The Major Marketing Functions

Marketing Activity	Description
Gathering information	Business firms collect information about the market to forecast potential sales
Buying	Before finished goods can be sold, they must be selected and purchased.
Transporting	Goods must be shipped to the place where they are sold.
Selling	Goods must be advertised, promoted and sold.
Storing	Business firms had more goods than they can sell in a single day. These must be stored until they are sold.
Financing	Cash or credit must be found to pay for the goods the business intends to sell.
Standardizing and Grading	«Standardizing» is establishing uniform specifications for a product or a service. «Grading» is classifying products by quality and size.
Managing risk	People in business risk loss if things fail to go as planned. Steps taken to limit these risks fall into this category.

5. Write out these sentences putting the verb in brackets into the future tense:

1. The study of economics (to help) you to understand economic forces better.

2. Cleaning up the river (to require) a major effort, and considerable expense.

3. A change in the price of one item (to result) in a shift in the demand for a substitute.

4. An increase in production costs (to have) the opposite effect - supply (to decrease).

5. As long as supply and demand remain unchanged, the equilibrium of market price (to remain) constant.

6. Make the sentences (a) interrogative, (b) negative:

1. They will try to economize to get the most from what they have.

2. Economics will also help you to fulfill your responsibilities as a citizen in a democracy.

3. Economists will agree that unemployment is bad.

4. Entrepreneurs will try to run their businesses to earn the greatest profits.

7. Fill in the blanks with the verbs «can», «may», «must», «have to», «to be able (to)»:

1. Liquidity is a measure of the ease with which you ____ convert your savings to cash.

2. Since a society cannot have everything, it ____ decide which goods and services it will have now.

3. Americans ____ to own property for business purposes and use it to produce income.

4. Most producers ____ make more than one product.

5. Such systems ____ characterize isolated tribes or groups, or even entire countries.

6. Unable to compete with the Japanese, the company ____ to go out of business.

7. Any number of persons ____ contract to form a partnership.

8. You ____ earn the income to buy the things you want.

9. The number and value of things we ____ to buy depends upon the size of our income and how wisely we spend it.

10. Most of the time, we ____ to keep track of our expenditures so we ____ to meet our immediate needs.

Translate the following sentences paying attention to the different functions of the word «one».

1. In fact one common definition of economics is «the study of how people make a living».

2. The market price is the one at which goods and services will actually be exchanged for money.

3. One of the main reasons people save their money is to earn interest.

4. Advertising provides us with information about prices, recent improvements in certain goods and services, and the availability of new ones.

5. The development of the socio-economic formations rises from the lower stage to the higher one.

9. State the part of speech of the following words:

management, speaker, production, economist, economical, economic, economics, national, technical, techniques, largely, product.

10. Form nouns with the help of the suffixes:

-ment:   to manage, to agree, to govern, to employ, to invest, to develop.

-er: to consume, to programme, to produce, to buy, to sell, to plan, to own, to manufacture.

-tion:     to produce, to distribute, to consume, to compete, to operate, to explain, to determine.

-or: to distribute, to invest, to operate, to regulate, to educate.

-ist: economy, sociology, psychology, behavior, special.

 

11. Read the text and retell it in Russian:

Birmingham

Birmingham (England), city, seat of the metropolitan county of West Midlands, central England. In 1974 the former municipal borough of Sutton Coldfield was incorporated into the city. A major industrial center, Birmingham is the second largest city in Great Britain. It is the hub of the British metal goods industry and is served by a network of railroads and highways. Among the principal metal products manufactured are motor-vehicle parts, machine tools, brassware, household utensils, sporting guns, and jewelry. Other important manufactures include electrical equipment, glass, rubber products, and chemicals. The city is located in an important coal-mining region.

Birmingham is the seat of the University of Birmingham (1900), the University of Aston in Birmingham (1895), the University of Central England in Birmingham (1992, formerly a polytechnic college), and several technical schools. Cultural facilities include the large Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (1867), the Museum of Science and Industry, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (1913). The city's Municipal Bank (opened 1916) is the only one of its kind in Great Britain. Birmingham churches include Saint Philip's Cathedral (1715), Saint Martin's Parish Church in the Bull Ring (13th century), and the Roman Catholic Saint Chad's Cathedral (1841). Other notable buildings are the neoclassical Town Hall (1834), the Renaissance-style Council House (1881), and the modern Bull Ring Shopping Centre.

Heavily bombed during World War II, the city has undergone extensive rebuilding. Population (1981) 1,006,908; (1991 preliminary) 934,900.

 

 

Unit 2

Supplementary reading

MARKET PLACE

 

The stock market. To some it's a puzzle. To others, it's a source of profit and endless fascination. The stock market is the finan­cial nerve centre of any country. It reflects any change in the eco­nomy. It is sensitive to interest rates, inflation and political events. In a very real sense, it has its fingers on the pulse of the entire world.

Taken in its broadest sense, the stock market is also a control centre. It is the market place where businesses and governments come to raise money so that they can continue and expand their operations. 11 is the market place where giant businesses and institutions come to make and change their financial commitments. The stock market is also a place of individual opportunity.

The phrase "the stock market" means many things. In the narrowest sense, a stock market is a place where stocks are traded—that is bought and sold. The phrase "the stock market" is often used to refer to the biggest and most important stock market in the world, the New York Stock Exchange, which is as well the oldest in the US. It was founded in 1792 NYSE is located at 11 Wall Street in New York City. It is also known as the Big Board and the Exchange. In the mid-1980s NYSE-listed shares made up approximately 60% of the total shares traded on organized national exchanges in the United Slates.

AMEX stands for the American Stock Exchange.It has the second biggest volume of trading in the US. Located at 86 Trinity Place in downtown Manhattan, the AMEX was known until 1921 as the Curb Exchange, and it is still referred to as the Curb today. Early traders gathered near Wall Street. Nothing could stop those outdoor brokers. Even in the snow and rain they put up lists of stocks for sale. The gathering place became known as the outdoor curb market, hence the name the Curb. In 1921 the Curb finally moved indoors. For the most part, the stocks and bonds traded on the A M EX are those of small to medium-size companies, as contrasted with the huge companies whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Exchange is a non-for-profit corporation run by a board of directors. Its member firms are subject to a strict and detailed.elf-regulatory code. Self-regulation is a matter of self-interest lor stock exchange members. It has built public confidence in the Exchange. It is also required by law. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) administers the federal securities laws and supervises all securities exchanges in the country. Whenever self-regulation doesn't do the job, the SEC is likely to step in directly. The Exchange doesn't buy, sell or own any securities nor does it set stock prices. The Exchange merely is the marketplace where the public, acting through member brokers, can buy and sell at prices set by supply and demand.

It costs money to become an Exchange member. There are about 650 memberships or "seats" on the NYSE, owned by large and small firms and in some cases by individuals. These seats can be bought and sold; in 1986 the price of a seat averaged around $600,000. Before you are permitted to buy a seat you must pass a test that strictly scrutinizes your knowledge of the securities industry as well as a check of experience and character.

Apart from the NYSE and the AMEX there are also "regional" exchanges in the US, of which the best known are the Pacific, Midwest, Boston and Philadelphia exchanges.

There is one more market place in which the volume of common stock trading begins to approach that of the NYSE. It is trading of common stock "over-the-counter" or "OTC" —that is not on any organized exchange. Most securities other than common stocks are traded over-the-counter. For example, the vast market in US Govern­ment securities is an over-the-counter market. So is the money market—the market in which all sorts of short-term debt obligations are traded daily in tremendous quantities. Like-wise the market for long-and short-term borrowings by state and local governments. And the bulk of trading in corporate bonds also is accomplished over-the-counter.

While most of the common stocks traded over-the-counter are those of smaller companies, many sizable corporations continue to be found on the "OTC" list, including a large number of banks and insurance companies.                                         

As there is no physical trading floor, over-the-counter trading ' is accomplished through vast telephone and other electronic net-/ works that link traders as closely as if they were seated in the same room. With the help of computers, price quotations from dealers in Seattle, San Diego, Atlanta and Philadelphia can be flashed on a single screen. Dedicated telephone lines link the more active traders. Confirmations are delivered electronically rather than through the mail. Dealers thousands of miles apart who are complete strangers execute trades in the thousands or even millions of dollars based on thirty seconds of telephone conversation and the knowledge that each is a securities dealer registered with the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the industry self-regulatory orga­nization that supervises OTC trading. No matter which way market prices move subsequently, each knows that the trade will be honoured.