essay - GMAT: Issue 27

Location has traditionally been one of the most important determinants of a business fs success. The importance of location is not likely to change, no matter how advanced the development of computer communications and others kinds of technology becomes.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Answer:
The speaker says that location is one of the most important determinants for business organizations and then this will continue even under the circumstance of fast-growing development of technologies including computer communications. I agree with his opinion to some extent, but I generally believe that the importance is going to diminish little by little. Also, I point out that the importance varies with the industry that the business organization belongs.

As everybody is aware, information technology is rapidly developing. Nowadays, any smooth business activity can not be performed without email, Internet sites, laptops, and so forth. Electrical commerce (E-commerce) especially affects the importance of location. E-commerce is a type of business; commercial activity through the Internet. If a company has a commerce site on the Internet, the company can sell or buy any products on the Internet. (Of course, the product is conveyed to the customer by shipping.) In this case, location is not a crucially important factor for the company. Even a company which has only the virtual shop exists. (A typical example is Amazon.com. It sells books and other gadgets on its sites and doesn't any physical store.) Therefore, under this circumstance, the importance is relatively going down for enterprises.

Also, I'd like to spell out the relationship between the importance of location and the type of business. For retail industries, such as the food service industry or a shopping center business, location is critically important for the success. If a restaurant owner starts its business at the site where nobody comes, the failure is inevitably showing up. On the other hand, for B2B companies (B2B stands for business to business), location is not necessarily important, because the frequency of transaction is less and it is general that sales person visits the customer to make a deal. Therefore, although the speaker doesn't mention, this aspect should be taken into consideration when talking about the importance of location.

To sum up, while agreeing with the importance of location to some extent, I don't agree with the claim that the importance won't change. In addition, the importance depends on the type of business.