Executive Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 12

Executive Summary - Essay Example Friedman presents three phases of globalization: globalization 1.0 presents countries globalizing, globalization 2.0 presents companies globalizing and globalization 3.0 entails individuals and small groups globalizing. Fried’s argument is based on two major tenets: the ten flatteners of 1990s and the triple convergence in 2000. Friedman presents the collapse of Berlin wall, netscape, workflow software, open sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining, insourcing, and in-forming and the steroids as the ten forces that flattened the world. Friedman further argues that when the ten forces converged in 200, the product was a flat world. Similarly, in Hans Rosling’s lecture â€Å"Hans Roslings 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats,† he explores the development of the world in the past present as well as the future using massive quantities of public data. Rosling presents to his audience the tale of the world focusing on 200 countries in a period of 200 years by use of 120,000 numbers within 4 minutes. Rosling also conveys the concept of technological advancement spurring globalization where he issues an example of a technology in San Francisco that keeps the entire city under police watch and help curb crime. He asserts that statistics is the basis through which human confusion is eliminated and brings out a vivid picture of how the world was, is and will be. A flat world impacts international businesses in various ways. First, it leads to increased level of competition because firms can easily get access to new markets across the flat world. Second, it leads to increase in business opportunities. Finally, it gives rise to multi-national and cross-cultural management, which is a big challenge to managers. Both Rosling and Friedman present how globalization has flattened then world over time. The world has become one leveled playing field for multinational

EHarmony Case Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

EHarmony Case Study - Essay Example The advent of new technologies has facilitated this change in social media and has made it a common activity. By 2005, the number of subscribers and user of social media and internet personals websites had increased with eHarmony recording over 15 million subscribers. This growth was attributed to a change in online dating perception. Currently, the social media industry has become extremely competitive and lucrative with companies employing different strategies to capture the market and increase customer base. Organizations have realized that apprehending the competitive forces and their fundamental roots discloses the causes of the industry’s present productivity (Porter, 2008). By the time online dating was gaining popularity, there had been few internet personals websites. For this reason, there was less competition in the industry. In the contemporary, competitive business environment, publicity is a significant facet of any organization. This therefore poses a great thre at to the existing business as more and more new entries are aiming the market in order to gain a share of the profits. This is therefore threatening the dominance of companies such as eHarmony an aspect that might affect even the overall returns of the company. The marketing strategy in the social media industry determines the profit potentiality of the company. For instance, Piskorski et al (2008) asserts that eHarmony centered on creating publicity through the owners who appeared in TV and radio programs including home news programs. The company focused on selling its unique features which yielded increased number of subscribers. According to Walker et al (2005), this is a competitive advantage that the company used to acquire a greater market share. In addition, eHarmony heightened its advertising campaigns in the radios and TV to capture wide audience. The contemporary social media have been characterized by fraudsters who have made people lose hope in finding serious mates in the internet personals websites. Arguably, social media sites have tried to employ a personality profile based on many questions, which discourage the not serious users from joining the site (Alex, 2010). For instance, eHarmony personality profile contains 258 questions, which portray seriousness of the subscriber. One of the major threats that online dating poses is erosion of culture. Initially, people had the chance to select his/her mate physically. This gave the person a chance to analyze the mate’s behavior and attitudes. With the current technology, this aspect has eroded. In addition young people will be exposed to early relationships an aspect that could expose them to early sex and marriages. This market therefore will lead to increased divorces and abusive marriages due to poor decision making before choosing the partner (Alex, 2010).. Increase of companies such as eHarmony would therefore reduce the time that was previously used to know your partner which is a thr eat to the new families. The company faces a great threat from ghost companies which retrieve money from the customers only to for the client to realize that the site has very few members. This mistrust by people creates a great threat to expansion of the company an aspect that hinders it to reach global standards. Another major threat that if facing companies such as eHarmony is lack of adequate resources to keep up with the increasing technological competition which makes communication easier. This