In addition to it some additional challenges faced by the Brita brand were: * Bottled water consumption was growing at a tremendous pace which was the main cause of the Brita brand’s volume decline. Bottled water was expected to surpass carbonated soft drinks as the most popular commercial beverage in the US in 2004. For bottled water (400 brands), 20% of brands were driving 80% of category volume. * The “leaky bucket” issue where customers who bought the product stopped using the brand because these consumers were finding changing filer too onerous job. * Refrigerators with built-in water filtration were going rapidly at an expected rate of at least 2 million units per year from 2005.
The state of the economy also greatly affects the sales as in 2008 there was a decline in sales when the market dropped. The sale also rely on good weather and in certain months of the year, so in high temperatures or in the summer more people will drink juices and will consequently buy more drinks. Sales also depend on the status or popularity of the item, as younger
Slump is when business activities begin to slow down, and the economy slowly goes into recession. Following slump is recession and this is when there is a decline in the economy and usually occurs when there is a fall in the GDP in two successive quarters. Recovery is when the economy begins to return to a normal state and business activities begin to increase once the economy has gone through recession. Finally, boom is when the economy is processing continuously with business activities and the demand is high, the unemployment rates are lower and further expansion due to higher GDP. British Airways faced recession in 2009/2010 where business faced a decline.
Such a decline (and such a low percentage) indicates that management is not efficient in employing the company’s assets to make a profit. Also, the Return on Capital Employed had an even more significant decline – from 15.6% in Year 12 to (29.9%) in Year 14. This indicates very poor performance for FBN. In order for FBN to become profitable (efficiently, that is) ROCE should be higher than the rate at which the company borrows. In FBN’s case, their long-term debt ratios alone are 55.7% and 81.5% in years 12 and 13, respectively (and they’ve incurred interest rate increases); and ROCE in the same two years is 15.6% and 6.4%.
Manufacturing is another sector that causes the negative growth in GDP; it has decreased by 1.5% than the year before. Now UK is facing a tough situation because the economy is not going to have a significant growth in these years and UK will be in downturn (BBC, 2013). 2.1.2 Influences Nevertheless, a GDP increase has occurred in the third quarter 2012 which was mainly because of the London Olympic Games (Thompson, 2012); it affected the retail industry, performed in an increase of sales and tobacco revenues (London South East, 2012). 2.2 Unemployment Unemployment rate refers to the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the total labour force. Generally, a booming economy will bring a decrease of unemployment rate as more labour is used to meet extra demand (Sloman, 2008).
In our case, for years six and seven we see an increase of 37.5%, and then in years seven to eight there was a 16.3% decrease. This could be caused by either selling less, through an increase in the cost of goods sold, or a combination of the two. The gross profits come as no surprise when the net sales of decreased significantly between years seven and eight. The company attributes the loss in sales to the lack of sponsors for their professional rider customer base. Many of competition bikes customers are sponsored and with the current economy many sponsors are cutting back funding which will have a negative impact on sales for Competition Bikes Inc.
The business cycle is a series of cycles that define the economies and a business’s stages of expansion and contraction. The first stage of the business cycle is the Boom stage, this is where there is high level of customers spending, there are high levels of business confidence, and an increase of profits & investment. Unemployment is also low as the business creates jobs. The next stage is the Recession stage, this is where the high levels of customer spending start to decrease and business confidence means that lower profits and the business will have to start cutting back on investments which starts to increase unemployment as the business is forced to cut back on resources. The next stage is Depression, this is where there is a lengthy period of declining Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – this is where there is little to no customer spending (there is some increase in the rise of employment).
In the USA’s market, the development of the alternative beverages was hit by the lingering economic downturn. Between 2008 and 2009, sales of sports drinks declined by 12.3%, sales of flavored and vitamin-enhanced waters declined by 12.5%. And in 2009, segment sales exceeded sales in 2008 by only 0.2%. The forecasts of the dollar value and volume sales of the U.S. market for alternative beverages showed that although the alternative beverages industry was hit by the economic, the dollar value and volume will keep going up in next few years. Alternative beverages competed on the basis of differentiation from traditional drinks such as carbonated soft drinks or fruit juices and were also positioned within their respective segments on the basis of differentiation.
Expansion is measured from the trough of the previous cycle to the peak of the current cycle, while recession is measured from the peak to the trough. During a boom there is high levels of consumer spending, business confidence, profits and investment. In addition, prices and costs also tend to rise faster and unemployment tends to be low as growth in the economy creates new jobs. During a recession falling levels of consumer spending and confidence means lower profits for businesses, which then start to cut back on investment. Also recession increases spare capacity and unemployment rises as businesses cut back and reduce stocks.
List a few reasons economists speculate could be the cause of the slump in productivity increasing presence in the work force of women and teens (had lower skills, less likely to take full time jobs),declining investment in new machinery, general shift of American economy from manufacturing to services B. Sharply rising oil prices in the 1970s also fed inflation, but its deepest roots lay in government policies of the 1960s—especially Lyndon Johnson’s insistence