Transnational corporations are powerful: they manufacture, market, and distribute their goods across the globe. Unsurprisingly, they hold massive power over people and manage to make billions of dollars through selling their products. One of the most successful multinational corporations in the world at the moment is Apple. Despite humble beginnings in California in 2007, the iPhone that it created has evolved and is now being mass produced on a global scale. Originally, the iPhone was built in the United States, where it was developed by Apple. Over time, however, as the product became more popular, a new factory was opened: Apple Shenzhen. China presented the company with the opportunity to produce the iPhone at a much lower cost. Today the Apple headquarters in California no longer produce the physical product, instead they serve as the place in which the software is designed. As a transnational corporation, Apple sources the materials used to build the iPhone from across the world. Components from the phone come from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and America. Once these parts have been manufactured they are shipped to the Shenzhen factory where they are assembled and transported to distributors in order to be sold.
Part of Apple's success comes from the marketing of their product: they target various groups in order to ensure their popularity. It is advertised through various forms of media including television, internet, and printed advertisements. It is depicted as revolutionary as well as practical: something for everybody. Through games and music, Apple targets the younger generation. In order to draw the interest of a slightly older audience, it is marketed as being a useful tool for balancing home and business lives: offering features such as calendars, reminders, and other apps. Apple presents its product as something much more than a phone: it is a gaming device, an organiser, a credit card, a library, and much more.
Transnational corporations manage to forge links between different parts of the world through the product that they are selling. In doing so they create both new opportunities and new problems.
AdvantagesThrough this manufacturing process, transnational corporations are able to create innovative products for their consumers. They encourage the evolution of technology. By sourcing their parts from places all across the globe they are able to ensure that they are buying them at the cheapest prices possible, and thus they are able to provide the product at an inexpensive price: consumers win. They also benefit developing countries by creating new jobs, and in doing so they are ensuring that money is flowing through the economy. Transnational corporations ensure that products are available in multiple countries, and so people will be able to buy the same thing all over the world. This gives people a sense of interconnectedness and allows a shared culture.
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DisadvantagesMany multinational corporations are interested only in money, and do not care about the standards in which their employees are working. In outsourcing their components they are able to buy them at a cheaper rate: but this means that the wage earned by those who create them is much lower. Sweatshops are created, and many people in poorer nations have no alternative and so they agree to provide labour at a low wage on which they can barely survive. Transnational corporations are also a major contributor to global warming: parts that are sourced must be shipped to their destination, and they mass produce products. Both of these lead to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Finally, large businesses make it difficult for local ones to survive: because they mass produce things, they are able to sell it at a cheaper rate and smaller businesses simply cannot compete.
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