Word: conceptive
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like many of America's great entrepreneurs, Kroc was not a creator--convenience food already existed in many forms, from Howard Johnson's to White Castle--but he had the cunning ability to grasp a concept with all its complexities and implement it in the best possible way. And that's as American as a cheeseburger...
From the outset, Morita's marketing concept was brand-name identification and brand responsibility: that the name would instantly communicate high product quality. This is a marketing concept widely used by companies today. But at that time most companies in Japan were producing under somebody else's brand name. Pentax, for example, was making products for Honeywell, Ricoh for Savin and Sanyo for Sears...
...Walkman is just such an invention. Morita watched as his children and their friends played music from morning until night. He noticed people listening to music in their cars and carrying large stereos to the beach and the park. Sony's engineering department was generally opposed to the concept of a tape player without a recording function (it would be added later), but Morita would not be denied. He insisted on a product that sounded like a high-quality car stereo yet was portable and allowed the user to listen while doing something else--thus the name Walkman...
Though it's hard to believe today, discount retailing was a controversial concept when it began to gain ground in the '50s at stores such as Ann & Hope, which opened in a reclaimed mill in Cumberland, R.I. Traditional retailers hated it, and so did manufacturers; it threatened their control of the marketplace. Most states had restrictions on the practice...
Alfred Sloan literally wrote the book on managing large organizations--My Years with General Motors. No large company is untouched by his concept of decentralized management. He came into a GM that was cash short, chaotic and nearly bankrupt--Ford had a 60% market share--and brought discipline to a sprawling company, clearly defining the issues of planning, strategy and organization. He mastered the concept of market segmentation--Chevrolets for Everyman, Cadillacs for the wealthy--to better target GM's sales and avoid internal competition, a strategy that left Ford behind. Sloan also understood what managers today call "consumer insight...