Ex. III. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between data and information?

2. Where do business facts come from?

3. What kind of procedures are common to business and daily life?

4. What are basic characteristics of data?

5. What does “accuracy” mean?

6. Why is completeness of data necessary?

7. What do managers often complain of?

8. What kind of decisions require timely data?

9. What does the term “auditability” refer to?

10. What are the basic characteristics of information?

Ex. IV. Arrange the words in the correct order to make sentences:

1. various, Sources, business, and, facts, are, of, diverse.

2. from, freedom, error, Accuracy, means.

3. decisions, data, require, Operational, timely.

4. systems, help, of, accounting, people, to manage, the assets, the company, In.

5. is, raw, Data, a collection, facts, of, which, are, from, made, conclusions.

Ex. V. Fill in the gaps with the words from the box:

inputting, order, processing, to verify, involves, valid, relevant

1. Data processing to convert data into information …… the following activities: input, process, store, and output.

2. Before …… data may need to be converted into machine-readable form.

3. The data …… may involve performing some mathematical operations on the data.

4. Data must be edited …… its validity and completeness.

5. A data entry clerk may enter a customer’s …… using some type of computer terminal.

6. Quantity and cost data must be numeric, names must be alphabetic, otherwise data is not ……

7. A lot of managers complain that the data they receive is not always …… to the situation.

Ex. IV. Find the examples of different tense and voice forms of the verbs in the above text. Translate the sentences into Ukrainian. Ex. V. Translate into English.

Слово “data” (данні), як правило, визначається як “необроблені факти”, або “спостереження”, зазвичай коли йдеться про фізичні явища, або ділові угоди. Наприклад, запуск космічного корабля, або продаж автомобіля можуть генерувати багато даних, що описують ці події.

Більш конкретно, дані – це об‘єктні вимірювання властивостей (характеристик) об‘єктів (таких, як людей, місця, речі та події). Ці виміри, звичайно, представляються у вигляді символів, таких як числа або слова, або у вигляді кодів, складених зі змішання числових, алфавітних та інших знаків. Дані, як правило, мають різні форми, включаючи цифрову, текстову, голосову та у вигляді образів.

Терміни “дані” та “інформація”, є, як правило, взаємозамінними. Однак, корисно розглядати дані як необроблені матеріальні ресурси, що обробляються в кінцевий інформаційний продукт. Тоді інформація може визначатися як дані, що трансформувалися у смисловий та корисний контекст для певного кінцевого користувача. Звичайно, дані можуть не вимагати обробки перед тим, як вони спрямовані до конкретного кінцевого користувача. Однак, дані не є корисними, доки вони не будуть розташовані у необхідному для користувача контексті.

Ex. VI. Discuss whether the following sentences are true or false:

1. Information is processed data collected from various unusual sources.

2. Business decisions are made on the basis of “raw” facts.

3. Inaccurate data will always be rejected by an information system.

4. Managers complain that half the information they receive is irrelevant.

5. Accuracy and completeness are very important for market-intelligence information.

Part II

Ex. I. Think and answer the following questions:

1. How would you define marketing?

2. What does marketing deal with?

Ex. II. Read the text:

Defining Marketing

The following text will introduce you to the topic of marketing. Defining marketing presents a problem: which definition you get depends on who you ask. The text below discusses the definitions of marketing offered by economists and marketers. If you ask an economist to define marketing, he or she will undoubtedly give you an answer that speaks of the process of exchange and of the utilities that buyers receive from sellers in this exchange process. Marketing deals with the motivations and actions of people who make exchanges, that is, buyers and sellers. An exchange is a transaction between two or more people, groups, or organizations in which each party gives up something of value and receives something of value. The presumption in any exchange is that all parties receive something whose value equals or is greater than the value of what they give up. The buyer usually receives a product or service; the seller usually receives money (see Fig.1).

A product is anything an organization offers for exchange that satisfies a consumer need. In marketing terms, a product may be a tangible good (a car or a coat), an intangible benefit in the form of a service (dry cleaning or fire insurance), or even an idea that offers some benefit (to stop smoking). In many cases, a product may be perceived by both parties in the exchange as a combination of a good, a service, and an idea. For example, if you have the money to exchange for a Mercedes-Benz, the product you buy is a physical good (car), a service (the warranty), and an idea (an image of luxury and success). For an exchange to succeed, it must lead to utility for the consumer.

F ig.  1. The exchange process.

Three scholars have had a particularly strong influence on contemporary marketing: Peter Drucker, Theodore Levitt, and Thomas Peters.

Drucker believes that successful organizations devote themselves to identifying and offering products that satisfy the wants and needs of consumers. He concludes that a business has only two fundamental activities: innovation and marketing. Through innovation, companies continuously replace products with new products that better satisfy customers’ needs. The function of marketing is to identify these changing needs so that innovative products can be developed to meet them. In Drucker’s view marketing is the “central dimension” of the entire business: “It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final results, that is, from the customer’s point of view.”

Theodore Levitt of Harvard University wrote an article, “Marketing Myopia”, that became a classic statement of modern marketing philosophy. Businesses, Levitt said, suffer from myopia when they fail to ask themselves the question, “What business are we in?” Levitt sounded a warning of the dangers of managers keeping their attention on the products they make rather than on the needs of the customers who are satisfied by those products.

Defining a business in terms of the product made and sold is an easy answer. But, in his view, the more appropriate answer to the question lies in whatever needs of the customer are satisfied — or in the service provided to the customer.

Thomas J. Peters was the co-author of what many think are the two most important management books of the 1980s, “In Search of Excellence” and “A Passion for Excellence”. These books show that close attention to the needs of customers makes excellent organizations excellent. Both books report on extensive research into what distinguishes excellent companies from ordinary ones; a key factor identified in the research is how different companies treat their customers: “In the private or public sector, in big business or small, we observe that there are only two ways to create and sustain superior performance over the long period. First, take exceptional care of your customers via superior service and superior quality. Secondly, constantly innovate. That‘s it. There are no alternatives in achieving long-term superior performance, or sustaining strategic competitive advantage, as the business strategists call it.”

Peters insists that firms that take care of customers and innovate constantly win competitive battles, hold leading shares of the markets in which they compete, and produce top financial returns for their stockholders.

Active Words and Phrases:

utility	вигідність; економічна вигідність; корисність	consumer	споживач
warranty	гарантія, запорука	satisfy customers’ needs	задовольняти потреби споживачів
value	вартість	insurance	страхування
benefit	вигода; прибуток	myopia	міопія, короткозорість
tangible	матеріальний	identify	ототожнювати
transaction	операція (грошова)	warning	застереження
commitment	відданість (справі); зобов’язання	performance	виконання; робота (машини); інтенсивність праці
intangible	нематеріальний	give up	відмовитись
perceive	розуміти, сприймати	in marketing terms	з точки зору маркетингу
be satisfied with (by)	будити задоволеним	in many cases	в багатьох випадках
exchange of goods	товарообмін	have influence on	впливати на
succeed	досягати успіхів	keep attention	приділяти увагу
luxury	предмет розкоші	sustain	підтримувати