Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest UK-based travel business, is now encountering the losses caused by a general fall in tourism numbers as a result of the global recession. The company was also saddled with debts of more than £1bn. Harriet Green, the chief executive of Thomas Cook, is trying to rally the company by multiple ways.

According to Ms.Green, enterprise culture is of top priority of developing a company. Employees should be together as a team, supporting each other and giving their engagement. Furthermore, Ms.Green modifies her style and attitude towards management to improve her leadership.

Then, it comes to financial management. Ms.Green changed costs structure by managing our cash better and reducing cost. She moved the focus on internet-based sales rather than physical store, resulting in job losses.

Finally, Thomas Cook enlarges the market by adding new travel lines from Europe to East and Asia. On 7^th October, the company began to offer outbound travel to Egypt and Lebanon. And it also plans to help Chinese and Korean customers to explore Europe.

In a nutshell, Ms.Green’s confidence is reasonable if all her improvement can be done properly.

Resource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24328944

As the article indicates, Samsung is now been very confident about its growth rate. The competitive advantages of Samsung attribute to its clear and insightful positioning.

First, at the time of information overload, Samsung gets into consumers’ mind with strong image and advertising.  The names of the products affect consumers ‘perception on the product. For example, Galaxy delivers a sense of infinite and fancy. Notes directly tells the size of screen and its handwriting function.

Secondly, Samsung is doing quite well on segmentation and targeting. It targets both low and high-end segment of the market, catering to different purchasing powers. Therefore, Samsung not only sells top-end products like Galaxy4, but also seizes the growth opportunities in emerging markets, which is the key to overall success of their business. At this point, Samsung’s biggest rival, Apple, is mainly focuses on high-income consumers. However, Apple found out the weakness and launched iphone5c which costs much lower than iphone5s.

Also, Samsung stands out the points of difference. Samsung said that it is planning to launch handsets with curved displays and a smart watch, the Galaxy Gear. Though their credibility is still questionable, Samsung is on the way of exploiting distinctiveness.

Resource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24393850