Any organisation that can create a barrier to entry which prevents new competitors entering the market can, in theory, keep prices high. Economies of scale (think Airbus or Boeing), branding (think Apple) and distribution channels (think Coke) are all excellent examples of barriers to entry but one of the toughest barriers to break through are [...]

You’ve all used a computer and the “qwerty” style keyboards which are named after the first row of the letters of the top row of the keyboard are things that we currently take for granted. The interesting thing though is that 20 years ago they weren’t very common and my feeling is that in 20 [...]

We get a weekly report on the phrases that people are searching for when they visit our website. As well as the search terms that would be expected on our site such as “ACCA courses” or “CIMA courses” there are also some more unusual ones. One recent such unusual search term was “How do I [...]

Companies often offer incentives to encourage people to sign up for their products or services. BOGOF is a term that’s well known in marketing circles. It stands for “Buy One Get One Free” and as the phrase implies it is a sales promotion encouraging people to buy a product or service. If they pay for [...]

What price should you charge for your products? As any professional business qualification student knows, there are several different pricing strategies that can be used when setting the price for your product. You could for example base it on the internal factors of how much it costs you to produce (cost plus pricing) or you [...]

What have the Olympics, The European Football Championships and the American presidential elections got in common? Well, if you’re WPP, the world’s largest advertising and marketing group then they are all hopefully going to make it a bumper year for profits. The WPP Group make a fascinating case study. On Thursday they released their results [...]

Tonga is a beautiful island in the South Pacific. They have great beaches and lovely weather but what they don’t have are a lot of are icy mountains with toboggan runs. That hasn’t stopped Tongan Bruno Banani from becoming a pretty successful luger and he recently entered the luge World Championships in Altenberg, Germany. The [...]

A few years ago if a company wanted to advertise their products they mainly used the traditional media methods of TV, radio and print. Nowadays the world is awash with viral marketing and social media promotion. Although the main delivery methods used in advertising have no doubt faced rapid change I would argue that the [...]

So, it’s good and bad news for the fast food giant McDonalds. They recently released their latest annual results and things are looking good for them. Global comparable sales increased 5.6% and consolidated operating income increased by 14%. The split in individual geographic regions showed the US up 6%, Europe up 15% and APMEA (Asia [...]

Forget about the rivalry on the pitch between Manchester United and Liverpool. Forget about Luis Suarez refusing to shake hands with Patrice Evra at the game on Saturday. No, the key question is who has got the biggest kit sponsorship deal in the world. Manchester United’s kit is sponsored by Nike and until recently it [...]