In current business publications, find examples of firms whose strategies to increase profits focus primarily on generating more revenue. Compare these cases with firms that are trying to cut costs to increase profits. In your initial post, include a summary of these firms and how the different strategies have been successful or unsuccessful. Having a nice size profit margin is the goal for most companies. In order to make this happen there has to be a plan/strategy that is carefully thought out and implemented. You want to take your time and make sure things are done correctly and in a way that it is profitable and not detrimental to your company at the same time. One good example of this act comes from McDonalds. One McDonalds franchise in New York increased the price of their Big Mac from $5.98 to $6.28 currently to increase revenue. Prior to this there was an anual increase that took place. "The Golden Arches' pricing in the U. S. Rose 2% year over year in the first quarter, which was still less than the consumer Price Index's overall".
On the other end of the spectrum we have companies like Apple. Apple fired 1,600 full time employees from retail stores to increase their profit margin. "The retail segment reported operating income of $308 million during the second quarter of 2009 down from #334 million". In cutting down on those full time positions they were able to increase their profits by paying less full time salaries to employees. "Revenue increase 8.7% to 8.16 Billion, which is more than 7.96 billion expected...". I do not feel that this is the best way to go about getting results. A merger of the two would be effective. Gradually increasing sales prices and not eliminating so many positions at once or merging positions even would be effective. You have to take into account that less employees mean more work for the workers that are left, which could leave them in a stressful work environment. In turn could mean customer service quality decreases drastically. Things have to be looked at on both sides of the spectrum.