China
More often than not, people set up businesses in order to generate profits, regardless of the size, nature or location. But depending on the nature and long term goals, strategies are set up. The strategy a company will employ will differ greatly from city to city and living in the global village we do today, from country to country but the bottom line will always remain profits. The same rule applies for the corner shop down the street where you buy your coca cola or the multinational itself, which supplies the corner shop.
Location scouting for setting up production factories, outlets, and joint ventures is a task that is taken very seriously. One of the most favorite locations is China. Though many people say entering China is tedious due to its government policies of wanting to share technology so they could learn from them. But with changing times China is also changing from a communist country to a capitalist one, making it easier for multinationals to enter their market. As far as the argument of risking market share to China goes, that exists everywhere in the world. If it’s not them, it’ll be someone else.
China is a humongous market which provides great opportunities be it in terms of size of its market or the cheaply available labor. Setting up production plants there also removes trade barriers such as import quotas allowing a greater share in the market. China is a populous country which can make up a good portion of the overall profit as the probability of selling there is quite high. All countries will present problems of their own while setting up business there, but one thing which the Chinese can be relied upon for is their integrity and if that means giving up some management methods to them than it’s a fair price to pay.
Yahoo
One of the biggest online names one can not ignore even if they wanted to is Yahoo. Yahoo was launched in 1994 in the form of an online business making it fall into the category of electronic business, better known as e-business. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, news, and social media websites and services. Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995.
Unlike a normal business, it doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar form from which it operates but that doesn’t mean that there are no physical premises. Yahoo is such a large organization, with its operations world over. People may be off the belief that because it is online there’s lesser risk, money, human resources and other necessities that are required to run a business, involved. That is not true. The amount of resources is almost equal, if not more than any huge retail organization like Wall Mart.
The online business industry was riding the waves and was at its peak till the end of 1991. But this was then followed by its downfall which left many investors and entrepreneurs bankrupt. One of the survivors that we still see today is Yahoo. On of the main reasons for this is that the strategies that they had outlined for themselves such as diversifying and creating joint ventures with many other online businesses. They spread their risk all over the board and survived and have managed to leave an imprint on the minds of all those peoples who have used it.
Conclusion
All in all, one can not say which would be more successful or profitable, a brick and mortar or an online company. But what we can say with quite a bit of certainty is this that whichever form of business one runs, the strategies which are formulated and applied should be inline with the changing environment and flexible so as to mold them according to time and environment.
References
“Yahoo! Inc: Company Report”. MSN. 2008. Web.
“Key Statistics”. Yahoo. 2008. Web.