Understanding Trade Unions and Marketing Strategies
Trade Union: An organization formed by a group of workers that represents their interests. The reasons for joining together include strength in numbers, negotiating pay on behalf of its members, representing workers in grievances with management, providing advice if dismissed or made redundant, offering guidance if unfairly treated, and improving working conditions. Example: National Union of Teachers (NUT).
Craft Union: Represents a particular type of skilled worker. Example: An electricians’ union.
General Union: Represents workers from a variety of trades and industries. Example: A union that represents skilled and unskilled workers in different industries.
Industrial Union: Represents all types of workers in a particular industry. Example: A union that represents all workers in the mining industry.
White-Collar Union: Represents non-manual workers. Example: A union that represents office workers.
Employer Associations: An organization formed by a group of employers to provide benefits to its members. The reasons for joining together include strength in being a large group, acting as a pressure group, representing employers and negotiating with trade unions, sharing ideas among members, and sometimes organizing discounts for members when buying in bulk. Example: Universities and Colleges Employers Association.
Collective Bargaining: Negotiations between the management of a business (or several businesses) and a trade union (or several trade unions) on pay and conditions of employment. Example: The management of a business negotiates pay rates with the trade union that represents the employees.
Industrial Action: Action that may be taken by a trade union to put pressure on management during negotiations. It involves halting or decreasing production. Strike: Employees refuse to work. Picketing: Employees taking industrial action stand outside their place of work to prevent or protest against goods or people entering or leaving the business.
Work to Rule: Rules are strictly obeyed so that work is slowed down. Go Slow: Employees do their normal work, but more slowly.
Non-Cooperation: Workers refuse to engage with new working practices they disapprove of.
Overtime Ban: Refusal to do overtime.
Worker Participation: Employees contribute to the decision-making process in the business. Example: Worker directors, works councils, quality circles, and more democratic styles of leadership.
Marketing: The management process that identifies customer wants, anticipates their future wants, and then satisfies them profitably. Marketing helps a business to increase: its sales revenue, profits, and market share (or at least maintain it). It also may want to: improve the image of the product, enter a new market or market segment, develop new products, and improve existing products.
Market Segmentation: The market is divided into groups of consumers who have similar needs:
By income group, by gender, by use of the product, by age, by region, by lifestyle.
A Market: Where buyers and sellers come together to exchange products for money. Example: Fruit market.
Product-Oriented Business: One whose main focus of activity is on the product itself. Example: A business that invented a new kitchen tool. / Market-Oriented Business: One that carries out market research to find out consumer wants before a product is developed and produced. Example: A business that makes chocolate bars by finding out what type of chocolate bar appeals to consumers.
Marketing Budget: A financial plan for the marketing of a product or product range for a specified period of time. It specifies how much money is available to market the product or range, so the marketing department knows how much it can spend. Example: $500,000 to market a new chocolate bar. The marketing department will then decide which marketing activities it will use to achieve its target sales over a specified time period. Marketing Mix: Describes all the activities that go into marketing a product.
They are often summarized as the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.