Test: Evaluation of the attractiveness of the strategic area of ​​management. Strategic economic zones (SZH) Economic characteristics of a strategic economic zone

Once leadership has weighed external threats and opportunities against internal strengths and weaknesses, it can determine the strategy it will pursue. At this stage, management has already answered the question: “What business are we doing?” and is now ready to deal with the questions: "Where are we going?" and “How do we get from where we are now to where we want to be?”

The process of choosing a strategy consists of the stages of development, fine-tuning and analysis or evaluation. At the first stage, strategies are created that allow you to achieve your goals. At this stage, it is important to develop as many alternative strategies as possible. At the second stage, the strategies are finalized to the level of adequacy to the diverse goals of the enterprise development. A common strategy is being formed. At the third stage, alternatives are analyzed within the framework of the chosen overall strategy firms and are evaluated according to the degree of suitability for achieving its main goals. This is where the overall strategy is filled with specific content. The modern concept of strategic planning provides for the use of an effective methodological technique in the development of an organization's strategy - strategic segmentation and the allocation of strategic business zones.

Strategic business zones (SZH) - a separate segment of the company's environment, to which it has or wants to get access. The parameters for separating SBA from the external environment of the company are: a certain need (for example, the need for food or clothing); technology by which this need can be satisfied. Thus, the need for food can be satisfied by using the technologies of the agro-industrial and processing industries, as well as auxiliary technologies for the production of paper, glass and plastic containers. The need for warm clothing can be met by using technologies from the textile, leather and fur industries; type of client (for example, population, social organizations, state organizations); geography of need (considered from the point of view of the stage of the life cycle of demand and the level of demand satisfaction).

One and the same need can be satisfied with different production technologies and a different set of them. The art of identifying a set of technologies when singling out SBAs is to ensure that the enterprise achieves a synergistic effect from their interaction. Speaking of right choice strategy, it should be noted that an important task strategic management is to determine the proportions and rates of curtailment of one production and development of another production. An enterprise can move from one economic zone to another.

There are several models for choosing a strategic position. All of them are based on the assessment of the future state of the SBA by two simple or complex parameters (Y,X) and the determination of positions on the SBA based on the distribution of their parameters in the cells of the matrix 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4. The most common are the models for assessing the choice of a strategic position, presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Model for assessing the choice of a strategic position

Russian companies still do not have the practice of strategic segmentation of their environment and development market structure companies.

Let us consider in more detail the two-dimensional BCG matrix "Growth Rate - Market Share". In this analysis model, for each SBA, a expert review future growth rates and market share compared to that of a leading competitor.

It involves the following set of strategic decisions. (Picture 1)

Picture 1

"Stars" - protecting and strengthening the position; "dogs" - getting rid of strategic areas of management, if there are no good reasons for their preservation; "cash cows" - strict control of capital investments, transfer of excess revenue under the control of senior management; "wild cats" - conducting further study (can SZH data with known capital investments turn into "stars"?). You should be aware that in different publications strategic decisions may be called differently. So, "dogs" can be called "lame ducks", "wild cats" - "question marks".

In contrast to the BCG matrix, the two-dimensional General Electric-McKinzy matrix is ​​called "SZH Attractiveness - Competitive Position". Decisions made on the basis of the analysis of this matrix are similar to those that can be obtained from the analysis of the BCG matrix. The decision-making rules are the same as in the analysis of the BCG matrix. "Wild Cats" - conducting further study (can SZH data with a certain investment turn into "stars"?). You should be aware that in different publications strategic decisions may be called differently. So, "dogs" can be called "lame ducks", "wild cats" - "question marks". In contrast to the BCG matrix, the two-dimensional General Electric-McKinzy matrix is ​​called "SZH Attractiveness - Competitive Position". Decisions made on the basis of the analysis of this matrix are similar to those that can be obtained from the analysis of the BCG matrix. The decision-making rules are the same as in the analysis of the BCG matrix.

table 2

So, "dogs" can be called "lame ducks", "wild cats" - "question marks". In contrast to the BCG matrix, the two-dimensional General Electric-McKinzy matrix is ​​called "SZH Attractiveness - Competitive Position". Decisions made on the basis of the analysis of this matrix are similar to those that can be obtained from the analysis of the BCG matrix. The decision-making rules are the same as in the analysis of the BCG matrix. Strategy Implementation Management . Strategy management is a very complex issue. A manager responsible for strategy must be able to fulfill many leadership roles and act as an entrepreneur and strategist. Administrator and executor of the strategy, assistant, mentor, speaker. Resource allocator, adviser, politician, mentor and beloved leader.

Experience has repeatedly proven that the segmentation of the company's environment in determining the SZH. is a difficult task for managers. The reasons for the difficulties are, firstly, that it is not easy for many people to change the angle of view: they are used to seeing external environment from the standpoint of the traditional set of products manufactured by their company, and they have to look at the environment as the birthplace of new needs that can attract any competitor. Ansoff has found that it is practical to advise managers not to use the traditional names or characteristics of their firm's products when spinning off SBAs.

The second source of difficulty is that SZH is described by many variables. Before adopting this concept, a firm judged its environment by the growth rates of the industries in which it operates. SZH should be described using the following parameters.

1. Prospects for growth, which should be expressed not only by growth rates, but also by the characteristics of the life cycle of demand.

2. Profitability prospects that do not match profit prospects (the huge growth of the market for 64 kb memory chips has provided an example of prosperity without profit).

3. Expected level of instability, at which the prospects lose certainty and may change.

4. The main factors of successful competition in the future, which determine the success in the SZH.

In order to make sufficiently rational decisions about the allocation of resources to ensure competitiveness and maintain a development strategy, managers must go through a large number of combinations of factors (1-4) that differ significantly from each other in the process of market segmentation. At the same time, it is necessary to select a fairly narrow circle of SZH, otherwise decisions on them will lose their completeness and feasibility. In practice, in large firms, you can find from 30 to 50 SZH. Of course, the same number may be in small firms if their diversification is wide.

Figure 2 - The procedure for the allocation of strategic economic zones

The order of SZH allocation is shown in fig. 2. As you can see from the left side of the figure, this process begins with identifying the needs to be met, then moving on to the question of technology and to an analysis of the types of customers. Various categories of customers (end users, industrialists, freelancers, government agencies) are usually considered as different SBAs. The next classification is according to the geography of needs. On the right side of the figure is a list of factors that can be quite different within two countries. Within the same country, regional differences are possible, which should be taken into account through further market segmentation. At the same time, if it turns out that the parameters and prospects are almost the same in two or more countries, they can be considered as a single SBA.

Systematic strategic planning was born in an environment of abundant resources. The planners were concerned only with choosing the most attractive markets, technologies, geographic areas and product sets for the firm. To implement the strategy, they determined the need for money, people and material resources, relying on the heads of financial, personnel and supply services to meet these needs without difficulty.

The events of recent years make it doubtful that such conditions will continue in the future. First, the studies of the Club of Rome gave the world a common understanding of how limited natural resources are. Then the oil crisis demonstrated how the rapid rise in resource prices can undermine and completely negate the product - market strategy of any firm. Finally, global stagflation led to a shortage of cash and slowed down the growth of many firms. In the future, deficits and limited access to resources, both due to physical scarcity and political reasons, are to be expected.

The new problem is to expand the firm's strategic perspective so that resources can be taken into account along with market perspectives. Everyone puts resource limits. Tighter limits on what a firm can achieve in product markets. In many firms experiencing these constraints, planning is actually carried out on an input-to-output basis: first, it is established what resources the firm can have, and then, based on these data, the firm determines its product-market strategy.

From the point of view of the planning procedure, this two-way connection between resource and product-market strategies somewhat complicates the work, but it does not pose insurmountable barriers. Perhaps the most difficult thing is for managers to accept the new procedure. In the industrial era, the horizons of growth were expanded indefinitely, and benchmarks were set only to the extent of the aggressiveness of managers, their propensity for business adventures. In the world of post-industrial economy, with limited resources, managers have to measure what they would like to do with what they can. It is not necessarily a matter of passive acceptance of resource constraints. There is just as much room for creativity in developing entrepreneurial resource strategies as there is in developing product, market, and technology strategies. When a firm faces challenges in securing strategic resources, identifying strategic resource areas in the firm's resource needs is an important step in formulating the firm's resource strategy.

In addition to limited resource provision, the firm is increasingly influenced by the legislative framework, social pressure, interference in decision-making and actions from outside various groups both inside and outside the firm, not involved in the management process.

Even 20 years ago, this was thought to be a secondary issue, outside the main interests of corporate managers. Her decision seemed simple. The pressure on business was explained by the fact that the government and the general public "do not understand" what benefits the company brings to society and how important the non-intervention of society is for it to bring these benefits. The solution was to educate, to educate the general public about the spirit of free enterprise, and to state support business. These positions consisted of unchanging and firm resistance to any form of restriction of managerial freedom. But over the past 20 years, the number of restrictions in one form or another has increased. The ordinary consumer has ceased to exist as a modest and obscure buyer - he has changed, he has become a demanding, captious critic; governments, especially European ones, began to make directive decisions; the general public became increasingly disillusioned with the firm.

Thus, relations with society cease to be a secondary problem and become one of the key ones. In addition to market and resource strategies, firms will increasingly have to develop strategies for relations with society. The first step in formulating such strategies is to sort out the heterogeneous socio-political influences and sort them into separate, well-defined groups of strategic influence.

In the early stages, strategy development began with determining “what industry the company operates in,” and defining “the industry in which we operate” and finding out the strengths and weaknesses of the company was tantamount to delineating the boundaries of attention to traditional areas of business.

When strategic planning began to enter into practice in the 60s, its main object was the diversification of the company's activities. By the beginning of the 1960s, most medium-sized firms and all large ones, without exception, had turned into complexes that combined the production of heterogeneous products and entered numerous commodity markets with it. As technology instability, changes in competitive conditions, slowing growth rates, the emergence of socio-political restrictions, etc. the number of strategic tasks increased, it became more and more obvious that by simply adding new types of activity it was impossible to solve all the problems that had arisen. And if in the first half of the century most of these markets grew rapidly and retained their attractiveness, then by the beginning of the 60s, the prospects for their evolution turned out to be very different - from boom to decline. This discrepancy arose due to differences in the degree of saturation of demand, local economic, political and social conditions, competition, and the pace of technology upgrades.

Therefore, in the 1970s, the attention of strategists shifted from diversification to manipulation of a whole set of industries, activities, in which the firm specializes. This was hastened by the fact that the various activities that the firm had gradually mastered began to diverge more and more among themselves in terms of future growth prospects, profitability, and the firm's strategic vulnerability.

It became increasingly clear that moving into new industries would in no way help the firm solve all its strategic problems or seize all the opportunities, since new challenges arose precisely in the area of ​​its traditional activity. Therefore, when analyzing strategies, the focus was increasingly on the perspectives of the set of industries in which the firm was already involved. Consequently, the first step in the analysis was no longer “defining the industry in which the firm operates”, but developing ideas about the totality of the many activities in which it is engaged.

This required managers to radically change the angle of view: from seeing perspectives "from the inside" to "looking outside", to study the company's environment from the point of view of individual trends, dangers, opportunities that arise from the state of this environment.

The unit of such an analysis is a strategic business area (SZH) is a separate segment of the environment to which the company has (or wants to get) access.

The first step in strategy analysis is to identify the appropriate areas, to explore them outside of the firm's structure or its current products. The result of such an analysis is an assessment of the perspective that opens up in this area to anyone. A sufficiently experienced competitor in terms of growth, profit margins, stability and technology at the next stage needs this information in order to decide exactly how the firm is going to compete with other firms in the relevant field.

In the business world, the American firm General Electric pioneered the idea of strategic business center (SHC) - an intra-company organizational unit responsible for developing the company's strategic positions in one or more business areas.

The relationship between the concepts of a strategic economic zone and a strategic economic center is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Relationship between SZH and SHC

The upper part of the figure shows that SBA is characterized by both a certain type of demand (needs) and a certain technology. For example, until 1950, the need to amplify weak electrical signals was met through vacuum tube technology. Invented in 1948, the transistor became the backbone of competition in semiconductor technology.

The need to amplify weak signals, together with semiconductor technology, is one SZH whose prospects began to fade after 1950. The same need plus transistor technology is another area, extremely promising at the time.

As this example shows, as soon as one technology is replaced by another, the problem of their correlation becomes a matter of the most important strategic choice for the firm: to keep (and for how long) the traditional technology or to switch to a new one, due to which a certain part of the firm's output becomes obsolete. There are many examples of how firms that do not benefit from the development of SBAs retain their old products even after they have become obsolete.

As the lower part of the figure shows, after selecting the SZH, the firm must develop an appropriate product range. Responsibility for the choice of the field of activity, the development of competitive products and marketing strategies lies with SCC. Once the product range has been developed, the responsibility for realizing profits falls to the day-to-day business units.

The concept of SBA and SHC is an essential tool that provides a firm with a clear picture of what its environment might look like in the future, which is essential for making effective strategic decisions.

SZH should be described using the following parameters:

1. Growth prospects, which should be expressed not only by growth rates, but also by a characteristic of the life cycle of demand.

2. Prospects for profitability, which do not match the prospects for profit (the huge growth of the market for chips with a memory capacity of 64 kilobits provided an example of prosperity without profit).

3. Expected level of instability, in which perspectives lose certainty and may change.

4. The main factors of successful competition in the future that determine success in SZH.

In order to make sufficiently rational decisions about the allocation of resources to ensure competitiveness and maintain a development strategy, managers must go through a large number of combinations of factors (1 - 4) that differ significantly from each other in the process of market segmentation. At the same time, it is necessary to select a fairly narrow circle of SZH, otherwise decisions on them will lose their completeness and feasibility.

In practice, in large firms, you can find from 30 to 50 SZH. Of course, the same number can be in small firms if their diversification is wide.

SZH allocation procedure:

Determining the needs to be met

Moving on to technology

Analysis of types of clients. Different categories of clients (final consumers, industrialists, freelancers, government agencies) are usually considered as different SBAs.

Analysis of the geography of needs. Within the same country, regional differences are possible, which should be taken into account through further market segmentation. At the same time, if it turns out that the parameters and prospects are almost the same in two or more countries, they can be considered as a single SBA.

Previous

In the early stages, strategy development began with a definition of "in which industry the company operates." What was meant was the generally accepted idea of ​​boundaries that isolated the firm and marked the external limits to growth and diversification that it could claim. For example, T. Levitt, who in the 60s blamed the railway and oil companies for not being able to determine the content of their entrepreneurial activity, suggested that they declare their industry affiliation - the first to transport, the second to energy.

In the eyes of early strategists, identifying “the industry in which we operate” and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the firm was tantamount to delineating the focus on traditional business areas.

By the beginning of the 1960s, most medium-sized firms and all large ones, without exception, had turned into complexes that combined the production of heterogeneous products and entered numerous commodity markets with it. And if in the first half of the century most of these markets grew rapidly and retained their attractiveness, then by the beginning of the 60s, the prospects for their evolution turned out to be very different - from boom to decline. This discrepancy arose due to differences in the degree of saturation of demand, local economic, political and social conditions, competition, and the pace of technology upgrades.

It became increasingly clear that moving into new industries would in no way help the firm solve all its strategic problems or seize all the opportunities, since new challenges arose precisely in the area of ​​its traditional activity. Therefore, when analyzing strategies, the focus was increasingly on the perspectives of the set of industries in which the firm was already involved. Consequently, the first step in the analysis was no longer “defining the industry in which the firm operates”, but developing ideas about the totality of the many activities in which it is engaged.

This required managers to radically change their perspective. By the middle of the century, I had to learn to see the prospects of the company as if "from the inside", perceiving its future through the eyes of various organizational units and from the point of view of traditional product groups produced by the company. Prospects were usually determined by extrapolating the performance of the firm's divisions. However, by the early 1970s, each division usually served a whole group of markets with very different perspectives, and at the same time, several divisions could work in the same demand area. Extrapolation of previous results of activity lost its reliability and, most importantly, did not allow assessing possible changes in environmental conditions in all their diversity. Therefore, I had to learn to "look outside", to study the company's environment from the point of view of individual trends, dangers, opportunities that arise from the state of this environment.

The unit of such an analysis is the strategic business area (SZH) - a separate segment of the environment to which the company has (or wants to get) access. The first step in strategy analysis is to identify the relevant areas, exploring them outside of the firm's structure or its current products. The result of such an analysis is an assessment of the perspective that opens up in this area to anyone. A sufficiently experienced competitor in terms of growth, profit margins, stability and technology at the next stage needs this information in order to decide exactly how the firm is going to compete with other firms in the relevant field.

The evaluation of the perspective from the point of view of the external environment was first undertaken in the US Department of Defense by R. McNamara and J. Hitch, who developed the principle of separate combat missions - the military equivalent of the concept of strategic economic zones.

In the entrepreneurial world, the American firm General Electric has become the instigator, proposing in addition to this concept the idea of ​​​​a strategic business center (SHC) - an intra-company organizational unit responsible for developing a firm's strategic position in one or more business areas.

The relationship between the concepts of a strategic economic zone and a strategic economic center is shown in rice. 2.2.1. The upper part of the figure shows that SBA is characterized by both a certain type of demand (needs) and a certain technology. For example, until 1950, the need to amplify weak electrical signals was met through vacuum tube technology. Invented in 1948, the transistor became the backbone of competition in semiconductor technology.

The need to amplify weak signals, together with semiconductor technology, is one SZH whose prospects began to fade after 1950. The same need plus transistor technology is another area, extremely promising at the time.

As this example shows, as soon as one technology is replaced by another, the problem of their correlation becomes a matter of the most important strategic choice for the firm: to keep (and for how long) the traditional technology or to switch to a new one, due to which a certain part of the firm's output becomes obsolete. There are many examples of how firms that do not benefit from the development of SBAs retain their old products even after they have become obsolete.

As the bottom shows rice. 2.2.1, after selecting the SZH, the firm must develop an appropriate product range. Responsibility for the choice of the field of activity, the development of competitive products and marketing strategies lies with SCC. Once the product range has been developed, the responsibility for realizing profits falls to the day-to-day business units.

When a firm first addresses this concept, it must decide for itself the important question of the nature of the relationship between the strategic and commercial divisions. For example, McNamara, starting to develop this concept, found that the main types of tactical forces - the army, navy, air force and marines - interfere and often contradict each other in solving separate combat missions of strategic deterrence, air defense of the United States, limited military operations, etc. McNamara's solution was to create new units that deal with the strategic planning of the respective separate tasks. The strategic decisions developed by them are transferred "across the road" - to the relevant departments for implementation. Thus, according to McNamara's idea, the strategic divisions were responsible only for the development of the planned strategy, and the departments for its implementation. This separation has caused discord and loss of coordination, in part because some departments have often assumed the responsibilities of strategic divisions. Thus, for example, both the navy and military aviation were simultaneously responsible for the development of certain functions of strategic deterrence.

To avoid this dual strategic responsibility, General Electric found another solution. She did the hard work - she distributed her departments of current commercial activities (groups of plants, design bureaus, sales offices, etc. - Approx. scientific ed.) between SCC so that the latter were responsible not only for planning and implementing the strategy, but also for the final result - making a profit.

This approach eliminated the transfer of strategy "across the road" and made SCC responsible for both profits and losses. However, as GE and others have found, the current organizational structure does not fully match the newly created SCCs, making it impossible to clearly and unambiguously divide responsibilities.

The third solution is to reorganize the firm on the basis of the SHZ so that each of them corresponds to one division of the current commercial activity. This option, at first glance so simple, has its own difficulties, since the main criterion for the formation of SCC within the organization - the effectiveness of development in this strategic direction - is only one of the defining parameters of the organizational structure as a whole. There are others: efficient use of technology and a high level of profitability. SCC-based reorganization, while maximizing the effectiveness of strategic behavior, may at the same time reduce the profitability of the firm or simply be an impossible task due to some technology-related reasons (in Chapter 4.3 we will consider the problem of reconciling strategic developments with current activities within the organizational structure).

It can be seen from the foregoing that the problem of distribution of responsibility between the company's SCC is by no means simple and its solution may be different each time. However, it is already fairly well known from experience that the concept of SBA and SHZ is a necessary tool to provide a firm with a clear idea of ​​what its environment may become in the future, which is extremely important for making effective strategic decisions.

Strategic business zone(SZH) is a separate segment of the environment to which the enterprise has (or wants to get) access.

The first step in strategy analysis is to identify the relevant areas, their study outside of links with the structure of the enterprise or its current products. The result of such an analysis is an assessment of the perspective that opens up in this area for any enterprise in terms of growth, profit margins, stability and technology. At the next stage, this information is needed in order to decide how exactly the company is going to compete with other firms in the relevant field.

SZH should be described using the following parameters:

- Growth prospects, which should be expressed not only by growth rates, but also by a characteristic of the life cycle of demand.

- Prospects for profitability, which do not match the prospects for profit (for example, the huge growth of the market for chips with a memory capacity of 64 kilobits provided an example of prosperity without profit).

- Expected level of instability, in which perspectives lose certainty and may change.

- The main factors of successful competition in the future that determine success in SZH.

In order to make sufficiently rational decisions about the allocation of resources to ensure competitiveness and maintain a development strategy, managers must go through a large number of combinations of factors (SZH parameters) that differ significantly from each other in the process of market segmentation. At the same time, it is necessary to select a fairly narrow circle of SZH, otherwise decisions on them will lose their completeness and feasibility. In practice, 30 to 50 SBAs can be found in large firms (the same number may be found in small firms with wide diversification).

The order of SZH allocation is shown in fig. 1.

As you can see from the left side of the figure, the process of identifying SBAs starts with identifying the needs to be met, then moving on to the question of technology. and to the analysis of types of clients. Different categories of clients (final consumers, industrialists, freelancers, government agencies) are usually considered as different SBAs. The next classification is according to the geography of needs.

On the right side of the figure is a list of factors that can be quite different within two countries. Within the same country, regional differences are possible, which should be taken into account through further market segmentation. At the same time, if it turns out that the parameters and prospects are almost the same in two or more countries, they can be considered as a single SBA.

Options		prospects		Determining Factors
Need				Phases of demand development Market sizes Purchasing power Trade barriers
Technologies		Profitability		Buyers Habit Composition of competitors Intensity of competition Sales channels State regulation
Type of clients
Geographic area		instability		Economic Technological Social Political Ecological
		Success factors and competition

Rice. 1. The procedure for the allocation of SZH

If the attractiveness test shows that the company's set of SBAs as a whole is not promising enough, or if the short-term prospects are very different from the long-term ones, the analysis of strategic positions should be supplemented by a thoughtful relationship between the sets of SBAs in the short and long term. The problem is no longer to achieve a change in the competitive status of the enterprise for the sake of optimizing the short-term results of its activities, but to ensure a balance between short-term and long-term profitability.

H I eat dangerous violation of this balance, shown in Fig. 2.

Rice. 2. Comparison of two sets of SZH

From fig. 2 shows that the enterprise A the phases of the life cycles of SBAs coincide, and although the short-term prospects for growth and profitability look much better than those of the enterprise IN, in the long run it will collapse. Company IN carries out balancing of the life cycles of the SZH in phases, therefore it will be more viable.

A convenient tool for balancing near and far perspectives can be life cycle balance matrix(Fig. 3).

Volume of sales
Cap. attachments
Competitive	very tall						Short term
	unprofitable
Life cycle phases		birth			maturity	damping
Competitive	very tall						Long-term perspective
	unprofitable
Volume of sales
Cap. attachments

E - extrapolation; KC - check digit

Rice. 3. Life cycle balance matrix

Each SZH fits into a cell that designates, respectively, the phase of its life cycle in the near and distant future and the expected competitive status of the enterprise. Each SBA is marked with a circle, the diameter of which corresponds to the size of the market, and the shaded part shows the company's share in this market.

At the moment, the company has only two SZH. For example, a company produces household washing machines and sells them to Ukraine (SZH 1) and has a strong position in Russia (SZH 2). In the expected long term, the sale of washing machines in Ukraine will decrease, and the company's weak competitive status will lead to its losses. Therefore, SZH 1 is marked with a dotted line in the long term, as the enterprise will make a radical decision to leave it. The Russian market will expand and enter the second phase of growth. If the company adheres to the current marketing strategy, it will retain its market share, and with higher sales, its short-term competitive status.

The analysis shows that if the enterprise does not expand the set of SBAs, then in the future it will lose income, so the company's management decides to supplement the set with other SBAs at the inception phase and the first phase of growth. The overall size of the market in these areas should be small, while the company can claim a significant market share. So far, nothing has been said about the specific characteristics of these SBAs: neither about the types of products to be developed, nor about the markets and technologies to be mastered. But SZH-3 and SZH-4 are defined specifically enough for the management of the enterprise to start exploring the opportunities that open up.