Week 9

Reflection

This week we were off for easter break, therefore I looked back at all lecture and seminar notes from the past 9 weeks. I also made sure to read the requirements for the reflective writing piece for coursework 2. I am excited to do the reflective writing skills as I feel I have the knowledge and skills to write a good reflection about the past 10 weeks. 

Teamwork

This week as we were off for easter break, we kept in contact through social media and decided to meet up to discuss the problems within Japan Tobacco International as we didn't feel that we could get everything we were saying across within a text. We came up with more solutions with the problems our business was facing by going to the library and doing a lot of research with similar companies. One of the problems our company had was that the market was becoming smaller, more restricted and more competitive, especially within the tobacco industry. We decided as a team that companies need to find new and more effective ways to penetrate the market whether that is keeping up with trends such as 'vaping' and electronic cigarettes. Also, they could fix this by using IS such as creating databases for their existing and loyal customers which helps keep the customers up to date with anything new happening that involves the business, any discounted products, any new launches or even about loyalty privileges . This could expand the companies market and give them a competitive advantage as none of the competitors offer this service.

Another very serious problem the company faced was annual tax increases on their products. As smoking is frowned upon and people are addicted, the government do not care about raising the tax on tobacco products which could possibly damage the net profit as people may stop buying them or move to a cheaper brand of tobacco. We came up with the solution of the company calculating an estimate of the tax increase and then maybe cutting the costs of production or to their overall budget. This could possibly make up for the loss of profit and also help them focus on where their money will go when drawing up the budget for the following year. There are many tool that help make these predictions and that help to cut the costs of the business where necessary.