netrashetty

Netra Shetty
Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau (ARB) by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s. The company's initial business was the collection of television broadcast ratings.

The company changed its name to Arbitron in the mid 1960s, the namesake of the Arbitron System - a centralized statistical computer with leased lines to viewers' homes to monitor their activity. Deployed in New York, it gave instant ratings data on what people were watching. A reporting board would light up to indicate what home was listening to what broadcast.


Communication in the functional type is usually vertical, up and down a pyramidal structure. The decentralized structure cuts down on the directions from the top and allows each division to act as an autonomous business. Assuming PCCW, because of different factors, such as globalization and its rapid expansion has moved from functional to a more decentralized organization structure. PCCW Directories as a subsidiary acts as an autonomous business.

While PCCW products can be designed and marketed so as to have a more or less general appeal to most members of a market, the role of environment in identifying customers and their varying wants and needs are expected to complete a better competitive advantage by producing a number of different offerings to meet the needs of specific segments (Proctor, 2000). Further, the role of environment is inherent to the nature of market segmentation – the process of clustering people with similar needs into individuals and identifiable groups (Neal and Wurst, 2001; Jain, 2000), as it serves as the primary determinant. The environment constitutes a significant variety of people who probably are the future consumers of the product of service. It serves as the main source of information and knowledge for marketing decision making and strategy formulation and execution. In the recent years, the company had been muddling in a series of transformation without any clear strategic vision or exit strategy (Ng, 2004). Due to the complaints and demands of its shareholders, founder and former chairman Richard Li resigned. PCCW had difficult time in recovering its competitive position even with the presence of billion dollar investments like that of Cable & Wireless purchase of Hong Kong Telecom.

Considering the competitive environment in which PCCW Directories operate, the organization operates in a highly competitive environment where customer needs and demands are changing rapidly. Based on how many external factors that affect the organization and the number of competitors, the dimension of uncertainty can be described as complex. The stability of the environment is also important as it affects the company’s operation. PCCW Directories operate in complex environment where environmental factors especially technology and customer demands and needs are unstable. The demand for flexibility in the company’s services and products and the need for effective advertising tool make the environment unstable for PCCW Directories. In addition, instant competition with other companies also adds to complexity of the environment.

In January 1986, Sculley began to pitch the Macintosh to Fortune 500 companies like General
Electric, Eastman Kodak and Du Pont, and listened to their criticisms. He also expanded the
number of business packages written for the Mac. Apple’s marketing strategy focused more
aggressively on the corporate market to win space in the office at the expense of the IBM.
Simultaneously, the company slowly extricated itself from the unprofitable home computer
market and lessened its dependence on sales to schools. Said Sculley, “We went after business
because that’s the biggest market with highest profit and the fastest growth in the personal
computer industry.”49
In pursuing the business segment, Apple began to hire more employees with professional
business backgrounds.
Early on, Apple tended to hire hackers and enthusiasts. For the last two years,
they’ve taken on experienced professionals who were businessmen before they
were Apple enthusiasts.50
The idea was that corporate managers would be more responsive to salespeople who were similar
to them.
Apple’s national salespeople were ordered to seek “highly visible reference accounts.” The
company received orders from Sea First Bank for 1,000 Macs, Federal Express for $5 million
worth of machines, and commitments worth roughly $2.5 million apiece from General Motors,
GTE, Honeywell, and Motorola. In 1986, revenues from the sale of Macintosh products
exceeded those of Apple II products. That following March of 1987, Apple introduced two new
computers for the business market: the Macintosh SE and the Macintosh II. Both machines were
“open”--the first to accommodate microprocessor boards made by outside companies.
Apple Computer, Inc.
9
The open design vastly increased the Macs appeal to businesses, since the extra
boards let Macs work better in corporate computer networks, use bigger screens,
and run software written for IBM computers. The…Mac II had ten times the
computing power of the first Mac.
These products attracted larger software houses that developed sophisticated applications for
large business users.
The new Macintosh products and desktop publishing contributed to an expanded business market
for Apple. Nearly half of Apple’s sales and most of its profits came from selling personal
computers and related products to business users. The company now offered product features
that IBM did not offer that the business market highly valued.
In 1990, however, Apple’s progress in the business market was largely thwarted by Microsoft’s
introduction of the Windows operating system. This system’s ease of use surpassed MS-DOS
and reduced Apple’s interface advantage. This fact, coupled with the much larger installed
hardware base of IBM compatible machines for which Windows was designed, enabled
Microsoft to beat Apple with Apple’s own ideas, and “Microsoft emerged as the uncontested
leader of the desktop computing world.”

There are also numerous other factors that affect the organization’s operation. There are different market forces that affect the company’s operation and strategies. The policies and regulations set by the Hong Kong government and regulatory bodies that oversee the telecommunications and media sectors namely the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and the Broadcasting Authority (BA). Hong Kong’s growing economy has a tremendous impact on the growth of the company. Because of the flourishing economy, strong demand for data services is growing. General growth led to more business premises requiring services. PCCW Limited is committed to maintaining a high standard of corporate governance and strives for transparent, responsible and value-driven management focused on enhancing the value of the company to its shareholders. In order to effectively deal with the external environment, the organization pursues different strategies like investments in research and development,
 
Last edited:
Back
Top