Thinking like an economist: The basic vocabulary essay
ING is one of the leading financial groups operating internationally. At the same time, the company expands its international market share through providing franchises for local firms operating at the national and local level. The provision of franchises opens large opportunities for ING to promote its services and expand its business internationally because the company can grant its brand name for minor companies that have human resources, facilities and local network to provide financial services.
In actuality, ING operates internationally and the company attempts to expand its business even more using the full potential of franchises. At the same time, ING focuses on the international market expansion as the means to enhance its position in the international market. For this purpose, the company attempts to use its full potential to conduct the policy of aggressive marketing expansion. In actuality, the company opens its affiliates in many countries of the world, where the company transfers its professionals, who conduct training of local employees and help them to meet corporate standards. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that corporate standards are particularly important for the company and its affiliates and franchises. The company has established standards that help to define the quality of services and the list of services provided by the company to its customers. These standards are extremely important because they allow developing homogeneous standards and policies, regardless of the location of the affiliate of the company. Therefore, customers of the company can enjoy services of the high quality, regardless of their location. Choosing ING, they count on the traditionally high standards of the company.
At the same time, the company needs substantial resources to develop its business internationally. Resources required for the company are not limited to financial resources only. Instead, the company needs human resources as well. In the contemporary business environment, human resources play an extremely important part in the successful business development and comprise important marketing asset of any company. In case of ING, human resources are particularly important because the company uses its human resources to provide financial services of the high quality internationally. As the company enters a new market, ING needs to employ local professionals to provide financial services for customers and to manage the affiliate or franchise. However, local professionals may have either little experience or they may be not confident of standards of ING. In such a situation, human resources transferred from other units of the company can help local employees to get training and to acquire essential experience to meet high quality standards of ING.
In actuality, ING benefits from tradeoffs of operating a franchise. In fact, operating as a franchise is beneficial for ING as well as the company that uses ING brand to provide financial services. First of all, the franchise means that the company meets the high quality standards of ING. The company offers services that are provided by other units of ING. In addition, the personnel of the company get training to provide services of the high quality. The franchise also gets access to technologies and network of ING. ING, in its turn, can accelerate its market expansion using franchises.
Thus, ING is a growing financial group that uses franchises to expand its market share.
