Business decisions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business decisions - Essay Example The company is also finding it difficult to undertake product differentiation. Moreover with the present global financial crisis, the company is also facing the problem of lower spending by the customer. Finally due to the housing crisis, rising unemployment rate (9.9%) and the steady depreciation of the dollar has led to a huge current account deficit for the country. Larsen must conduct proper research to understand the customer. The company should continue with its marketing research programs. This would give knowledge of the customer’s needs and wants during these recessionary periods. The company must continue with its advertising budget. This strategy follows from a popular theory that states that companies who advertise during recession are the leaders when the economy bounces back. It should prepare ads which tend to focus on family values rather than the extreme fun and humor ads. In order to cut costs the company can resort to reduce the duration of the ads rather than scrapping them as a whole. The company can also put emphasis on direct marketing as a promotional tool. Larson must also reforecast its demand estimates. These estimates should be made on the basis of actual market conditions. The demand estimates must be made on the basis of scenario planning where different scenarios would be considered while forecasting the demand estimates. Larson must also change its pricing strategies. Instead of a cost plus pricing strategy it can adopt a marginal cost pricing approach in which the company would charge only the additional amount apart from the total cost coming from labor and materials. The advantage of this strategy is that the company can set up prices of the products near the marginal costs during the periods of poor sale. . (Weinburg College of Arts and Sciences, n.d.) Finally the firm must look towards expanding into newer markets like Asia which offer tremendous opportunities. Lastly it can also identify its business