export Managers, Works (Production) Managers, Staff Managers, etc.

A General Manager has managers, working under his control, and receives his instructions from the Managing Director.

By British Company Law a limited company (public or private) must have a Company Secretary whose duties are plenty. First he is the clerk to the Directors: he is to keep registers of Directors and Members, arrange for proceedings at directors’ and shareholders’ meetings, prepare notices for the calling of these meetings, attend them and advise directors at board meeting on the legal, accounting and tax implications of any proposed business move as well as write minutes and reports (the minutes of a meeting are usually concise records of resolutions or decisions reached; and the reports are more extensive and give details of decisions, arguments for and against the resolutions and so on). Second he represents his company and in this capacity he supervises the working of the staff manager, he is often finally responsible for the accounting and handling of contracts. Thus he is the link between the company and the public.

The company Secretary must be a properly qualified person, and to be able to fulfill his routine duties well he is supposed to have training in company law, accountancy and many other subjects. He is expected to be part-lawyer, part-economist, part-administrator and part-accountant.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14