This is a comment to Johnston Kirimo’s blog post: South African phones to be made in Africa for Africa. https://blogs.ubc.ca/kirimo12/2013/11/14/south-african-firms-phones-to-be-made-in-africa-for-africa/

According to the article, the parts will be made in China and the phones assembled in South Africa. Then over time, the whole production process will shift to South Africa. The management of the firm expects to compete against huge firms like Samsung and Apple, with high hopes of acquiring a large customer base all over Africa.

I agree with the management that it is possible to attain a considerably large market both in South Africa and the rest of the continent. However, this can only be achieved lowering the prices greatly. A cheaper price will be a competitive advantage since not many people can afford the high prices charged by Samsung and Apple. While Johnston claimed that stronger brand images for Apple and Samsung may lead to tougher competition to a new firm, I disagree because when faced with choices, majority of the customers consider costs first. Thus, it is possible for a new South African firm to compete with Samsung and Apple, just in Africa.

http://www.neumann.edu/academics/divisions/business/journal/review_08/Gibison.pdf

Even though highly credited for issuing positive impact in cultural globalization and homogenizing, this MNC’s brand name seems to be falling under its aspirations lately. As highlighted in the academic article above (hyperlink), Mc Donald’s has been subjected to numerous business ethics objections. These are issues that currently directly affect two main stakeholders; the customers and employees but, falling victim to ‘the stake holder theory’ will eventually hinder the entire company’s success. There have been reported situations of Mc. Donald’s failure to respond/show concern towards poor meal service to a costumer. A consistency of this kind of negative attitude further implicates unethical business practices that pay no attention to customer satisfaction and expectations. Societies are becoming much more aware of the unhealthy/unsafe food served by Mc. Donald’s thus, reducing the number of costumers. Advice to the business managers would be to firstly to own up to mistakes, find the source of the problem and make changes from there.

Ironically, most of the ethical issues based on the origin and production process of the food are probably a result of some of the company’s cost reduction strategies. So, either the forthcoming of the potential damage on profits was never closely analyzed or, the strategy needed more effective supervision t ensure success. To further investigate and assess the extent to which the ‘stakeholder theory’ applies to Mc Donald’s, I will look at the different methods of evaluating business success and evaluate whether these ethical problems have had effect on Mc. Donald’s over the past few years. http://www.surepayroll.com/articles/small-business/how-to-measure-success-of-small-business.asp

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