What Portugal needs at the moment, according Alvaro Santos Pereira (Portugal’s economy minister);

is a boost to the growth of their economy. How he plans to do so is through lowering the corporation tax they currently have, to a predicted 17% by the year 2016. This, together with the economy minister’s recent tour through Europe and North America, where he promised friendly taxes to investors and multi-national companies.

The reduction of tax is expected to increase the flow of money going into their economy and to create more jobs.  However, reducing corporate taxation would not only mean good things for Portugal, with it would come bad things for other countries. The lower the taxes are in other countries, (in most cases) the more the chances of investment in in other countries decreases. Germany is a country that is very sensitive to this type of economy-boosting move. If the portuguese are not careful, they might end up harming their relationship with the country that ‘bailed them out’.

Sources:

-http://www.portugaldailyview.com/whats-new/stimulus-package-portugal-announced-company-tax-cuts-to-boost-growth

-http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/oct/22/portugal-tax-rate-business

Results have shown that advertising in the internet is extremely effective as it is easier and in most cases; less expensive. This, however, is no shocker as it has been going on for many years, making companies like Google earn billions of dollars from advertising. What is interesting about it is how quickly advertising in the internet has grown.

As anyone can see, in this digital era; people’s everyday life depend more and more on the internet, and in some places, like the article “Online Ads Key to Business Growth” talks about, people “depend more on the internet than on the traditional media”.

Many markets; such as the movie rental market, have been threatened to completely disappear by online streaming media providers such as Netflix. As consumers now follow the trend to depend more on the internet… could this be the start to the case the movie rental businesses ended up in?

Sources:

-http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=290444

-http://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-earnings

With the increasing use of storing data in ‘cloud’ systems such as “Dropbox”, “iCloud” and “Google-Drive” the future of databases in the business world could be in the ‘clouds’. A ‘cloud’ is a place where you can virtually store your data, rather than on physical devices (memories,USBs,Discs, etc..). Businesses could potentially save millions of dollars from very expensive machinery for storing data, without mentioning the space needed to store these.

What big businesses would need to make this transition to ‘cloud’ storage is a provider that can give them security (that they will not loose their information and that only they have access to it). ‘Clouds’ are commonly used today, mainly, for personal use and the businesses that provide this service have complete control over the million dollar market. This means that if  DropBox, iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive or possible ones can provide enough security to convince large businesses to have an online provider manage their data, they could just become the pioneer in a billion dollar market.

Sources:

-http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/best-cloud-storage-dropbox-vs-skydrive-vs-google-drive-vs-icloud-1120024

-http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2013/07/disa-plans-427-million-hybrid-cloud-storage-setup/66221/

-http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10412528-62.html

Bacardi, the giant in the alcoholic drink industry has launched an advertising campaign where the company is portrayed as a true victor in the business. Founded in 1862, the company has faced fires, earthquakes, prohibition and even exile. The advertisement (as seen above) concentrates purely on the story behind Bacardi, rather than on the rum itself. Could this be a bad decision towards advertising their products? I believe it isn’t. With increasing awareness of the risks involving the consumption of alcohol, potential consumers are being ‘scared away’ (decreasing their overall consumption of alcohol). Driving consumer into seeing Bacardi from a different aspect might just be the best thing they could do. As the article ‘Bacardi Campaign Focuses on Resilience Rather Than Rum’ mentions, the campaign tells an admirable story of success. With upcoming releases of television advertisements focusing on the many problems that the company overcame to stand where it does today, potential consumers may end up choosing Bacardi over other brands simply for what it stands for, associating the consumption of it with success. The brand shows a promising future, however, only time will show how effective their new campaign really is.

Sources:

-http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/business/media/bacardi-focuses-on-resilience-rather-than-rum.html?ref=business&_r=0

-http://www.alcohol.org/