Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 984, Competing in Business.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 984.
In beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Yoko and Cedric about competition, trying to be the best company, the most successful company, in your area.
Let's get started.
We used to be the only game in town.
Now we have three competitors and they are luring away our customers.
I know.
We need to do something before we go under.
What about price matchings?
Our prices are already competitive.
If we want to focus on price, we'll need to undercut our competitors.
Slashing prices would be really hard on our profit margin.
But these are desperate times.
What do you think of a two-for-one deal?
We can do that if lowering our prices doesn't work.
I'm thinking we could go in another direction.
What do you think about offering freebies or gifts with purchase?
I think that's a good idea.
The more frills we include, the better our services look.
What kind of frills?
I'm not sure, but the more bells and whistles, the better.
And if all of this doesn't work?
Then we'll be up the creek without a paddle.
Yoko begins by saying to Cedric, we used to be the only game in town.
The expression the only game G-A-M-E in town means the only person or only organization involved in this particular business or in this particular field.
To be the only game in town is not to have any competition.
You're the only company that is doing what you are doing.
Yoko says that is no longer true for her company.
She says, now we have three competitors and they are luring away our customers.
A competitor, C-O-M-P-E-T-I-T-O-R, is someone who competes with you.
To compete is to try to beat someone at something, to be better than someone else.
A competitor is a person or a company that does what you do and tries to do it better than you do.
So if you're buying a car in the United States, you could buy a Ford or a Chevy or a Toyota or a Mazda.
All of those companies are competitors.
They're all trying to do the same thing, which is to sell cars.
Yoko says that, Her competitors are luring away customers.
To lure L-U-R-E away is a phrasal verb meaning to attract someone away from another person or another business.
You can lure someone away by offering them something better or perhaps the same thing but cheaper.
Cedric says, I know.
To go under is a phrasal verb meaning to go out of business.
To go broke we could also say to no longer have money to continue.
It is especially used when talking about a business.
Cedric says, what about price matching?
Cedric is proposing that their company lower their price or offer the same price for the product or service they're selling as their competitors have.
That's what price matching is.
Yoko says, our prices are already competitive.
To be competitive is to have similar qualities or characteristics of other companies or other options.
When someone says we are competitive, he means they have the same prices or similar prices, in this case as other companies.
Yoko is saying that that isn't really a good solution because their prices are already pretty competitive, pretty similar, to the other companies.
Yoko says, if we want to focus on price, we'll need to undercut our competitors.
To undercut, U-N-D-E-R-C-U-T, is to sell something at a lower price.
So if you undercut your competitors, you sell what you are selling at a lower or much lower price.
Cedric says slashing prices would be really hard on our profit margin.
But these are desperate times.
To slash, S-L-A-S-H, prices is to lower or reduce or cut prices.
Profit, P-R-O-F-I-T, is how much your company makes.
It's the difference between the money you take in and the money you have to pay out for your expenses.
Your profit margin.
M-A-R-G-I-N is basically the amount of money sometimes expressed as a percentage of money that you make in your business.
So if you have a 10% profit margin, you are making or bringing in 10% more than you are paying out.
You are taking more money from your customers than you are spending to make your product and run your business.
If you slash your prices, you may reduce or lower your profit margin.
That's what Cedric means when he says that slashing prices would be really hard on our profit margin, meaning it would lower our profit margin.
However, Sedgwick also says these are desperate times.
Desperate times refers to a situation where things are going badly quickly and you need to do something quickly in order to save the situation.
In this case, in order to prevent your company from going under.
Desperate times are difficult times, challenging times.
Cedric says, what do you think of a two-for-one deal?
Two-for-one means you get two of something for the normal price of one of something.
So if you are buying some pumpkin pies...
And, by the way, that's my favorite kind of pie, in case you are looking for something to buy me for my birthday.
You may be able to find some store selling the pumpkin pies at a two-for-one deal or a two-for-one price.
That means you would get two pies for the price that you would normally pay for one.
That's what Cedric is proposing here, is suggesting here.
He says we could offer it for a limited time.
For a limited time means only temporarily, not forever.
It's a very good strategy when selling to put some sort of time limit on the price that you are selling something for.
It motivates people.
It gives people a reason to buy right now.
If you don't give people a reason to buy right now, they'll say, oh well, maybe I'll buy it in the future.
And then they never actually buy it.
That's one of the things that good marketing does is to motivate the buyer to buy the product.
That's part of what Cedric is saying here.
He's thinking of offering this two-for-one deal for a limited time.
Yoko says, we can do that if lowering our prices doesn't work.
Yoko wants to start by lowering the price and then, if that doesn't help, they can try this two for one deal.
Yoko says, I'm thinking we could go in another direction, meaning we could do something different.
What do you think about offering freebies or gifts with purchase?
A freebie is, you may already have guessed, something you get for free.
Some stores give away freebies. samples of their products.
If you go to the grocery store in the United States, sometimes the store will give you a cracker or a piece of cheese.
That's a freebie.
You don't have to pay anything for it.
Of course, they're doing that to get you to try the product so that eventually you will buy some.
Gift with purchase is when You get something extra when you buy a certain product.
So a woman who goes to a store to buy some makeup, things to make her face look beautiful.
The store may offer her a gift with purchase.
If she buys this $50 package of makeup, they will give her a $2 gift.
Lipstick or $10 lipstick.
I don't know how much lipstick costs.
I don't buy lipstick.
Not anymore.
Technically, a gift is something that someone gives you without you having to pay for it or give anything in return.
So...
Gift with purchase doesn't really make a lot of sense because you are actually having to buy something.
It's really just another way of lowering the price of the thing you are buying.
There's also a very popular expression in advertising in English, free gift.
Well, once again, gifts are free by definition.
If you had to pay for the gift, it wouldn't be a gift.
But that's just something that advertisers do to emphasize that it is free.
Cedric says, A frill, F-R-I-L-L, is something additional that's nice to have but isn't necessary.
If you stay in a hotel, it's necessary for you to have a bed and a room and a bathroom.
It's not necessary for you to have a spa or a swimming pool or a restaurant or a lot of other things that many hotels have.
Those extra things are called frills.
That's what Cedric is referring to.
Yoko says, I'm not sure, after Cedric asks what kind of frills.
Yoko says, the more bells and whistles, the better.
The more here means the more that we have.
The phrase bells and whistles is an old one to refer to the same basic idea as frill.
Additional items that make something more interesting or more exciting but aren't really necessary.
We often use this term when talking nowadays about technology.
You can buy a phone that makes a phone call.
Or you could buy a phone that makes a phone call and sends email and allows you to check the internet, and so forth.
Those extra things would be bells and whistles.
They're not, strictly speaking, necessary for a phone, but people like to buy phones that have those bells and whistles, those additional features.
Cedric says, and if all of this doesn't work, meaning what?
What happens if we try all of these things and we still don't make money?
Yoko answers, then we'll be up the creek without a paddle.
To be up a creek C-R-E-E-K without a paddle P-A-D-D-L-E means to be in a very difficult situation, a situation that is going to be very difficult, difficult to get out of.
A creek is a small river.
A paddle is something you use to move a boat in the water just with your arms and hands.
You use a paddle with small boats typically.
The whole expression taken together however means to be in a difficult or challenging situation.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
We used to be the only game in town.
Now we have three competitors, and they are luring away our customers.
I know.
We need to do something before we go under.
What about price matching?
Our prices are already competitive.
If we want to focus on price, we'll need to undercut our competitors.
Slashing prices would be really hard on our profit margin, but these are desperate times.
What do you think of a two-for-one deal?
We could offer it for a limited time.
We can do that if lowering our prices doesn't work.
I'm thinking we could go in another direction.
What do you think about offering freebies or gifts with purchase?
I think that's a good idea.
The more frills we include, the better our services look.
What kind of frills?
I'm not sure, but the more bells and whistles, the better.
And if all of this doesn't work Then we'll be up the creek without a paddle.
Our scripts are full of bells and whistles, thanks to our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
