Business Resource Guide

US computer and electronics company, manufacturer of the iPod MP3 music player, iPhone multimedia mobile telephone, and more. MORE

Trade name of a sweetened, carbonated drink, originally made with coca leaves and flavoured with cola nuts. MORE

U.S. company that in 2001 became the largest bankruptcy and stock collapse in U.S. history up to that time. MORE

Italian vehicle manufacturer founded in 1899, now one of Europe's largest companies. It remains in the control of the founding Agnelli family. Fiat's core automotive operations are focused in three main business areas: motor cars; agricultural and construction equipment; and trucks and commercial vehicles. MORE

The company, based in Detroit, Michigan, is the world's third largest motor manufacturer after General Motors and Toyota. MORE

A Multinational company, IBM is the largest manufacturer of computers in the world. MORE

US corporation, now the world's largest software supplier, based in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. MORE

Industrial company manufacturing luxury cars and aeroplane engines. It was founded in 1906 by Henry Royce and Charles Rolls and was later nationalized by the British government in 1971 and then divided from 1973 into two separate business entities. MORE

US newspaper, established as a penny paper in 1851 and aimed at an educated, cultured readership. It began as a paper for New York but has grown into a world-respected daily newspaper, distributed nationally, renowned for its objectivity, broad coverage, and excellent reporting. MORE

Organized traders' exchange in which standardized, graded products are bought and sold. Worldwide, there are 48 major commodity exchanges that trade over 96 commodities, ranging from wheat and cotton to silver and oil. MORE

Device used to obtain consumer credit at the time of purchasing an article or service. Credit cards may be issued by a business, such as a department store or an oil company, to make it easier for consumers to buy their products. MORE

The process of scrambling stored or transmitted information so that it is unintelligible until it is unscrambled by the intended recipient [...] It is also now used increasingly by the financial industry to protect money transfers, by merchants to protect credit-card information in electronic commerce, and by corporations to secure sensitive communications of proprietary information. MORE

Commerce conducted over the Internet, most often via the World Wide Web. E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory transfers. MORE

In modern usage, trade or commerce carried on without such restrictions as import duties, export bounties, domestic production subsidies, trade quotas, or import licenses. MORE

Process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural, and political means. MORE

Company or enterprise operating in several countries, usually defined as one that has 25% or more of its output capacity located outside its country of origin. MORE

Building or part of a building used for the retail sale of goods. Roman stoae were market stalls enclosed by an arcaded walkway; shops changed little from ancient times until the latter part of the 19th century, when the growth of manufactured goods and the concentration of population in big towns gave rise to the department store, the chain store, and the supermarket. MORE

Small device that resembles a credit card but contains an embedded microprocessor to store and process information. Magnetic-stripe cards, which store a very small amount of information (most typically used to identify the owner) and have no processing capability of their own, can be thought of as primitive smart cards. MORE