Consumer Finance In Education
Consumer finance is not merely a limited specialized activity of the business, but rather a perspective for the total personal management. It is very important to study consumer finance in high schools because it will help students to master the main skills and knowledge necessary for all financial operations including debt credit finance. Finance does not function as a separate entity in the business, nor is it more important than any other primary activity, yet through actual and potential sales it does establish constraints within which the other activities must be performed. In reality, the conception of marketing as a viewpoint or as the fundamental purpose of a business focuses on the business as a satisfier of consumer wants and needs. This conception implies a top-management philosophy of business operation, the marketing philosophy. Accordingly, customers and consumers become the core around which a business revolves, thus recognizing customer orientation to decision-making and problem-solving and the impact of marketing on other functional areas.
It is crucial for students to master the main principles of consumer finance in order to avoid financial problems in future. The close and critical relationship between marketing and other business functions is underscored by the systems perspective. Sales forecasts establish constraints for accounting budgets. Credit sales and inventories have a direct bearing on consumer finance. Students and young adults must be aware of the interfaces among marketing and other areas, and shape marketing decisions accordingly. The fact that anticipated actions may not occur is clear. Therefore, consumer finance is dynamic by necessity. Consumer finance will help students to plan their life and budget. Flexible and pliable plans that reflect unexpected and unanticipated reactions must be developed. Because it encompasses market and sales forecasts, company plans and programs, and, of course, budgets, consumer finance planning carries out the marketing concept by balancing the firm’s capability with expected opportunities. Consumer finance assists in perfecting the fundamental strategies of a business enterprise through attention to market needs, forces, and opportunities. As with consumer finance, it assumes that objectives can be established, and that profitable strategies can be determined and implemented in marketing. In short, consumer finance lends rationality to marketing decisions (Burton 2003).
Consumer finance is an essential element for business growth and survival. Moreover, marketing planning itself must be planned. As one of the most significant functions, consumer finance is a prime responsibility of the top marketing executive. Yet, the very nature of critical day-to-day operations, the pressures of time, and the tendency to act rather than plan, frequently cause executives to neglect this function. But one of the major criteria of an executive’s effectiveness is his expenditure of time and resources on creative and contemplative consumer finance, especially of a longer-range character. The person who is too busy to plan is admitting that he is too busy to manage. A distinction may be drawn between the basic organization under the personal philosophy and under the more traditional approach. The latter emphasizes personal management in a functionally organized company. In reality, however, although the sales executive is responsible for sales and sales-related activities, marketing activities may be shunted to other functional areas. For example, manufacturing may be responsible for personal and consumer finance for distribution cost accounting ‘and credit (Burton 2003).
Consumer finance at high schools will help students to make calculations and create personal budget. Although actual calculation of rates of return on investments in various components of the marketing mix is uncommon, “rate of return” thinking is used as a criterion. Since many people have limited resources, they must be increasingly concerned with the rate of return on investments in different marketing sectors. The assumption underlying heuristic programming is that human approaches to problem solving and decision. making are really governed by programs (Burton 2003). Humans organize and process information, and adjust to cues in problematical situations to arrive at solutions. Moreover, consumer finance programs that simulate human thinking can be written for computers, and computers can apply these heuristic procedures to reach solutions to problems.
Consumer finance may thus take its place beside some of the long-standing institutions of American society. Its impact reverberates throughout the culture. It continues to shape our way of life and affects us significantly as consumers and producers. Yet analysts of the consumer culture have virtually ignored it, and sometimes regarded it as a minor type of activity, as a group of techniques not important enough to be investigated in detail. The central idea of consumer finance is very simple – it is that planned activity is more effective than unplanned activity; that marketing factors, regardless of their variability and situational differences, can be planned; and that a company to a considerable degree can help shape its own destiny it can plan its market posture. Yet marketing is a relative late comer to the planning fraternity. The dynamic approach stresses that a person should plan for change. It underscores the fact that plans are not merely the results of objectives, but that plans affect objectives. In this case, consumer finance will help people to manage their limited resources and spend money carefully. During life span, the goals and objectives can be changed, as can the plans (Burton 2003).
Processing your request, Please wait....
