Day 10 (5/13/13)-Group Presentations

Today was our day to present our group company presentations. The most important things I learned actually came from the questions that Jaimes (the university professor) asked us after presenting. He asked us things that got us thinking about the economy here in Chile and over the whole world. We found out that there are less amounts of companies here in Chile for most areas of products resulting in less competition meaning that many companies can choose to have higher prices for their customers. As an example, only a few phone service providers exist in the entire country and own most of the broadband so they can set higher rates and run away new companies from starting up. Although there are some government agencies working to prevent monopolies from controlling entire areas of services, many companies such as LAN and the phone companies have a lot of control over their area of service. As the Chilean economy is growing, companies are starting to join forces and merge into larger companies or expand where they provide services to. For instance, it is necessary for many manufacturers now to team up with larger distributors so they can keep up with other companies. However, a lot of companies are not embracing this trend for the main reason that it costs more money to change their brand name and advertise and expand than to just stay as they are and distribute to smaller stores. We also touched on how different companies (such as HELA) here have to import products from many different countries in order to manufacture the rest of their products but too few companies export to other countries, many just export to different areas in Chile. All groups presented on the five companies: LAN, Vina Indomita, Hela, Centauros, and Bosques del Mauco. After learning a little bit about each company and their business style, we left the university and headed over to the mall to grab lunch! Most of us picked up Burger King which may not have been the best decision since we had to play soccer right after! I got a cheeseburger with bacon and guacamole which is another thing that many meals come with in Chile. After we finished eating, we headed over to the futbol fields to play on the turf with some of the Chilean students! We played 6 v 6 games and it was so fun for everyone to experience one of Chile’s favorite activities. It was interesting to see that pretty much all of the Chileans were very good and obviously had prior experience since futbol is so popular in Chile whereas only a few of us Pitt students have played before.