Chenoy Ceil

Consumer behavior is an essential part of the marketing for brands that are trying to influence the purchasing behavior of consumers. Burberry as a brand has been able to influence the purchase decisions of consumers by utilizing motivational, perception, personality and lifestyle strategies. This paper looks at the various factors that are utilized by Burberry that act as marketing stimulus for influencing the purchasing decision of their consumers. Some recommendations dealing with the brand perception of Burberry are also provided to help Burberry improve their sales and create a unique fashion brand for itself. Motivation, personality and emotion are important factors that affect consumer decision making, especially in the case of high fashion products. Looking at all these various factors in detail, this paper concludes that motivation, perception, personality and lifestyle have been carefully utilized by Burberry to reposition its brand for the modern age.

This report looks at the service quality and service efficiency delivered at the restaurant chain of McDonald’s. McDonald’s was first opened in USA over 50 years ago and the first McDonald’s in UK was opened at Woolwich in 1974 (Crosby, 1979). Today, McDonald has opened over 1000 branches in UK. This report looks at the existing service structure at McDonalds and provides certain recommendations in the field of SERVQUAL and brand strategy that the company might incorporate to improve their service efficiency. This report takes into account the service characteristics such as intangibility, heterogeneity that are relevant to the fast-food chain restaurants such as McDonald’s. Further, this report also studies the service blueprint and servicescape that has been adopted at various outlets of the company.
From the findings of this report it can be suggested that there is scope for improvement of McDonald’s stores in their design layout for faster delivery of food and better service delivery to consumers. Branding strategies of the company such as co-branding and individual branding can be adopted to improve the perception of the service quality amongst consumers. This report proves that SERVQUAL can be utilized to understand the gaps creates in service delivery and consumer perception (Carman, 1990). This report helps in understanding how McDonald’s can improve their service qualities to improve customer perception (Bolton and Drew, 1991).

The role of international managers in the world is increasing as companies tend to expand all over the world. However, with the growth in industries, there is also need of human resources to manage such industries and global conglomerates. International Human Resources Management (IHRM) regulates the human resources in international organizations, including expatriate nationals and host-country nationals. However, understanding and measuring the performance of expatriate employees under host-country defined rules often leads to employee discomfort. Under such circumstances, performance management and performance appraisal plays crucial role in defining the strategic approach that would lead to organisational success.
According to Armstrong (1998), performance management includes developing the capabilities of employees through various processes that would ultimately lead to growth of the organisation. However, measuring performance in international organisations is a difficult task as the parameters of measurement depends on various cross-cultural factors. Performance management of expatriate population often focuses on individual performance rather than concentrating on all the various factors and environment interacting with such employees.
This study focuses on the paper written by Woods (2003), to understand why performance appraisal of expatriate managers and employees have failed to truly evaluate the performance rate of such population. The cross-cultural challenges that managers face in international environment is often unnoticed and this should not be the case while designing performance appraisal systems for international managers and employees.
From this paper it can be assessed that performance rating criteria, number of performance raters and the overall cultural diversity should be taken into consideration by Human Resources department while designing the performance appraisal for expatriate managers. Research conducted by Woods (2003) and Hempel (2001) showcases why expatriate managers from foreign nations struggle to perform in host nations. The employment and firm regulations also differ from one country to another and the same criteria cannot be utilized to judge all managers operating within different socio-cultural settings in different countries.

Leaders inspire confidence and builds trust among people to attain objectives. In an organization, leadership is required at all levels to lead the team members towards organizational development. However, leadership alone cannot attain anything superior unless the entire team follows the leader and works together with the leader to achieve the goals (Dubrin, 2010).
Leadership and teamwork are the two most important keywords for the success of any organization. Poor leadership cannot lead a team to success and a group of unmotivated and incompetent team cannot help a leader to achieve great success (Kouzes & Posner, 2007). To achieve organizational goals, the team must work as a whole under the leader and the leader must exhibit behavioural skills that can motivate the team (Bass, 1990).
Today, there are several leadership theories that tries to define leadership as transactional, transformational, autocratic or charismatic. However, to achieve success as a team, the leader must exhibit participative leadership where each member of the team is valued and each member is offered the opportunity to participate in organizational development (Dubrin, 2010).
This essay looks into the different theories of leadership and urges that collaborative leadership is the best style for leaders to build team and achieve teamwork capabilities. This paper also looks at some of the companies that have incorporated collaborative leadership style to achieve success.

Leadership is a trait that is achieved when people are moved or directed towards a desired goal. Leadership has also been defined as a characteristic where one plans, directs, motivates or guides people to achieve results. In essence, leadership is not only about achieving results but it is also about achieving change. According to Lussier & Achua (2004), leadership influences not only people but also the leader to bring about changes that are aligned with organizational goals.
However, connecting leadership and change can be difficult because there are so many diverse forms of leadership styles. Leaders are persons who have a respectable personality and who provide unselfish service to the organization (Dubrin, 2010). Sometimes, leaders may not be oriented towards change and rather look to sustain the current organizational structure through transactional leadership (Dubrin, 2010).
This essay draws on transformational leadership theories to establish that leadership and change is related. Although leadership styles may vary but in essence, all leaders seek to inspire a shared vision, challenge the process and bring about change (Kouzes & Posner, 2007). Some of the theories about leadership such as trait theory, behavioral leadership, transactional leadership and transformational leadership are discussed in this essay to show how change and leadership are related. This essay concludes that leadership is an inherent part of any organization and change is the path to progress which can be best achieved with transformational leaders.

In the age of globalization, most businesses are looking to expand by setting up businesses in different parts of the world. However, all organizations require strategic human resource management (HRM) to focus on the success of such organizations. Strategic international human resource management (IHRM) is nothing but an extension of HRM practices that can work globally for the organization (Nankervis, Compton & Baird 2002: 617). IHRM focuses on understanding the policies, culture, and practices that a multinational enterprise need to master to better manage their local and non-local employees in different countries where the organization has set up branches (Dowling, Schuler & Welch 1994). Since Excelsia International Hotel and Leisure Group are hoping to expand their business from the United States to European countries and non-European countries, they need to understand the IHRM practices in these countries for better management of their employees. Currently Excelsia management have no operational experience of working in other countries, hence they need to focus on understanding the hotel and leisure industry regulations, labour legislations, employment conditions and expectations prevalent in the European Union (EU) countries and non-EU countries.
This business report suggests that Excelsia International Hotel and Leisure Group expand their business in Germany of Europe and China in Asia to begin operations in other countries. This report analyses the market conditions for staffing, employment regulations and employee culture in these two countries to explain the IHRM practices that Excelsia management should implement while expanding their operations in these countries.
From the business report, it is evident that EU provides great avenues for expansion as the hotel and tourism market is growing. China too is a growing hub for hotel industry. However, the industry practices are not necessarily similar in both nations and Excelsia management must consider the IHRM practices described here to achieve success with expansion of their hotel business.