Business Essentials: Global Edition, 9th Edition

For Introduction to Business Courses.

Business Essentials continues to provide a solid foundation of the essential topics that first-semester business students need to understand. Its focus on practical skills, knowledge of the basics, and important developments in business makes for a brief book, but a rich experience.

The recent events in domestic and global economies are presenting unprecedented challenges, excitement, and disappointments for business—and a need for a change in the Introduction to Business course and text. This text captures the widespread significance of these developments and presents their implications on businesses today. 

• Real World Business Practices. An abundance of the latest real-world business developments provide clear illustrations of business concepts and current dilemmas, and every chapter shows how basic practices apply not only in business upswings, but also during economically challenging times as well.
• Challenges for Businesses. Businesses everywhere are dealing with external influences that give rise to new opportunities, demands, and ethical dilemmas. This text presents examples of these influences arising from changing technologies, political forces and government regulation, environmental movements, consumerism, economic conditions, and competition.
• Managing in Turbulent Times Features. Whether working for a large corporation or starting their own business, students need to see the challenges firms encounter during economic downturns. In each chapter, these boxed features tie into important topics. Experiences from real companies reveal both disappointments and unexpected new opportunities arising from the 2008-2009 recession.
• Managing Finances Content. In response to instructor feedback, more finance content has been included with a chapter and an appendix on managing both business and personal finances. Finance content is covered from basic principles to an exploration of debt and equity financing, risk, and capital-growth maximization. Securities markets and the opportunities they present to businesses and individuals are also covered.
• Chapter Case Vignettes. All of the chapter-opening cases are fresh, relevant, and up-to-date. Covering companies such as Facebook, eBay, and Apple, these chapter case vignettes pique students’ interest at the beginning of the chapter and reinforce concepts they’ve learned throughout their reading.
• Entrepreneurship and New Ventures Features. Whether working for a large corporation or starting their own business, students need to be both entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial. These now updated popular boxed features touch on entrepreneurs who have truly made a difference.

OTHER POINTS OF DISTINCTION

• Glindex. In addition to the marginal key terms from previous editions, this text also features a combined glossary and index—a glindex—to make it even easier to find the definitions of key terms and where they are referenced in the text.

mybizlab: This text features robust online support at mybizlab.com. mybizlab provides students with links to informative and exciting supplemental text and media. Students can also practice what they’ve learned through interactive exercises that give them instant feedback.

The text resources that are found in mybizlab include:

• Building Your Business Skills activities are extended business problems presented throughout the text that ask students to use their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Exercising Your Ethics allows students to explore ethical dilemmas and use critical thinking skills to solve them. 
• Team Exercises give students the experience of working collaboratively to tackle ethics issues.
• Video Exercises give students the opportunity to see how real business people apply concepts in their daily lives.
• Self-Check Questions allow students to check their understanding of concepts within the chapter.
• Crafting a Business Plan provides practice in developing this important skill.

Additional Student Resources found in mybizlab:

• Chapter Objectives
• Chapter Summaries provide an outline of the chapter, highlighting and summarizing key points of the material.
• Self-Study Quizzes (multiple-choice, true/false, and essay) give immediate feedback and instant review. All questions are tied to the chapter learning objectives.
• Student PowerPoints® slides
• Student Narrated PowerPoints slides are audio PowerPoints designed to help students summarize the key topic in the chapter and also additional online resources. They are available for review and lecture reinforcement.
• Interactive Exercises include items such as document makeovers and the Self Assessment Library to assess students’ skills in management.
• Mini-simulations allow students to interact and make decisions in common business situations in an online environment. These mini-simulations can be scored, and include reinforcement quizzes, outlines, glossaries, and book page remediation.
• Web links link out to additional resources and information on the web. Each chapter contains links on Ethics, Global, Tech, Career, and Cool Stuff that coordinate with the topics covered in that chapter.
• Video Library is comprised of 3-8 minute videos across a variety of business topics, including Operations Management, Management, Management Information Systems, and Marketing.
• End-of-Chapter Exercises and all end-of-chapter resources are conveniently found in mybizlab. Students can complete their work and immediately receive their grade and feedback.
• Study Guide PDF files are available for students to download. The Study Guide features a review of chapter objectives by providing students with additional learning aids to reinforce what they learned in class.
• iPod files, including Chapter Objectives and Summaries, are available to download for studying on the go!  
• Image Library contains all the art, tables, and photos from the text to use for study or to create their own presentations.
• eBook includes a complete glossary and index, so students can get right to the topic they need. Students can search for specific keywords or page numbers, highlight sections, enter notes right on the eBook page, and print reading assignments with notes.
• PDFs of text content
• Business Plan files (data files) or sample business plan documents help students complete the business plan activities and assignments in the book.