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системами более высокого уровня. К такого рода системам в первую очередь
относятся Системы бухгалтерского, налогового и управленческого учета.
На среднем уровне пирамиды финансового управления
сконцентрированы системы аналитического уровня. Это те системы, которые
агрегируют данные отдельных транзакций, совершаемых в компании, в
информацию, пригодную для аналитической обработки. Например, данные о
единичной покупке, которую
в какой-либо день совершил покупатель,
представляют собой отдельную транзакцию, фиксируемую в какой-либо
транзакционной системе. Необработанные данные об отдельных транзакциях
(например, покупках клиентов) ввиду их большого объема и значительного
отклонения от средних величин мало пригодны для принятия каких-либо
управленческих решений.
Действительно, единичная покупка, когда-либо совершенная
отдельным покупателем
, мало что может сказать о предпочтениях целой
группы покупателей определенного региона. Но если эти данные
агрегировать в разрезе временных периодов, отдельных географических
регионов, различных товарных групп, а также групп покупателей, то
полученная таким образом информация будет чрезвычайно полезна
менеджеру.
Агрегированная и отражающая различные тренды и зависимости
(например, тренды продаж) информация
является основой для принятия
обоснованных решений. Именно поэтому генерация информации такого рода
является основной задачей систем аналитического уровня. К системам такого
рода в первую очередь можно отнести Системы бюджетирования и
управленческой отчетности.
И, наконец, на самом верхнем уровне располагаются системы
стратегического уровня, ориентированные на потребности среднего и
высшего менеджмента компании.
Основная задача данных систем –
оперативно отражать степень достижения компанией своих стратегических
целей. Такие системы должны в режиме реального времени (или
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приближающемся к таковому) отражать состояние дел в компании по самым
важным показателям деятельности как отдельных подразделений, так и
компании в целом. К данному уровню стоит отнести Систему ключевых
показателей деятельности (KPI), а также Систему сбалансированных
показателей (BSC), хотя данные системы и близки к системам
аналитического уровня.
Кроме того, к системам стратегического уровня относятся
различные
мониторинговые системы, предназначенные для высшего менеджмента для
контроля над деятельностью предприятия в режиме реального времени по
важнейшим показателям деятельности компании. К таким системам стоит
также относить мониторинговые системы, контролирующие исключительно
производственные (нефинансовые) показатели деятельности компании,
поскольку они напрямую влияют на финансовое положение компании.
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UNIT 12. MARKETING
Part 1
MARKETING VS. ECONOMICS:
GYMNASTICS OR HIGH-WIRE ACT?
Pete Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing and Co-
Director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative
Everybody has been buzzing about Nik Wallenda and his daredevil crossing
over Niagara Falls this week. Elsewhere in the world of sports, the USA
gymnastics trials for the Olympics will start later this month, and there’s nary a
whisper about it. This difference in public interest/attention makes me think about
the difference between the fields of economics and marketing: economics is like a
high-wire act, and marketing is equivalent to gymnastics. Let me explain.
Economists are an interesting breed. They have their heads in the clouds,
dreaming of a magical world where people are rational, markets operate efficiently,
and all kinds of other strict rules apply about what’s right and wrong. In their vivid
imaginations, they see upward-sloping supply curves, downward-sloping demand
curves, and all the implications that arise from these and other assumptions.
They’re not particularly troubled by facts, often because the actual «rubber meets
the road» data that would support or refute such assumptions are hard to find –
especially when they’re too busy balancing their delicate curves in a manner that
often seems to defy the laws of physics.
Occasionally, economists encounter phenomena that don’t seem to comply
with their balancing act – much like a gust of wind endangers the tightrope walker.
That’s when their real skills start to show. They conjure up new assumptions and
clever twists on old ones to prove that seemingly irrational phenomena are, after
all, quite rational. Balance is restored once again. Well-written books like
«Freakonomics» beautifully demonstrate this blend of art and science. It is
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wonderful to behold such mastery, and the skills required to stay safely perched up
high are quite considerable.
In sharp contrast, marketers – like gymnasts – start and finish with their feet
on the firm ground. The marketer’s desire is to understand the way the world
really works – not how it should work under a shaky set of assumptions.
Marketers and gymnasts also emphasize the need for balance, but in their case this
word means something different than it does for the high-wire economists. Much
of the balance for a marketer/gymnast arises from the need to be quite good at each
of several different tasks. For the gymnast, this means achieving excellence across
a variety of physical challenges (e.g., floor exercise, vault, parallel bars, etc.); for
the marketer, it means mastery across a variety of academic disciplines (such as
statistics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and – yes – economics).
Overspecializing in any one of these areas is a path to sure defeat; the key is to
develop a broad set of skills to ensure that you can take on all the twists and turns
required by the problem at hand, while always landing safely on two feet. A
marketer wants to «stick the landing» by offering an implementable solution to a
real problem – not an ivory-tower explanation that merely proves that the world is
still rational.
Because marketing/gymnastics is so deeply rooted in reality, it is gritty work
that doesn’t generate the same «oohs» and «aahs» as a tightrope performance.
People look up to economists and down at marketers – just like they do when their
athletic counterparts are performing. Economists get to rub elbows with
presidents; marketers get to sell more deodorant. Nik Wallenda gets a prime-time
special on national TV and marvelous movies have been made about other high-
wire heroes such as Philippe Petit («Man on Wire»); in sharp contrast, however,
can you name a movie about a famous gymnast? Likewise, it’s easy for business
leaders to name many economists, but how many can name even a single
marketing professor?
OK, I admit it. While I’m proud to be a marketer, I do suffer from a bit of
econ envy – as do many of my marketing brethren. It’s not that we feel
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intellectually inferior to our economist cousins; it’s just that we wish we could get
some of the glory and attention that seem to come so naturally to them. We respect
their work quite a bit (in part because our field derives some of its intellectual
origins from theirs), but we hope in vain that they would share some of their
limelight with us.
But when I stop being wistful about such matters, and get back to work, it’s
all worthwhile. I genuinely enjoy the challenges of describing markets and
consumers as they really are – not as they should be. I appreciate the opportunity
to learn and combine different skills to solve complex real-world problems. I’m
glad that companies come to me when they are looking for tangible
recommendations and measurable solutions.
And while I know there will never be a Nobel Prize for Marketing, at least I
can draw some consolation that gymnasts can compete for Olympic gold, unlike
the folks who teeter on the high wire…
EXERCISES
1. Sum up the main ides of the text and retell it in Russian.
2. Fill in the missing words from the box into the text below.
economy consumers different microeconomic actually
unreadable sophistication irony work mathematics lead shows
consumers practice acquisitions determine leave discipline
Economists rarely mention marketing. Occasionally an article appears in the
American Economic Review on advertising or promotion or warranties. But to
most economists, marketing is a sideshow in the 1)________. It is filled with too
many particulars and virtually no theory. A cynical economist would even hold
that marketing activity hurts the efficiency of the economy. Promotions distort the
true price and lead 2)________ to buy on brand name, not real value.
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Ironically, the discipline of marketing was started by economists! Marketing
textbooks first made their appearance in the 1900-1910 period. Their authors were
economists who were institutionally oriented rather than theory-oriented. These
economists wanted to examine the role that 3)________ distribution organizations
– wholesalers, jobbers, agents, retailers – played in the economy. They also wanted
to describe and analyze the different promotion tools – advertising, sales discounts,
guarantees and warrantees–and determine whether they 4)________ shifted
demand.
Somehow classically-trained economists didn’t view marketing as an
intrinsic economic activity. They couldn’t fit it into either macroeconomic theory
or 5)________ theory. They didn’t see a role for mathematics in the discipline.
Marketing was seen as much more of a psychological and sociological discipline
than an economic discipline.
An irony today. If you picked up a recent copy of the Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), you can easily mistake it for the
American Economic Review in terms of the articles’ mathematical 6)________ –
they are almost 7)________ to the lay reader. Although traditional economists are
not doing much mathematical analysis of marketing tools and strategies, marketing
scientists are producing quite interesting and complex analyses of marketplace
economics.
The greatest 8)________ is that traditional economics is now facing a new
competitor, namely behavioral economics. Behavioral economics attacks the
crucial assumption that consumers engage in maximizing behavior. Aiming to
maximize utility or profits is the key to building economic decision models.
Otherwise, economists would have to 9)________ with another assumption, that
consumers are basically «satisficing», stopping short of spending time to maximize
and being happy enough to achieve enough of what they want. But the
10)________ aren’t there for this behavior and hence the claim of economics to be
a science is also weakened.
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Behavioral economists, instead of assuming that consumers and producers
are maximizers, have to study how different marketing actors actually behave. This
involves collecting empirical data. This will 11)________ to recognizing many
instances of non-rational or even irrational behavior. How do we explain people
paying so much more for coffee at Starbucks or ice cream from Haagen Dazs?
How do we explain some low income people voting for Republican candidates
when the empirical evidence 12)________ that poor people have done better
during Democratic administrations than Republican administrations?
If economists now have to study and explain how consumers actually make
their choices, they need to turn to marketing. For a hundred years, marketers have
collected data on what, how and why 13)________ buy what they buy. The data is
there. The only conclusion we can draw is that behavioral economics is, ironically,
another word for marketing. Marketers have been the behavioral economists!
What about producers’ decision making? Traditional economics says that
producers aim to maximize their profits? But this ignores the role of risks. Every
producer can take on higher levels of risk in the pursuit of higher profits. But
producers, in 14)________, have risk aversion. They have different appetites for
risk. This undercuts the notion that they only concentrate on profit maximization.
When risk is include, we might say that producers aim for a balanced ratio of profit
to risk.
When producers face a big risky decision such as buying another company,
many market estimates must be made. What will happen to market size and market
share? Many different scenarios can take place. Estimating their respective success
probabilities is difficult. Many 15)________ in practice are motivated by CEO’s
egos that 16)________ them less sensitive to actual risk. Again, the task of
behavioral economists is to collect data on how these difficult acquisition decisions
are actually made. And part of it is to 17)________ how much marketing
estimation and game-theory thinking occurs in the process.
The main conclusion is that economists, both traditional and behavioral, will
benefit from paying closer attention to developments in the marketing
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18)________ and marketers looking for more theory will benefit from paying
closer attention to both traditional and behavioral economics.
3. Read the following article and make a rendering of it in English.
СУЩНОСТЬ ФИНАНСОВ ПРЕДПРИЯТИЙ И ИХ РОЛЬ В
ФИНАНСОВОЙ СИСТЕМЕ СТРАНЫ
Основу системы финансов России, как было отмечено ранее,
составляют финансы организаций (предприятий), поскольку именно здесь
формируется преобладающая часть финансовых ресурсов. В
институциональном плане основу сферы финансов предприятий составляют
финансы хозяйствующих субъектов (юридических лиц). Согласно ст. 48
Гражданского
кодекса РФ (далее – ГК РФ) юридическим лицом признается
организация, которая имеет в собственности, хозяйственном ведении или
оперативном управлении обособленное имущество, отвечает этим
имуществом по своим обязательствам, может от своего имени приобретать и
осуществлять имущественные и личные не имущественные права, нести
обязанности, быть истцом и ответчиком в суде. Помимо перечисленных
признаков юридическое
лицо обязано иметь самостоятельный баланс или
смету.
Исходную теоретическую основу финансов организаций (предприятий)
в значительной мере определяет само понятие предприятия как
самостоятельного хозяйствующего субъекта, обладающего правами
юридического лица, производящего продукцию, товары и услуги,
выполняющего работы и занимающегося различными видами экономической
деятельности, целью которой является обеспечение общественных
потребностей и на этой
основе извлечение прибыли и приращение капитала.
Попутно заметим, что в ГК РФ термин «предприятие» употребляется в
двух значениях. Во-первых, он используется в гражданском законодательстве
для обозначения некоторых видов юридических лиц (субъектов права).
348
Имеются в виду государственные и муниципальные предприятия. Во-вторых,
термином «предприятие» обозначается имущественный комплекс, который в
ст. 132 ГК РФ рассматривается как объект права.
Как объект гражданского оборота предприятие представляет собой
имущественный комплекс, в состав которого входит не только недвижимое
(земельные участки, здания, сооружения и т.п.), но и движимое имущество
(оборудование, инвентарь, сырье, готовая продукция), а также
обязательственные права, требования, долги и некоторые исключительные
права (на фирменное наименование, товарный знак, изобретение,
промышленный образец и др.). При этом предприятием признается только
такой имущественный комплекс, который используется для осуществления
предпринимательской деятельности.
Part 2
MARKET ECONOMY: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
By Bertell Ollman
We must all be thankful to Prof. Kang Ouyang for his clear and concise
summary of the main tendencies in Marxist philosophy in China, a country whose
development is becoming ever more important to the fate of the entire world. It is
an impressive list. I was especially pleased to learn of the growing interest in
Marx's theory of alienation and his theory of truth, and of the widespread
opposition to all kinds of dogmatism. The question now arises of how to interpret
and judge Kang's remarks in these and related areas. For this I can come up with
no better criterion than the test of practice advanced by Kang himself (and also by
Deng Xiaoping whose writings are so influential in China today). On the basis of
this criterion, what is decisive is not what someone says or how well they say it,
but what they do, what it gets them to do, and how «successful» that is. So what
can we learn about contemporary Chinese Marxist philosophy from Kang's
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practice in presenting it and from the real social practices that it has in large part
inspired?
Considerations of space as well as my own limited familiarity with China
makes a full evaluation of Kang's wide ranging article impossible, so I will focus
on only one area, market socialism or what is often referred to as «socialism with
Chinese characteristics», which is also the area that I know best. My choice can
also be justified on the grounds that this is the subject on which the new generation
of Chinese scholars have made their most distinctive contribution and for which
they are best known outside China. And here–it must be said–it is not a good sign
that Kang's account of China's market economy offers us only one side of the
picture, presenting only arguments that support the market and presenting only the
positive results of China's experience with the market. «Practice» cannot serve as a
criterion for determining truth, progress, justice, alienation or, indeed, anything
else unless everything that counts as practice is included in our treatment of the
subject. Let me suggest what the main arguments both for and against the market
(socialist as well as capitalist market) look like, and sketch how using the market
has effected China, both for good and for bad. Through such rhetorical practice,
my aim is to provide a helpful basis for evaluating both China's experience with
market socialism and Kang's philosophical defense of it.
A market economy has seven main characteristics: l) people buy what they
want, but only if they can pay for it; 2) thus, money becomes necessary for life; 3)
people are forced to do anything and to sell anything in order to get money; 4)
maximizing profit rather than satisfying social needs is the aim of all production
and investment; 5) discipline over those who produce the wealth of society is no
longer exercised by other people (as in slavery and feudalism) but by money and
the conditions of work that one must accept in order to earn money; 6) rationing of
scarce goods takes place through money (based on who has more than others)
rather than through coupons (based on who has worked harder or longer or has a
greater need for the good); and 7) since no one is kept from trying to get rich and
everyone is paid for what they do, people acquire a sense that each person gets
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