Word: low-cost
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...existing product of features or packaging it in smaller quantities may not be enough to gain customers in this high-volume, low-margin enterprise. "It's not as simple as finding a low price point," says Richard Brown, marketing vice president for VIA Technologies. Company executives need to understand not only what poor consumers can afford but also what they want and can use. Motorola's Burnes says the company went through four redesigns to develop a low-cost cell phone with battery life as long as 500 hours (for villagers without regular electricity) and an extra-loud volume...
...series of attractively designed cars, and aggressive cost cutting to ensure they could be sold at both profitable and reasonable prices, the firm has rebounded. Renault earlier this year reported record profits, boosted in part by the runaway success of its Megane car. Last year, it introduced a new low-cost auto, the €5,000 Logan, that is aimed at a completely new audience: middle-class consumers in places like Eastern Europe and Latin America. "Renault still sometimes produces dogs that don't sell, but it's innovative, and people want to buy its cars," says consultant Schmidt...
...European and American clothing and textile companies knew they would be in for some hard knocks this year following the expiration on Jan. 1 of a decades-old quota system that limited exports from low-cost producers like China and India. But the reality is worse than their most dire expectations. Chinese companies have massively ramped up foreign sales even as they drop prices. Chinese textile exports to Italy alone jumped by 64% in January and February, according to the Italian national statistics office. In the 15 countries that made up the European Union before last year's accession...
...Morita became the best-known Japanese businessman in the world, friends with the great and the good on three continents. But Morita came from a family of long-established sake brewers, and the company was also always careful to maintain its Japanese roots. Notwithstanding the attractions of low-cost labor elsewhere, Sony continued to source products in a Japan that had-by virtue of the success of the company and others like it-become one of the most expensive places on the planet to do business. In 1989, at the height of Japan-bashing in the U.S., Morita even...
That's great news for tourists as well as locals. In the prewar years, Dubrovnik was known to the European cognoscenti as a low-cost alternative to the ritzy Riviera. Now its charms are fast becoming an open secret. Flights arrive almost daily from Madrid, Paris, Rome and Vienna, together with budget services from Bratislava, London Gatwick and Dublin. In all, more than 320,000 foreigners holidayed in Dubrovnik (pop. 37,000) last year, up from 250,000 in 2002. "Dubrovnik is a jewel," says Ed Serotta, a Vienna-based historian and frequent visitor. He recommends a stroll...