Globalization During a Recent Visit

Globalization

During a recent visit to a local BestBuy, the following five items were researches as to the country they were manufactured in. A Hewlett-Packard printer was manufactured in Singapore; a Dell laptop, in China; a Casio digital camera, in Japan; a Linksys wireless network router, in Malaysia; and a Samsung plasma screen television, in Taiwan. Each of these five brands of products is prominently displayed in the BestBuy visited, in addition to having self-running product demonstrations running on each of them.

Demand for these products is moderate to high given the observations made while visiting the store. BestBuy at a corporate level must get better pricing than its retailing competitors on these products, as each one was one sale and a discount below their prices at Target and other retailers in my area. The Samsung plasma screen television on sale was at a price equal to Wal-Mart.

BestBuy has been lowering their prices quickly during these economic hard times, and they appear to be competing on price more often with Wal-Mart on plasma screen televisions specifically. The entire BestBuy retail chain must be buying from overseas manufacturers to give their stores the opportunity to compete more on price than ever before. Prior to the economic downturn, BestBuy tried to sell warranties and other services, add-ons and extra features to me when shopping. Today the focus is on price and getting customers to buy now, even offering coupons on their more expensive electronics. BestBuy almost seems forced to buy from any manufacturers globally in order to keep up their new pricing approach. For BestBuy this has to introduce more complexity into how they manage their supply chains than ever before. It also puts more money, over time, into these other country's economies at the expense of the American economy. That could potentially impact the U.S. economy even more with retailers buying the majority of their products from offshore manufacturers. Yet, conversely, competition does bring out the best in people and companies. A little competition for General Motors, earlier in its life as a company, might mean it would own Toyota right now rather than Toyota "owning" GM in terms of market share today. The more one considers how consumers spend their money on the highest quality products at the lowest prices, the more one point becomes clear: dollars chase quality. If these manufacturers in other countries can produce products that are of exceptional quality and a low price, the arguably deserve the sales. It is all about serving the customer now, with the highest quality product that can be produced. American manufacturers may not be able to get the price points of these foreign made goods, yet that should not mean customers should be denied them. The challenge to any manufacturer of these products, whether they are in the United States or any other country in the world, is to stay current on the best approaches to driving costs out of their manufacturing so they can globally compete