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Ikea’S Global Strategy
Globalization benefits
Globalization benefits
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Recommended: Ikea’S Global Strategy
The globalization of production refer to the sourcing of goods and services from location around the globe. This benefit is to take advantage of national differences in the cost and quality of factor of production such as labor, energy, land and capital. IKEA had concentrated production in four core suppliers in China and Europe to reduce the cost of the cotton slipcovers. Between 1999 and 2005, the price of the Klippan by some 40 percent are reduce from these global sourcing decision enable IKEA as the resulting efficiencies. It is because, the labor of cost in China and Europe are more cheaper than another country. Thus, IKEA choose the China because in there have cheaper labor and lower price of sources to take advantage of national differences in the cost. By doing this, IKEA hope to lower their overall cost structure or improve the quality or functionality of their product offering, thereby allowing them to compete more effectively than others. The globalization of production has enabled IKEA to focus on efficiency. IKEA relies on some 1,300 suppliers located in 53 countries. I...
1. What were the sources of IKEA’s successful entry in furniture retail business in Sweden?
The essay, “The Noble Feat of Nike” by Johan Norberg basically talks about the effects of Nike going into third world countries, particularly Vietnam. Norberg explains how Nike’s factory gains from being in its desired location, Vietnam. Vietnam being a communist country comes to Nike’s advantage, because if they were located elsewhere they would have to pay workers higher wages and use more of their machines. Workers in these countries are provided with an air conditioned building with regular wages, free meal plans, free medical service, and training/education to operate the machinery within the factory. The workers find all of this beneficial and in their own favor because of the fact their earning double to five times the amount in wages than if they were working outdoors on a farm. This great deal, blinds them to notice the meaning behind the company’s location in Vietnam. The Nike factory was rather clever in making their location in that specific area to gain benefits for Western owners. The catch Nike gains from is simple. The owners pay factory workers only a small monthly sum from what they make selling the shoes to customers. Globalists state that the company doesn’t pull this fast one on the Western population because of our advancements compared to the Eastern countries. Western people would protest and strike to demand better wages for their work, but the people in Eastern countries have no choice but to deal with the injustice in order to support their families and educate their children.
The organization has had to ensure that it has retail stores in many countries globally and website options in more than 100 countries. The company further enhances access of online stores in more than 37 countries which is accessible all the time and people are able to access the services regardless of their location. Globalization further affects the organization in the sense of international market management which requires it to engage in strictly global decision making. The organization’s production networks have been geared to enhancing global competition (Lüsted, 2012) .The Company is further good when it comes to seizing the opportunities available in global market. For the organization to find efficient as well as cheap means of production, it has to bargain hard so as to allow its contractors to have low profits. This mostly is consequential to the suppliers cutting corners with the use of cheap
Another example of IKEA’s international strategy in building good relationships with suppliers is in Asia, especially in Vietnam, where IKEA expanded its own supply base. Vietnam manufacturers offers low cost labor force and not expensive raw materials, while IKEA provides the view of creating a long-term, high-volume business relationship, and advice on finding the best according to the price raw materials, setting up and bulding factories, choosing what machines, equipments
The furniture company Somerset needs to retain its customer service record and remedy any of its global supply chain issues before it has an adverse effect on the brand and start losing customers. With a frequent change in the product catalog, keeping an excessive inventory will cut its profit and some of the product may become obsolete even before the furniture hits the retail outlet stores. In order to achieve profit and success, business employee many strategies and the supply chain strategy are one of the operational management techniques that use analytical decision making process to achieve the company goals and provide tools to effectively compete in the market (Taylor and Russell, 2014).
Environmental analysis is integral to understanding how the organization operates within the organization itself, with in the industry and within the macroeconomic environment. For this analysis the subject organization will be IKEA. “IKEA Group is one of the world’s largest privately owned companies, engaged in the retail of flat-packed home furniture and other house wares. Operating over 150 large-scale stores in over 30 countries, and with a mail order division, IKEA sells a range of furniture, which is made by over 2,000 suppliers in more than 55 countries. The company is headquartered in Helsingborg, Sweden”. (DataMonitor, 2007). IKEA major retail competition in the US are: Furniture Brands International Inc , Office Depot Inc , Sauder Woodworking Co., Stanley Furniture Company, Inc. , and Staples, Inc. This paper will identify the key macroeconomic variables which affect IKEA and the retail industry as a whole. To better understand the effects of such variables upon the industry, two specific variables will be developed further. Once an understanding of how the industry is affected by these variables, the challenges and opportunities will be identified for IKEA, which operates in the retail industry.
IKEA is more than a furniture store they are a company driven by values (IKEA, 2014). The company seeks to make their consumers lives easier by providing them with modern, innovative, inexpensive products which they use to tackle daily home activities. IKEA Group has 298 stores in 26 different countries (IKEA, 2014). The company’s vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people” (IKEA, 2014, para 1). Using innovative techniques for creating, producing, and marketing their products IKEA can provide consumers with durable products for reason...
Globalization is a broad concept and the angle taken to define it can lead us to interpret the idea in many different ways. There is much controversy about what globalization actually means and many definitions fail to encompass social, cultural and technological exchanges between world systems. John Pilger suggests that "it is a jargon term which journalists and politicians have made fashionable which is often used in a positive sense to denote a 'Global village' of free trade, hi-tech marvels and all kinds of possibilities that transcend class, historical experience and ideology." (J.Pilger 1998:63). Taking a broader point of view, Bilton et al defines globalization as "The process whereby political, social, economic and cultural relations increasingly take on a global scale, and which has profound consequences for individuals, local experiences and everyday lives."
The management of cross-cultural is another challenge, which have to face during the develop entering into market process. According to (Dong and Liu, 2010, p. 233) mentioned that “Cultural distance between the home and host country can have significant influence on selection, training and performance management system.” When IKEA develop the Chinese market, it affected by different culture background as well. As the case mentioned (China teaches IKEA limits of homogeneity, 2009) that, in other countries, IKEA stores are far away to the city with a lower rental and larger place for the consumers. However, in China, IKEA sets their stores close to the city, where are easier able to arrive by public transportation. Because of the different consumption habits, Chinese customers prefer to choose the methods of home delivery to shop. Furthermore, owing to lacking of DIY (do it yourself) culture, the consumers have a highly demand on the workers of furniture packaging. From the HR managers’ perspective, this home assembled services are more common used in China, thus, they need to adjust the recruitment plan to hire more assembled furniture workers. Meanwhile, it can be acknowledged that “scientific evidence indicates that certain human resource (HR) practices are positively related to organizational performance.” (COMBS et al., 2006) For example, in China, IKEA HR managers
The selected organization for the marketing Audit is IKEA Group. As part Phoenix University marketing course, the author of this document (hereafter referred as “author”) will review the marketing process of IKEA and will provide an audit report at the end of the course.
Globalization is an overwhelming trend. It is no doubt that there are many positives rise out of globalization, but equally some serious negatives brought from this trend, such as gradual disappearance of ethnic identity (Buckley, 1998). This essay is going to address some positive effects of globalization generally, and then it will focus on impacts of this trend on developing countries.
With the globalization of a product, a company might benefit in many ways. First, by sifting its production or services overseas, the company can reduce its overall production costs due to availability of low-cost labor. Second, working collectively with other companies overseas allows companies to access technical knowledge or resources that are either unavailable or are too expensive at home.
Offshoring has become a big factor in the global economy. Many companies have opened customer service centers in different countries due to the savings. Clothing companies moved their manufacturing plants to other countries due to the cost of labor. Major stores in the US, for example, Wal-Mart, brings in most of their products from other countries to save money and pass that savings onto the consumer. Capitalism in the US has recently helped the global economy, the benefits of the Americans in the world’s marketplace is seen in the return of money to the rest of the world.
Not only is there a sense of globalisation in the things we watch but also in the way we watch them. For example, digital television has become such a part of everyday life for the majority of UK viewers that many don’t even know they have it. The total number of households in the UK with digital television now stands at 15,715,178. We are now able to watch the same channels as people at the other side of the world, thanks to digital television. We have so much choice that we, at times, don’t know what to do with all of it. It has the availability to hold around 999 channels ranging from BBC channels to children’s cartoon channels, from DIY shows to adult content channels; it is all available to us.
Globalization is a term that is difficult to define, as it covers many broad topics in the global arena. However, it can typically be attributed to the advancement of economic, social, and cultural interactions among the companies, citizens, organizations, and governments of nations; globalization also focuses on the interactions and integration of countries (The Levin Institute 2012). Many in the Western world promote globalization as a positive concept that allows growth and participation in a global community. Conversely, the negative aspects rarely receive the same level of attention. Globalization appears to be advantageous for the privileged few, but the benefits are unevenly distributed. For example, the three richest people in the world possess assets that exceed the Gross National Product of all of the least developed countries and their 600 million citizens combined (Shawki and D’Amato 2000). Although globalization can provide positive results to some, it can also be a high price to pay for others. Furthermore, for all of those who profit or advance from the actions related to globalization, there are countless others who endure severe adverse effects.