Class 12 Business Studies

Welcome to Class 12 Business Studies. Follow Business environment, then practise in the learning system. Sign in and use the study header to open your authorised course. Select this published lesson. Start Course Tutor with Auto audio on: it teaches continuously, answers a typed question, then resumes. Keep your board, session and medium selected. The clearest recent illustration in India is the change of economic policy that began in nineteen ninety-one, usually summarised as liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Take a firm that made and sold black and white television sets in India in the late nineteen eighties, and follow what the environment did to it. Economically, incomes rose and consumer credit became easier, so households that had once saved for years could now buy sooner and buy better. That alone shifted demand towards colour sets. Socially, television moved from being a shared luxury watched by a neighbourhood to an ordinary household possession, and expectations rose with it. What people wanted from a television changed, which is a social force and not merely an economic one. Technologically, colour sets became cheaper to manufacture as production scaled, and then flat screens displaced the picture tube altogether. A firm whose whole plant was built around the picture tube found its main asset turning into a liability within a few years. Politically and legally, the liberalisation of the early nineteen nineties removed the shelter that had protected domestic producers. Import restrictions eased and foreign manufacturers entered, bringing technology, scale and brands the local firm could not match. Now consider what a manager who read the environment would have done, and when. The economic and social signals came earliest, in rising incomes and changing aspirations, pointing towards moving up the range. The technological signal came next and was most dangerous, threatening not the product but the plant. The policy signal shortened the time left for everything else. A firm that acted on the first two signals could have invested in colour production while it still had profits to invest. A firm that waited for the policy change faced a market opening to competitors at the very moment it needed capital to retool. This is the practical meaning of saying that environmental scanning gives first-mover advantage and early warning: not that the future is predicted, but that the firm acts while it still has choices. Note finally the relativity. The same liberalisation that ruined sheltered producers made fortunes for firms with good technology and distribution, and for consumers it meant better sets at lower prices. The environment did not change for the worse; it changed, and firms differed in what they made of it. Ask Course Tutor to explain this step: Politically and legally, the liberalisation of the early nineteen nineties removed the shelter that had protected domestic producers. Say what you tried. Pause and try this source task. Name two benefits of scanning the environment. The source answer is: First-mover advantage and early warning of threats. Compare your method and result, correct an error, then continue. Use Stop to end Course Tutor.