By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney
A long-running feud has pitted protesters from a small town of 2,000 people in the shadows of Australia’s temperate rainforest against one of the world’s most recognisable brands. Tranquil Tecoma, 35km (20 miles) east of central Melbourne, has become a battleground between McDonald’s and “community” protesters over the construction of a 24-hour drive-through restaurant. Opponents say the restaurant would be too close to a nursery and primary school, would damage other businesses and disrupt the fabric of a leafy community known for its artists and wildlife.
The plan was initially rejected by the local council, but the fast-food giant won an appeal at a state planning tribunal, and work on the site is under way.
It’s been a two-and-a-half-year fight spanning two continents. Last month, campaigners delivered a petition containing 97,000 signatures to the company’s global headquarters in Chicago. “We knocked on the door of every house in Tecoma and we discovered that nine out of 10 people didn’t want this,” says Garry Muratore, a spokesman for No McDonald’s in the Dandenong Ranges, who denies the group is on an anti-corporate crusade. “They have the legal right, but they don’t have the moral right. McDonald’s have a right to run a business as long as it is in an appropriate place,” he tells the BBC News website. “People who moved up here for to escape the city and live in the countryside are worried about litter and the fact that this would be the closest McDonald’s to a national park anywhere in Australia. Some people are worried about the traffic.”
Despite such fierce opposition, McDonald’s says it will press ahead. The company tells BBC News: “We have followed due process every step of the way to build a family restaurant on a highway that houses a number of food and service outlets. The area is appropriately zoned, we have an approved planning permit and we are moving forward.”
McDonald’s has dropped a claim for damages against a group of demonstrators, while a judge has sent both sides to mediation to resolve a dispute over the company’s legal costs.
Business advocates believe McDonald’s is being unfairly victimised by activists. In response, the company is forced to go to court at great expense just so it can engage in its lawful business activity.
Marketing expert Dean Wilkie, from the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales, says community groups can now wield great influence over public opinion. “Social media is giving consumers back the power, and those companies that don’t act ethically or don’t listen to what consumers want will suffer the consequences,” Mr Wilkie told the BBC.
“McDonald’s stresses this idea of helping the local community as one of its core values, but the fact that they are going against the people of Tecoma in such a manner is to me inconsistent with what they say their core values are. It creates a lack of credibility.”
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In Tecoma, regular community meetings are held to determine the demonstrators’ next moves to boycott McDonald’s in their village. “It will be a peaceful, non-violent protest that will go on as long as they are there,” says Garry Muratore.
13. Discuss with your partner the following issues:
· Marketing mix and business ethics
· Social responsibilities of businesses
· Business vs. community values
Illustrate in 1-2 written paragraphs the meaning of one of the proverbs/sayings below.
· Business is business.
· Business before pleasure.
· Everybody’s business is nobody’s business.
Role-playing
You are CEOs of big global companies who would like to conquer new markets. Discuss the possible difficulties your might face and need to overcome trying to implement your marketing mix.
Case-study/Project
Stephen Elop, who joined Nokia as President and CEO from the senior staff of Microsoft, is faced with a significant amount of uncertainty in determining the future strategy of the company. With a rapidly declining market share in developed markets and a weakening competitive position in emerging markets (such as India), the decisions he is taking are significant for the survival of the organization. He issues his famous ‘burning platform’ memo and canvasses 3 questions to all Nokia employees:
“What do you think I need to change?”
“What do you think I need not or should not change?”
“What are you afraid I’m going to miss?”
Mr. Elop subsequently announces a strategic decision to create a joint venture with Microsoft and adopt their Windows operating system to power their new smartphones.
Consider the questions for discussion and further research:
1. What were the decisions taken by Mr. Elop and what were the defining features of those decisions?
2. What was the process he used and why, to take the decisions?
Self-assessment grid
| Tick (✓) “Yes” or “No” answers in appropriate columns and lines to self-assess your knowledge and skills. | Yes | No |
| I know: | ||
| - the topical vocabulary “Marketing mix”; | ||
| - different meanings of the verb to meet; | ||
| - set expressions with the verb to meet; | ||
| - some proverbs/sayings with the word business. | ||
| I can: | ||
| - fill in missing prepositions/particles; | ||
| - put the word enough in the correct place in a sentence; | ||
| - use non-finite verb forms (infinitive, participle, and gerund); | ||
| - summarize an article; | ||
| - express the opinion about the article/text I have read; | ||
| - discuss the issues related to marketing mix; | ||
| - role-play a situation about implementing a marketing mix; | ||
| - analyze and comment on the case of successful strategic marketing decisions. | ||
| Total number of positive/negative answers: |
Module 10
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Pre-reading issues
1. What is quality?
2. Why is it important to produce quality goods or provide quality services?
3. Is it possible to measure quality?
4. What should quality be measured for?
5. How is quality related to management?
Quality management
Our understanding of the word quality should be associated with achieving or exceeding expectations, meeting requirements that customer had not actually stipulated, but once offered become the expectation of everyone.
Quality is defined by the customer, and as such will change over time, often in unpredictable ways. Quality is associated with creating customer value. As a complex concept, quality can only be addressed by the whole organization working together. If ‘quality’ is the end point, then ‘quality management’ is the approach and process for getting there.
If we are concerned with providing ‘value’ to customers, we must consider how we can improve customer value.
There are a number of principles which are central to the practice of quality management:
· Customer focus. If we wish to create value for our customers, we need to become obsessive about understanding of our customers and their requirements and expectations.
· Strategic focus. Companies must create a strategic vision and deploy this throughout the company in associated goals and actions.
· Leadership focus. Nothing happens in any organization without commitment of leaders and their active driving of the strategy.
· Process focus. Emphasis needs to move from assessment of outcome performance to the development and control of processes to deliver customer value.
· People focus. Quality management is fundamentally about people. An excellent process can be let down by a demotivated or poorly trained member of staff.
· Scientific focus. Quality management is fundamentally based on the scientific method: Plan, Do, Study, Act.
· Continual improvement, innovation and learning. At the heart of quality management is dissatisfaction with the status quo. Process improvement in an organization is about proactively seeking to learn about customers and processes, to improve upon existing practices, and to innovate in developing new markets.
· Systems thinking. By integrating the key concepts and seeing the organization in a holistic way, we can deliver a whole which is much greater than the sum of the parts.
Quality management is a contested area. Authoritative and impartial guidance is required to help the majority of organizations to make sense of this area.
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The ISO 9000 series of standards is the international standard for quality management. Its objective is to provide a common, authoritative and widely accepted standard by which to evaluate and compare the potential of companies to meet acceptable levels of quality and reliability. ISO does not itself certify companies to ISO 9000. Instead each member country has an accreditation body which accredits certification bodies who deal with accreditation of companies.
Text comprehension
1. Does quality change over time?
2. What is quality associated with?
3. Is quality management normally referred to an organization as a whole?
4. What principles are important for quality management?
5. Why is it essential to understand customers and their requirements and expectations?
6. Why is quality management fundamentally about people?
7. What principle is at the heart of quality management?
8. What is the present-day international standard for quality management?
9. What is the objective of ISO 9000?
10. Does ISO certify companies to ISO 9000?