The Business Processing Association of the Philippines announced that the call center industry is expected to sustain its growth over the next year. A recent survey conducted by the GlobalEnglish Corp. illustrated that the Philippines is the leading country in terms of business English proficiency. BPAP and the Contact Center Association of the Philippines have created a partnership with academic institutions to offer students internships at BPO companies.

The growing popularity of call centers around the world demonstrates the increasing globalization in our society today. This concept of outsourcing creates more opportunities for transnational corporations to minimize their production and service costs. While globalization can be considered beneficial to participating countries due to the job creation it creates, it can also be seen as damaging to local businesses and fledgling companies.

“Telemarketing Call Center Services”. <http://telemarketingcallcenterservices.blogspot.ca/>

This year Nintendo, the world’s largest manufacturer of video-game devices, cut its profit forecast by 5.4 percent and lowered its estimate for sales among depreciating demand.  The lowering of product demand is due to the increasing competition from smartphone and tablet computers. In total, retail sales of video-game devices and accessories in the U.S. fell by 24 percent last month compared to a year earlier. This lack of profits was not what analysts had predicted while previously putting together Nintendo’s profit forecast.

A company’s forecast is a prediction of the possible scenarios that the firm will face and the likelihood of them happening. It is not a single number but rather an option followed by a percent. In other words, is a process used to estimate future patterns by analyzing business data.

Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman has brought in a new law which will limit the power of the independent directors of Grameen Bank. The presidential decree also grants a government-selected chairman the ability to pick a new managing director to take over the micro-lender bank from founder Muhammad Yunus. Critics of this new law are worried that only pro-government candidates will make it through the selection process. Mohammad Yunus was officially fired last year for exceeding the mandatory retirement age of 60. He had previously challenged this policy in the Supreme Court, but lost.

Mohammad Yunus  can be defined as a social entrepreneur who targeted an unfortunate but stable equilibrium that had previously caused suffering in his home of Bangladesh. He established the first micro-lending bank called Grameen Bank, which is classified as a social enterprise that has a social and economic impact on its community. His forced retirement is an unfortunate incident but the social enterprise that Mohammad Yunus developed will have an extremely long-lasting impact on the citizens of Bangladesh.

“Mohammad Yunus”. <http://links.org.au/node/1955>

Samsung is currently being accused of mistreating factory workers in China. The accusers claim that employees are working over 100 hours of overtime a month, children under 16 are working in the factories, and that the company failed to provide appropriate safety equipment. These alleged mistreatments could prove to be very damaging to Samsung as the company owns and controls many of the factories in question. This means that the firm cannot defend themselves by claiming to had no knowledge of the conditions or deny responsibility, as Apple did in their situation.

Examples of unethical business practices are abundant in our world today. Some key points that business managers must keep in mind is that ethics can prove important while running a respectable and credible business. It is essential that they do not take advantage of the vulnerable consumer, take into account the community while making important decisions, and recognize that consumers want to do business with a company that they trust as reliable and not exploitive.

Walmart is a dominant participator in the retail industry, but it is unlikely that this will remain the case in the near future. There has been speculation that Walmart needs to develop new differentiators because price and assortment of goods is no longer considered a point of difference for the company. In the US market the saturation of supercenters, which has been key to Walmart’s success, has reached an all time high. Natalie Berg, a global research director, was quoted in supermarket.co.za as saying that Walmart “will have to focus increasingly on…previously unpenetrated areas”.

Photo Source: <http://technorati.com/women/article/walmart-is-watching-you1/ >

This issue is directly related to our class lesson where we learned about Porter’s Five Forces. With such a broad industry such as the supercenter industry, there are fewer substitutes and more rivalries evident. The intensity of rivalry within an industry is characterized by the larger number of firms, low levels of product differentiation, and industry shakeout (when new firms enter a market as a result of the potential for high profits). All these factors have contributed to increased competition and the need for Walmart to further differentiate themselves from their competitors.