Response to Katie McGarity

Do you think saving all of your receipts is helpful? Do you save all of your receipts?
I also think it is very important for students to keep track of the money they are spending, especially if they are using a credit card for most of their purchases. Many students are so caught up in their studying, school work, work, partying, or with their friends they often aren’t able to pay close attention to what they are spending with their credit or debit cards. Then before you know it, it’s the end of the month and they need to pay their credit card bill, and all the little things have added up and they cant afford their monthly bill. So would saving all of their receipts help them manage their accounts better? I don’t think it would help them with what they are spending, it would only help them if there was a misunderstanding at the bank for some reason. The one thing that I would recommend to help them control their bank accounts is to have an online banking account and check their balance almost every day. That way they can see how much they are able to spend during that specific day. Keeping every single receipt is too hassling and will get confusing if you use them to keep track of your balance. I don’t keep any of my receipts, I just check my balance every day and try to use cash for most purchases.
Is it better to make purchases with cash or credit? Why?

In Response to Max Gausch

Is internet monitoring that big of a concern for our nation?
The government does track a lot of our personal daily tasks such as phone calls, texts, voice mail, internet searches, internet purchases, transactions at every bank or ATM, and all other purchases with credit or debit cards. This monitoring makes searching the web easier and faster, and also makes purchasing things with electronic payment methods much quicker. This should not be considered a crime for the government to do this. Studies show that around 90% of Americans have some sort of financial debt. This is from borrowing money from the government, so why shouldn’t they have the right to see what other purchases we are making? If someone wants to not be tracked at all then they can write letters instead of using a phone, and pay with all cash, everywhere they go. Also the organizations that look at this information do it so they can focus on certain consumers. This means that their sales will go up and this will help the economy.

Where does it say that the government can’t monitor American citizens?

Response to Lauren Foley

Do you think that businesses should work on going green?

I think that going green shouldn’t be necessary for organizations. I believe that it would be somewhat helpful to the environment if they were recycling all their waste materials but only if it did save them money. For instance if a company was spending more money and energy on recycling just to be environmentally friendly, I don’t think it is worth it. Organizations definitely shouldn’t be wasteful with their natural resources and go beyond what they really need to be efficient. America is all about money and making money, so as long as the littering and pollution doesn’t get extremely out of control I think the earth will be just fine.

What are some companies that go over the edge in polluting the environment?

Social Entrepreneurs Turn Business Sense To Good

Recently many nonprofit organizations and other organizations that are involves ed in helping improve the natural environment, have been approaching nontraditional plans how to run their business. They are starting to create some of their own revenues and use for-profit business techniques to progress towards their goal as an organization. An example of this would be Neil Keny-Guyer of Mercy Corps. Keny-Guyer turned his relief organization into a global powerhouse with 3,500 employees and a $300,000 budget. He did this by going the capitalist route and purchasing a bank in Indonesia. They call these people “social entrepreneurs”. Another social entrepreneur is Vikram Akula wanted to prove that you can make a decent profit while serving and helping the poor, and not making them a charity case. He is the CEO of SKS Microfinance, which has around 9,500 employees and 3.3 million customers in India and adding roughly 300,000 new clients a month. They don’t turn down poor people when they come to SKS for loans. They feel that believes that it is a win win situation for everyone when people take out loans and uses them for a good reason, for example to start a small store and make a small store bigger. Last year SKS had revenues of $48 million, and a net profit of $6.16 million. This shows that having a for-profit business model helps everyone out in the long run.

What are other companies that should use this business model to help out the society?

College Credit Card Hustle

Many well known public universities and colleges’ alumni associations have a very deceiving process of making money. The alumni associations are selling the students’ personal information to credit card companies. They will often times decorate the credit cards with appealing colors and also the school mascot. Since the cards look appealing to the students and the fact that most undergrad students are very broke, they see the card as an opportunity to pay for a lot of the stuff they need. The students are also very vulnerable to late fees because they often don’t have a steady job to be able to pay for the monthly payments. They are also vulnerable to hidden fees or increasing interest rates because they do not have the experience in banking or take the time to fully read and understand the contract. Alumni associations will sometimes even get paid more if the students use the school credit cards often. These credit cards that the students are intrigued to buy can be very dangerous if they look at it as free money as many do. Before they know the interest rate has sky rocketed and the $3000 they were in, all of a sudden turned into $7000 because of the interest rate and/ or hidden fees they get charged with.

Should the students be more informed and educated about credit cards? Or should the ones intriguing the students to buy the cards make sure they are informed?

The Task Environment

The task environment is usually the environment that most organizations like to focus on. The task environment is very helpful to the organization because it helps them to specifically identify environmental factors that are important in the company’s success. This environment is made up of five parts. The first part are the competitors. Competitors compete mostly for customers dollars for example Nike, Adidas and Puma all compete for customers that are looking for athletic shoes, soccer cleats etc. Organizations also compete against one another but not only for customers money, but also for things like the right to buy a piece of real estate, or for a loan if the bank has limited funds they can lend. The second part is customers. Organizations have individual customers as well as wholesalers, retailers, and schools that are also customers to companies. For example hospitals buy food in bulk from McDonalds which makes the hospital a Micky Ds customers. The third part are suppliers, the ones who provide resources to other organizations. For example McDonalds buys soda from Coca Cola, and ketchup from Heinz. Most companies don’t buy ALL their supplies from just one supplier, because if that supplier goes bankrupt then so does the company that relied completely on them. The fourth part are strategic partners. This means that two companies work together in order to help each other. An example of this would be McDonalds will promote Disney toys in happy meals and Disney will build McDonalds in their parks. This can help companies get expertise from other companies that they tend to lack in. In this environment the manager will be able to see what companies or customers help them and who they need to focus their advertisement on.

In what other ways does the task environment help the manager?

Rise of the Numerati

After reading the article “Rise of the Numerati” I have become much more informed about how companies advertise to their customers through the internet. I came to realization of how much companies are able to track every move or transaction we make. Most Americans own cell phones, computers, and credit cards. Through just these three things these companies can know exactly where you are through GPS on cell phones. They can know what internet sites you have visited, and what advertisements you click on, which will reveal to them what products or other things you are interested in. Many Americans will use their debit or credit card for buying daily things like buying a few groceries at the store or filling up their car at the gas station. All these purchases are recorded on their bank accounts and the bank can know that you bought a 24 pack of beer at Market Basket at 8:22pm in Rindge, and that you bought $10 of gas at the CITGO station at 10:47pm in Keene. Also security cameras have time stamped pictures and videos at just about every convenient store, bank, gas station, and atm around the country. With all this access to everyone’s lives, statisticians are able to come up with inferential statistics to infer information about different types of people. Which means they are able to come up with relations for example that a high number of romantic movie fanatics, are one of the largest groups of customers for rent-a-car companies. Maybe because the movies they watch inspire them to travel to romantic areas. Now the rent-a-car companies know where to focus their advertisement for more business opportunity.

What other examples prove that statistics are used by a company so they can know where they can focus their business?