Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Negotiation Culture

Hi guys,
Here we are back into business. Today I would like to share how to deal with cross-cultural people and how they do negotiation. Here some characteristics of the nation when your company is decided to do global strategy. I put example from certain countries that in my opinion give the big impact in business. So here it is,
  • America
From the goal cultural dimension, American is included as individualists; they are more accepting of competitive bargaining tactics and bluffing. It is said that they may be perceived as less ethical by their International counterparts. American is significantly less accepting of misrepresentation to an opponent’s network and they are not afraid to show their real behavior instead of changing it.
Moreover, from social side, American is dispositionalism where Individualistic and egalitarian power are part of their culture and they have tendency to ascribe the cause of a person’s behavior to his or her character or underlying personality. In addition, American has culture of direct communication where message are transmitted explicitly and directly, and communication are action oriented and solution minded. They have tendency to tell things to your face, favoring direct confrontation and discussing problem freely. In expanding the pie, American exchange information directly and avoid using influence strategies when negotiating intra and intercultural.
  • British/ European
British dominant attitude is basically economic collectivism; they give priority to in-group goals, and for business relationship they were bounded by formal rules and low affectivity, they reserved in manners, dress, as well as speech. British people are famous for their politeness and self-discipline. In this case, British is considered as situationalism where there is tendency to ascribe the cause of a person’s behavior to factors and forces that are outside of a person’s control. Moreover, British people are doing indirect communication and they like to add a joke and humor on their negotiations that somehow it is hard to understand by others.
  • Japanese
Japanese are indirect culture; they transmit messages indirectly and implicitly. As example, Japanese negotiators are less likely to say no and more likely to remain silent. Moreover, they also exchange information indirectly and use influence when do intercultural negotiating, but adapt their behaviors when doing intercultural negotiation; however, even though they acted indirectly, they not afraid to engage in more direct information exchange (asking questions). For the influence dimension, Japanese are more hierarchy power relationship, they not challenge high status member and status implies social power and is not easily permeated or changed.
  • Chinese
Chinese people are collectivism, they emphasize social networks, and they negotiate with someone whom they believed to be a friend or a stranger from their own culture. As expected based upon their collectivist orientation, Chinese changed their behavior more when interacting with others and they perceived more external influence (situationalism). They considered as hierarchy power relationship just like Japanese, due to their preferences to use relational bargaining (asking a superior for a resolution; consulting with third parties for advice). That is why; it will be easier to persuade the higher authorities when doing negotiation with Chinese people because they concern for the collective and authority for business relationships.


Thank you for reading my entry and happy negotiate
written by Herlin

Catching the Customers Eye

Attracting customers is what we need to do as marketers. However, it is not an easy job. Marketers need to emphasize the uniqueness of the product while convince the customers that the products also have similarities with others. KFC “Jagonya Ayam” or Nike “Just Do It” is amazing slogan that makes the customers instantly think of the products when they heard it. Regardless, sweat and tears are needed to create these two or three words slogan and a tailored marketing support to kick the promotion. So, the question is how to create kickass slogan that will imprint in the customers mind.
Slogan or brand is a product of positioning. As MBA students all of us should be familiar with the term. In short, it is where we want the put the product in the market and customers eyes. Having clear positioning will ease the marketing team effort to build brand awareness, shady one will not go nowhere even with a lot of financial support like old time saying we cannot have it all, so choose one.
Even though positioning is a part of marketing, it has the formula to make it easier for the marketers to create one. The formula is:
To – mention the target customers in the first few words to emphasize the position of the products.
Brand- mentioning the brand so the customer will be familiar with it. For Example: Orang Pintar minum Tolak Angin.
Frame of reference – this is the similarity of this product with competitors or in short it is point of parity.
Unique selling proposition – emphasize of what makes the product different. This is important to hit the target right to the point not walking around the bush.
Comparison – Comparing the product with competitors, not really important if the marketers already created creative unique selling point that hit the bull’s eye.
Reason to believe – Showing why the customer should believe what the product claimed it good to be.
By using this formula, marketers can depict the right words to lead the customer imagination of how the product should be perceived. Now, how about you all use this guidance to create your own unique slogan?

written by Claudya

Monday, June 29, 2015

LST Removal


Hi there guys, we met again at last! Just a few moments ago government made a decision to remove PPnBM (Pajak Penjualan Barang Mewah) or LST (Luxuries Sales Tax) except for automotive products any thought why?
Based on our mini research, Indonesia’s economic growth are on a sluggish phase. In the first quarter of 2015 Indonesia’s economic growth is 4.71% which is slower if we compared to the same quarter in 2014 which is 5.14%. If this trends continues to happen, Indonesia’s economic condition might be in jeopardy. So how could this be happen? Again we analyze and search for a credible information, and it turns out that there are two main culprit. Firstly is the government itself, due to late ratification of Indonesian Revised Budget (APBN-P) which just finalize on February makes the states expenditure not optimal. Secondly is the private sector, the investor tend to perform “wait and see” because Rupiah’s exchange rate towards US Dollar recently fall sharply & there was a really chaotic condition on the new police head, in addition our export volume is decreasing this period.
So how to counter this miserable trend? There are many ways to overcome this problem, and we wanted to underline 2 ways, first is country competitiveness in all aspect, such as human & natural resources and technology. Why and how competitiveness could resulted in positive economic growth? Simply imagine you are the only humankind who can produce electricity, so if anybody in the world wanted to get electricity will buy it from you. How could this happened? This is what it’s called competitiveness, because nobody could produce the same until some period of time. But as we know human being is a genius creature, either they will construct new source of electricity or they imitate existing product, the ultimate goal is reaching “Sustainable Competitive Advantage”. In this case we could say we keep the technology blueprint for ourselves using patent and keep the human capital happy with tons of incentives, and monopolized all the natural electricity source from the water to nuclear. There you go! A completely sustainable competitive advantage, but again this is the extreme example so it could easily understand☺. Secondly is according to the government, is removing LST (Luxuries Sales Tax), so more people will buy stuff, and hopefully the economy will move towards positive growth. In other hand this could leads to overconsumption syndrome, BUT! This policy is made to help our local industries, so they could compete, and in addition it will give them better position in the market. So that’s all for today folks! We’ll see you again soon! Stay awesome people!!
Quotes for today: "Opportunities don't happen. You create them." -Chris Grosser-

written by Ibnu

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

PURCHASING DECISION

Have you ever wondered about how to do systematically purchasing decision, here is the steps which is written by one of MBA authors, Claudya. 


Conclusions :
The student gives much consideration in buying the product , he spends a lot of times searching for information. 
He buys the product that offers the best offerings according to his perspective.
There is a high posibility for him to buy another product from similar brand if the products satisfies him.
Buying electronic devices is an action that takes a lot of time to ponder. The customers really give their attention to the specification and quality.
They will not buy it because of habit.


Thank you for reading this entry 

Thursday, June 11, 2015

The Balance Sheet (Part 1)


Hi! Welcome back guys! Today is our Finance Day. Our topic now is the balance sheet. Balance sheet is one of the major financial statements used by accountants and business owners. The balance sheet presents company’s financial position at the end of a specified date. Some explain the balance sheet as an accountant’s snapshot of a firm’s accounting value at point in time.

The function of balance sheet for company is:
  • Exhibits the true financial position of a firm at a particular date
  • Financial position can be ascertained clearly with the help of balance sheet
  •  Provides valuable information to the management for taking better decision through ratio analysis
  • Balance sheet helps in knowing past and present position of company.

5    It is a mirror of a business


The balance sheet has two sides, which are left side where the assets placed, and the right side that contains the liabilities and stockholder’s equity. The balance sheet states what the company owns and how it financed. The accounting definition that underlies the balance sheet and describes the balance is:

Assets = Liabilities + Stockholder's equity 

Let’s discuss more about the three items above.

1.     Assets
Asset is a resource with economic value that company own or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefits. Assets split into two types, which are:

  • Fixed assets are those that will last a long time. Some fixed assets are tangible, such as machinery and equipment. Other fixed assets are intangible, such as patents and trademarks.
  • Current assets are those that have short lives, such as inventory. Product that your firm has made, but has not yet sold, is part of inventory.

Liabilities and Stockholder's Equity 
Liability is a company’s legal or obligations that arise during the course of business operation. There are two category of liabilities based on how long company’s must repaid, which are:
  •  current liability : short term debt (must be repaid within one year)
  •     long term debt (not must be repaid within one year)
  •  Stockholder’s equity is the portion of the balance sheet that represent the capital received from investor in exchange for stock, donated capital, and retained earnings. In other words, Shareholder’s equity represents the difference between the value of the assets and liabilities of the company or we can call as a residual claim on the firm’s assets.


The picture following is an example of balance sheet.



The next meeting, we will talk deeper about how to create the balance sheet. So, don’t miss it guys. J


Written by Dera Hafiyyan





Monday, June 1, 2015

Purchasing Decision Process




In marketing class, MBA students have to act and think like marketers. That is why, as a marketer, they need to understand the potential customer thoughts that lead to their purchasing behaviour. The first step to analyze the customer behavior is by understanding their thoughts when buying a product. For that reason, students have to understand the concept of customer purchasing decision process and comprehend each step of the process. Furthermore, a good marketer understand that each process has different weight depends on the product category. In this journal, we will not discuss about the concept but the five steps of purchasing decision and how to put the right importance for each of them.


The five steps of purchasing decision process are:
Problem Recognition ->Information Search->Evaluation of Alternatives ->Purchasing Decision->Post Purchasing Decision


This writing will explain the process through an example for each product category per week, it is approximately for three weeks.
In the first example, we will analyze the purchasing decision process of an ordinary product less than Rp. 5000.
The customer is a maid who wants to buy garlic for her personal consumption. (please check our picture bellow)

Written by Claudya