Brannigan Foods

Suggested Strategy 1) Raise Investments in Dry Soups / Healthier Soups / Fast Meals 2) Increase advertising investment in Fast Simple Soup meals and Heart Healthy Soup line. ïÆ'   Fast Simple Soup meals addresses the market demand created by professionals and working mothers looking for quick, healthy meal. Sales of this line are growing @ 12%. Interesting to see this is growing without advertising so why spend? ïÆ'   Heart Healthy Soup line with low-sodium is well positioned to address the concerns of the over-50 consumers. 3) Provide promotional couponing and sampling of hot new flavors, in particular dry mix Gazpacho and Teriyaki Beef Fast Simple meal. Why these two? ïÆ'   Gazpacho increases sales during warmer months, decreasing seasonality. ïÆ'   Teriyaki beef positions company in fast growing Asian soups category. 4) Continue to promote dry soups, even if they cannibalize Ready-to-Eat (RTE) soups. Bottom Line Srikant wants to increase advertising and promo spending by $18 million. He thinks this should help stop the slide in sales and market share, but this will also reduce next year’s profits. Whats wrong with this proposal? The CEO will not like that profits will be revised downward in 2013. Plus although the trend in the future was toward healthier options, it didn’t necessarily mean this will come to fruition as close to 70% of the US was overweight and interested in changing their eating habits so why chase a trend which may not even be working? Claire Mackey – Director of Finance Planning Suggested Strategy MA, Claire wants to buy a small competitor who offers healthy and more convenient soups as well as flavors that are gaining in popularity (Mexican, Southeast Asian) Bottom Line Claire likes Red Dragon Foods the best; they have $36 million in sales EBITDA $4.2million. Acquisition will probably add around 1.5 to 3.5% to sales within five years. Red Dragon will cannibalize less than 0.3% of total sales. Acquisition would be reasonably cheap in terms of hitting profit. Clark is looking for minimum ROI of 10% after five years of sales. What’s wrong with this proposal? The company acquired Annabelle’s Foods soups division five years ago and that acquisition had high hopes as well, the acquisition has been a nightmare since. It was only supposed to take two years to breakeven but it ended up taking five. Anna Chong Head of R D / Chief Innovation Officer Strategy Best option isn’t to buy another company with products they can easily duplicate Milk the cash cows and invest in rising stars. Increase ad and promo support spending for new products. Helps longer term. Develop new products internally instead of buying a company! Increased spending for the new Ready to Eat (RTE) products from RD including Raise RD budget to $19 million from $14 million to increase pace of new product creation and development. (Examples in case) Bottom Line Invest in the company, don’t buy another brand, focus on what you have and put $ into RD What’s wrong with this proposal? Many new products are bombs, as in the past. Low success rate for new products in the industry. However, Anna had some good ideas as the innovation was taking off from a customer standpoint. New RTE flavors were a good dieas as they can increase price per can to $0.10 which means net earnings will be increase of $12 million after spending 6% of the proposed advertising budget just for these specific new prodcuts. Bob Pugh, VP Sales Marketing Strategy Take a $0.05 cent price per can cut on the core RTE wet soups. These account for 64% of division sales and 71% of total profit. (This will eat into profits) Increase Advertising and Promo budget by $20 million to get back market share for the brand, as it was taken away in recent years due to slowdown in AP spend. Bottom Line What’s wrong with the proposal?

Ethical Analysis of the Ed Fischer Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Ethical Analysis of the Ed Fischer - Case Study Example Thus, the responsibility of the scientist is to discover new things. In the same way a lawyer helps in the justice, it is lawyer's responsibility to make sure that a proper justice is done to his/her client, so on and so forth. However all professions are governed by something other than just mere responsibility and duty. Sometimes it is not enough to just do your job. There are times when one needs to decide between what can be done and what should be done and at times, there are more choices available. It is slightly more complicated than it sounds. This is because there are other factors that play a role in the decision-making. These other factors define ethics. Ethics is not just about right or wrong or true or false. It is not that simple to define either. Ethics is not governed by rules or laws. Neither is there any ethical book of conduct. Ethics is actually a philosophy that existed for a long time for the betterment of the mankind. So then, one may ask if ethics is not law, neither it's a rule then what is ethics And why should one even bother to think about it Well there are good reasons to do so. Ethics defines the right actions based on the moral conduct and behavior for a greater good of an individual or a society. i.e., following the ethical standards would lead to following the general beliefs of the society. However, having said this, one may ask if it is always good to follow the ethics. Well that is a difficult question to answer. There are occasions when one needs to make a decision on either to follow the ethics or not. This can be elaborated further with Ed Fisher's case. Ed is currently bed ridden and needs assistance for most of his activities. He can't move his arms, can hardly move, and is really week due to eating disorders. His wife has died and is has three adult children. He has lost his desire to live longer in spite of having the possibility. The question that one needs to ask now is should a person who is suffering with so many severe symptoms still be convinced to live. Nevertheless, before asking that question, we need to ask what should be the reason to live, alternatively, if there should be any reason at all. The reason that a person lives, is not simply because he or she can move around or has the ability to do difficult tasks, but it is due to the reason that he has a soul within him or her. Moreover, as long as the soul exists, every living form in this world has the right to live life to the fullest and as long as possible. Having said that, the next question that arises is, everyone has the right to live but does anyone has the right to end his life as per his wish no matter what the circumstances are. What shall one do when a person decides to not to extend the days in his life Shall that person be allowed to die or shall that person be treated to the maximum possible way in order to extend his days fully As discussed in the beginning of this essay, these are the questions of ethics. These questions are toughest to answer and a nightmare for medical professionals. In Ed Fisher's case, it is obvious that he will not live much longer without the feeding tube. Therefore, for Ed, the advantages and disadvantages of undergoing the surgery are as follows: Advantages: He can live longer Can see his children prosper in their careers and personal lives Can see his grandchildren May learn or experience something new because you never stop learning until you

Comparative politics and Governance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Comparative politics and Governance - Essay Example France is taken to be the birthplace of liberal democracy in the modern era, sharing leadership culturally in the development of democratic society internationally with Britain and the USA. The ideals of democracy can be found in literature and transported to any location, but their implementation as a system of government is most strong in the USA and France today. Britain still has the House of Lords and Monarchy which illustrate the feudal patterns of society which liberal democracy replaced, and Spain also has a Constitutional Monarchy and King. The patterns of democratic liberalism found in the USA and France are used as a basis for development of similar systems in nation-states around the world in the process of modernization that relates to democratization internationally. Jurgen Habermas (1994) discusses the process of democratization as it aligns with modernization in his work, â€Å"Three Normative Models of Democracy,† relating the different stages a nation may ent er into as the people emerge from feudal power relations. (Habermas, 1994) Following this theory, liberal democratic structures will increase in a society as the culture develops economically and through education, adopting scientific standards, and becoming globalized. This theory would suggest that the world’s most advanced economies, such as the U.S., France, and Spain, would be also the most free historically, or have the highest advocacy for democratic institutions. Yet, China has the second largest economy globally, and it is often found to be lacking in liberal democratic openness on these standards. Similarly, Russia replaced the Soviet regime with a technically democratic system, and still has a strong economy today, yet international watchdogs regularly report human rights abuses and undemocratic processes in the country. This leads to the conclusion that there is not a direct relation between the size or advancement of an economy and liberal democracy as a politica l system inherently, as seen particularly in Russia and China today, but also in historical examples from around the world. Nevertheless, the relationship between modernization and democratization does proceed together in many nations historically, as Barber and other show in their studies on political sociology. (Barber, 2003) 2: The separation of executive and legislature is a fundamental requirement of democratic government’. Discuss. The separation of the legislature and executive is not the fundamental characteristic of democratic government, because the Parliamentary system of government links the Prime Minister directly to the ruling party and its control of the majority of legislators. What is more important than the relationship of separation of powers and indicative of a liberal democracy historically is the use of a constitution in the establishment of the system of government itself. Habermas, in such works as â€Å"On the Internal Relation between the Rule of La w and Democracy† (1995), describes the existence of a constitution as a foundation document in a system of government as characteristic and a predictor of democratic liberalism. (Habermas, 1995) Yet, France, Spain, US, Russia and Nigeria all have constitutions and make claims to political liberalism, but in practice display