Discussion Board 1-2 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Discussion Board 1-2 - Research Paper Example h a 2005 estimate showing more than 32 million Americans suffer addiction disorders (excluding tobacco addiction), more studies have become necessary (James & Gilliland, 2005). Over the years, public policies, especially those regarding alcoholic beverages established that the problem with alcohol use lies in the abuser and not the beverage. Although this stand shaped policies that either legalized or illegalized certain beverages, it also called for specialized ways to explain the etiology of addiction. However, none addressed the entire field of addiction comprehensively, neither were they dismissed as being incorrect. Therefore, experts in the field had to come up with more than one etiology, which served the mutual role of complementing each other. To that end, they came up with etiologies that attempted to explain addiction from various perspectives including moral, socio-cultural, psychological, disease and family. The most significant reason for having more than one etiology is for a wider and better understanding of addiction in an attempt to make plans in diagnosis and treatment as effective as possible. The scope of addiction itself is too wide f or a single etiology, with each aspect calling for its own kind of

Work and Environment Essay Example for Free

Work and Environment Essay Work may refer to: Human labor: †¢ Employment †¢ House work †¢ Labor (economics), measure of the work done by human beings †¢ Manual labor, physical work done by people †¢ Wage labor, in which a worker sells their labor and an employer buys it †¢ Work (project management), the effort applied to produce a deliverable or accomplish a task Environment may refer to: Environment (biophysical), the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism †¢ Environment (systems), the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties †¢ Environments (series), a series of LPs, cassettes and CDs depicting natural sounds †¢ Built environment, constructed surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places †¢ Knowledge environment Social environment, the culture that an individual lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact Work environment means the milieus around a person. It is your social and professional environment in which you are supposed to interact with a number of people. All of them are to be there with you. They are working there. They are supposed to co-ordinate with you in one way or he other. They may be working under you or you may be working under them. It depends upon your position at status at a work place. It is not important that an office would always be called your work place. It can be your home environment where you use to work for all the time where you are supposed to interact with your family members by and by. This environment is all about the people at your home and those who have any concern at your home. Work environment does not only counts the living world tings but also the materialistic world stuff. It may count the room or home where you are working. It may counts the things that you are using in one way or the other. It is all about things and livings that are around you where you are working. Hope it is clear now. A work environment can be identified as the place that one works. i. e. -in an office building in a cube, at home at the kitchen table, from a car or truck, at a construction site. All are work environments. We tend, however, to hear about healthy work environments. This can point to other factors in the work environment, such as co-workers, air quality, ergonomic seating, management (the boss! ), child care, parking, noise, and even the size of ones cube. A work environment doesnt require a job. It requires that work has to be done in some place. Say you need to do homework. Where do you do it? At school in study hall? At your kitchen table? On the floor at a friends house? These can also be considered work environments. A hostile work environment exists when an employee experiences workplace harassment and fears going to work because of the offensive, intimidating, or oppressive atmosphere generated by the harasser. A hostile work environment may also be created when management acts in a manner designed to make an employee quit in retaliation for some action. For example, if an employee reported safety violations at work, was injured, attempted to join a union, or in some way caused trouble for the management, then their response might be to harass and pressure the employee to quit. Actions that could be taken in furtherance of this might include inappropriate disciplinary procedures, reduced hours or wages, unreasonable scheduling or workload or similar things. The company’s behavior in lieu of termination avoids the need to pay unemployment benefits. The anti-discrimination statutes governing hostile work environment are not a general civility code. Thus, federal law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not extremely serious. Rather, the conduct must be so objectively offensive as to alter the conditions of the individual’s employment. The conditions of employment are altered only if the harassment culminates in a tangible employment action or are sufficiently severe or pervasive. An effective work environment is vital to the success of small businesses and large corporations alike. When problems remain unsolved and rules never get implemented, the result can be an unproductive staff and a stale work environment. People working together with a common denominator will accomplish tasks with greater ease and have higher expectations of themselves and their work. (success and passion)A positive work environment is critical no matter how many employees you have. It is management that fosters the work atmosphere so they are responsible for conducting things in a way that helps raise peoples spirits. There are four basic beliefs: †¢ Hope †¢ Trust †¢ Pleasure †¢ Opportunity

Mummification Essay -- Ancient Egypt

It started thousands of years ago when the first Egyptian was mummified by the natural sand found in the Sahara desert. Mummification is a method of preservation of a dead body. By performing this procedure, it assists the deceased to reach the Afterworld. There are three main methods of mummification, each depending of the wealth of the deceased. In this essay you will discover how pharaohs and high officials were mummified. Once the person has died, he or she is taken to the ibu, also known as the tent of purification. Usually, mummification is performed during nighttime due to the odoured caused by the dead body. When the embalmer is ready to begin the procedure, he first washes the body with water from the Nile. After, he uses an iron hook like device to remove the brain. The embalmer does this by inserting it to the nostril breaking up the cartilage until the hook can reach the brain. Once this procedure is achieved, he removes the brain by crushing it until it becomes watery enough to be drained by laying the person flat on its stomach. The remains of the brain are than ke...

A summary of Amazon’s business Essay

I’ve used Amazon in my books for over 10 years now since many companies, from startups and small businesses to large international businesses, can learn from their focus on the customer and the approach of using technology and analysis to improve results. It consistently outperforms other companies in its ACSI customer satisfaction rating too. I aim to keep the case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it we look at Amazon’s background, revenue model and sources for the latest business results. I recommend anyone studying Amazon checks the latest Amazon revenue and business strategies from their SEC filings / Investor relations. The annual filings to give a great summary of eBay business and revenue models. A good summary of the latest business model initiatives is available in this Amazon annual report summary for 2011. For Q4, 2010: North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $7.21 billion, up 45% from fourth quarter 2009. International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and new Italian sites, were $5.74 billion, up 26% from fourth quarter 2009. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 29%. Amazon has come a long way since it launched in 1995: From: and it’s offices†¦ to it’s current Seattle headquarters: Amazon performs exceptionally efficiently measured against revenue per visitor, which is one of the key measures for any commercial website, whether it’s a media site, search engine, social network or a transactional retailer or offers travel or financial services. Of course profit per user would be quite different due to the significantly lower costs of other .coms like Facebook and Google. Note: SEC is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which is a government agency for which companies have to submit an open evaluation of their business models and marketplace conditions. Further Amazon case information This case study created by FaberNovel â€Å"Amazon.com: The Hidden Empire† one of five â€Å"Most Favorited† slideshows and one of the five â€Å"Most Popular Technology Presentations† of 2011. Recommended: Amazon Case Study Context Why a case study on Amazon? Surely everyone knows about who Amazon are and what they do? Yes, well that’s maybe true, but this case goes beyond the surface toreview some of the ‘insider secrets’ of Amazon’s success. Like eBay, Amazon.com was born in 1995. The name reflected the vision of Jeff Bezos, to produce a large scale phenomenon like the Amazon river. This ambition has proved justified since just 8 years later, Amazon passed the $5 billion sales mark – it took Wal-Mart 20 years to achieve this. By 2008 Amazon was a global brand with other 76 million active customers accounts and order fulfillment to more than 200 countries. Despite this volume of sales, at December 31, 2007 Amazon employed approximately 17,000 full-time and part-time employees. In September 2007, it launched Amazon MP3, a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.1 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Amazon Vision & strategy In their 2008 SEC filing, Amazon describe the vision of their business as to: â€Å"Relentlessly focus on customer experience by offering our customers low prices, convenience, and a wide selection of merchandise.† The vision is still to offer â€Å"Earth’s biggest selection and to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. Consider how these core marketing messages summarising the Amazon online value proposition are communicated both on-site and through offline communications. Of course, achieving customer loyalty and repeat purchases has been key to Amazon’s success. Many dot-coms failed because they succeeded in achieving awareness, but not loyalty. Amazon achieved both. In their SEC filing they stress how they seek to achieve this. They say: â€Å"We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, timely customer service, feature rich content, and a trusted transaction environment. Key features of our websites include editorial and customer reviews;  manufacturer product information; Web pages tailored to individual preferences, such as recommendations and notifications; 1-Click ® technology; secure payment systems; image uploads; searching on our websites as well as the Internet; browsing; and the ability to view selected interior pages and citations, and search the entire contents of many of the books we offer with our â€Å"Look Inside the Book† and â€Å"Search Inside the Book† features. Our community of online customers also creates feature-rich content, including product reviews, online recommendation lists, wish lists, buying guides, and wedding and baby registries.† In practice, as is the practice for many online retailers, the lowest prices are for the most popular products, with less popular products commanding higher prices and a greater margin for Amazon. Free shipping offers are used to encourage increase in basket size since customers have to spend over a certain amount to receive free shipping. The level at which free-shipping is set is critical to profitability and Amazon has changed it as competition has changed and for promotional reasons. Amazon communicate the fulfillment promise in several ways including presentation of latest inventory availability information, delivery date estimates, and options for expedited delivery, as well as delivery shipment notifications and update facilities. This focus on customer has translated to excellence in service with the 2004 American Customer Satisfaction Index giving Amazon.com a score of 88 which was at the time, the highest customer satisfaction score ever recorded in any service industry, online or offline. Round (2004) notes that Amazon focuses on customer satisfaction metrics. Each site is closely monitored with standard service availability monitoring (for example, using Keynote or Mercury Interactive) site availability and download speed. Interestingly it also monitors per minute site revenue upper/lower bounds – Round describes an alarm system rather like a power plant where if revenue on a site falls below $10,000 per minute, alarms go off! There are also internal performance service-level-agreements for web services where T% of the time, different pages must return in X seconds. 2011 update on vision and importance of technology According to founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, technology is very important to supporting this focus on the customer. In their 2010 Annual Report (Amazon,  2011) he said: â€Å"Look inside a current textbook on software architecture, and you’ll find few patterns that we don’t apply at Amazon. We use high-performance transactions systems, complex rendering and object caching, workflow and queuing systems, business intelligence and data analytics, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural networks and probabilistic decision making, and a wide variety of other techniques.And while many of our systems are based on the latest in computer science research, this often hasn’t been sufficient: our architects and engineers have had to advance research in directions that no academic had yet taken. Many of the problems we face have no textbook solutions, and so we — happily — invent new approaches†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ All the effort we put into technology might not matter that much if we kept technology off to the side in some sort of R&D department, but we don’t take that approach. Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do†. The quote shows how applying new technologies is used to give Amazon a competitive edge. A good recent example of this is providing the infrastructure to deliver the Kindle â€Å"Whispersync† update to ebook readers. Amazon reported in 2011 that Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. For every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company sold 115 Kindle books. Kindle apps are now available on Apple iOS, Android devices and on PCs as part of a â€Å"Buy Once, Read Anywhere† proposition which Amazon has developed. Amazon Customers Amazon defines what it refers to as three consumer sets customers, seller customers and developer customers. There are over 76 million customer accounts, but just 1.3 million active seller customers in it’s marketplaces and Amazon is seeking to increase this. Amazon is unusual for a retailer in that it identifies â€Å"developer customers† who use its Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure such as hosting that developers can use to develop their own web services. Members are also encouraged to join a loyalty programme, Amazon Prime, a fee-based membership program in which members receive free or discounted express shipping, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Competition In its SEC (2005) filing Amazon describes the environment for our products and services as ‘intensely competitive’. It views its main current and potential competitors as: 1) physical-world retailers, catalog retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors and manufacturers of our products, many of which possess significant brand awareness, sales volume, and customer bases, and some of which currently sell, or may sell, products or services through the Internet, mail order, or direct marketing; (2) Other online E-commerce sites; (3) A number of indirect competitors, including media companies, Web portals, comparison shopping websites, and Web search engines, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers; and (4) Companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development; third-party fulfillment and customer-service. It believes the main competitive factors in its market segments include â€Å"selection, price, availability, convenience, information, discovery, brand recognition, personalized services, accessibility, customer service, reliability, speed of fulfillment, ease of use, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, as well as our customers’ overall experience and trust in transactions with us and facilitated by us on behalf of third-party sellers†. For services offered to business and individual sellers, additional competitive factors include the quality of our services and tools, their ability to generate sales for third parties we serve, and the speed of pe rformance for our services. From Auctions to marketplaces Amazon auctions (known as zShops) were launched in March 1999, in large part as a response to the success of eBay. They were promoted heavily from the home page, category pages and individual product pages. Despite this, a year after its launch it had only achieved a 3.2% share of the online auction compared to 58% for eBay and it only declined from this point. Today, competitive prices of products are available through third-party sellers in the ‘Amazon Marketplace’ which are integrated within the standard product listings. The strategy to offer such an auction facility was initially driven by the need to compete with eBay, but now the strategy has been adjusted such that Amazon describe it as part of the approach of low-pricing. Although it might be thought that Amazon would lose out on  enabling its merchants to sell products at lower prices, in fact Amazon makes greater margin on these sales since merchants are charged a commission on each sale and it is the merchant who bears the cost of storing inventory and fulfilling the product to customers. As with eBay, Amazon is just facilitating the exchange of bits and bytes between buyers and sellers without the need to distribute physical products. Amazon Media sales You may have noticed that unlike some retailers, Amazon displays relevant Google text ads and banner ads from brands. This seems in conflict with the strategy of focus on experience since it leads to a more cluttered store. However in 2011 Amazon revealed that worldwide media sales accounted for approximately 17% of revenue! Amazon marketing Amazon does not reveal much about its marketing approach in its annual reports, but there seems to be a focus on online marketing channels. Amazon (2011) states â€Å"we direct customers to our websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as our Associates program, sponsored search, portal advertising, email marketing campaigns, and other initiatives†. These other initiatives may include outdoor and TV advertising, but they are not mentioned specifically. In this statement they also highlight the importance of customer loyalty tools. They say: â€Å"while costs associated with free shipping are not included in marketing expense, we view free shipping offers and Amazon Prime as effective worldwide marketing tools, and intend to continue offering them indefinitely†. How ‘The Culture of Metrics’ started A common theme in Amazon’s development is the drive to use a measured approach to all aspects of the business, beyond the finance. Marcus (2004) describes an occasion at a corporate ‘boot-camp’ in January 1997 when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ‘saw the light’. ‘At Amazon, we will have a Culture of Metrics’, he said while addressing his senior staff. He went on to explain how web-based business gave Amazon an ‘amazing window into human behaviour’. Marcus says: ‘Gone were the fuzzy approximations of focus groups, the anecdotal fudging and smoke blowing from the marketing department. A company  like Amazon could (and did) record every move a visitor made, every last click and twitch of the mouse. As the data piled up into virtual heaps, hummocks and mountain ranges, you could draw all sorts of conclusions about their chimerical nature, the consumer. In this sense, Amazon was not merely a store, but an immense repository of fact s. All we needed were the right equations to plug into them’. James Marcus then goes on to give a fascinating insight into a breakout group discussion of how Amazon could better use measures to improve its performance. Marcus was in the Bezos group, brainstorming customer-centric metrics. Marcus (2004) summarises the dialogue, led by Bezos: â€Å"First, we figure out which things we’d like to measure on the site†, he said. â€Å"For example, let’s say we want a metric for customer enjoyment. How could we calculate that?† â€Å"There was silence. Then somebody ventured: â€Å"How much time each customer spends on the site?† â€Å"Not specific enough†, Jeff said. â€Å"How about the average number of minutes each customer spends on the site per session† someone else suggested. â€Å"If that goes up, they’re having a blast†. â€Å"But how do we factor in purchase?† I [Marcus] said feeling proud of myself. â€Å"Is that a measure of enjoyment†? â€Å"I think we need to consider frequency of visits, too†, said a dark-haired woman I didn’t recognise. â€Å"Lot of folks are still accessing the web with those creepy-crawly modems. Four short visits from them might be just as good as one visit from a guy with a T-1. Maybe better’. â€Å"Good point†, Jeff said. â€Å"And anyway, enjoyment is just the start. In the end, we should be measuring customer ecstasy† It is interesting that Amazon was having this debate in about the elements of RFM analysis (described in Chapter 6 of Internet Marketing), 1997, after already having achieved $16 million of revenue in the previous year. Of course, this is a miniscule amount compared with today’s billions of dollar turnover. The important point was that this was the start of a focus on metrics which can be seen through the description of Matt Pounds work later in this case study. From human to software-based recommendations Amazon has developed internal tools to support this ‘Culture of Metrics’.  Marcus (2004) describes how the ‘Creator Metrics’ tool shows content creators how well their product listings and product copy are working. For each content editor such as Marcus, it retrieves all recently posted documents including articles, interviews, booklists and features. For each one it then gives a conversion rate to sale plus the number of page views, adds (added to basket) and repels (content requested, but the back button then used). In time, the work of editorial reviewers such as Marcus was marginalised since Amazon found that the majority of visitors used the search tools rather than read editorial and they responded to the personalised recommendations as the matching technology improved (Marcus likens early recommendations techniques to ‘going shopping with the village idiot’). Experimentation and testing at Amazon The ‘Culture of Metrics’ also led to a test-driven approach to improving results at Amazon. Matt Round, speaking at E-metrics 2004 when he was director of personalisation at Amazon describes the philosophy as ‘Data Trumps Intuitions’. He explained how Amazon used to have a lot of arguments about which content and promotion should go on the all important home page or category pages. He described how every category VP wanted top-center and how the Friday meetings about placements for next week were getting ‘too long, too loud, and lacked performance data’. But today ‘automation replaces intuitions’ and real-time experimentation tests are always run to answer these questions since actual consumer behaviour is the best way to decide upon tactics. Marcus (2004) also notes that Amazon has a culture of experiments of which A/B tests are key components. Examples where A/B tests are used include new home page design, moving features around the page, different algorithms for recommendations, changing search relevance rankings. These involve testing a new treatment against a previous control for a limited time of a few days or a week. The system will randomly show one or more treatments to visitors and measure a range of parameters such as units sold and revenue by category (and total), session time, session length, etc. The new features will usually be launched if the desired metrics are statistically significantly better. Statistical tests are a challenge though as distributions are not normal (they have a large mass at zero for example of no purchase) There are other challenges since multiple  A/B tests are running every day and A/B tests may overlap and so conflict. There are also longer-term effects where some features are ‘cool’ for the first two weeks and the opposite effect where changing navigation may degrade performance temporarily. Amazon also finds that as its users evolve in their online experience the way they act online has changed. This means that Amazon has to constantly test and evolve its features. Amazon.com Technology It follows that the Amazon technology infrastructure must readily support this culture of experimentation and this can be difficult to achieved with standardised content management. Amazon has achieved its competitive advantage through developing its technology internally and with a significant investment in this which may not be available to other organisations without the right focus on the online channels. As Amazon explains in SEC (2005) ‘using primarily our own proprietary technologies, as well as technology licensed from third parties, we have implemented numerous features and functionality that simplify and improve the customer shopping experience, enable third parties to sell on our platform, and facilitate our fulfillment and customer service operations. Our current strategy is to focus our development efforts on continuous innovation by creating and enhancing the specialized, proprietary software that is unique to our business, and to license or acquire commercially-developed technology for other applications where available and appropriate. We continually invest in several areas of technology, including our seller platform; A9.com, our wholly-owned subsidiary focused on search technology on www.A9.com and other Amazon sites; web services; and digital initiatives.’ Round (2004) describes the technology approach as ‘distributed development and deployment’. Pages such as the home page have a number of content ‘pods’ or ‘slots’ which call web services for features. This makes it relatively easy to change the content in these pods and even change the location of the pods on-screen. Amazon uses a flowable or fluid page design unlike many sites which enables it to make the most of real-estate on-screen. Technology also supports more standard e-retail facilities. SEC (2005) states: ‘We use a set of applications for accepting and validating customer orders, placing and tracking orders with suppliers, managing and assigning inventory to customer  orders, and ensuring proper shipment of products to customers. Our transaction-processing systems handle millions of items, a number of different status inquiries, multiple shipping addresses, gift-wrapping requests, and multiple shipment methods. These systems allow the customer to choose whether to receive single or several shipments based on availability and to track the progress of each order. These applications also manage the process of accepting, authorizing, and charging customer credit cards.’ Data Driven Automation Round (2004) said that ‘Data is king at Amazon’. He gave many examples of data driven automation including customer channel preferences; managing the way content is displayed to different user types such as new releases and top-sellers, merchandising and recommendation (showing related products and promotions) and also advertising through paid search (automatic ad generation and bidding). The automated search advertising and bidding system for paid search has had a big impact at Amazon. Sponsored links initially done by humans, but this was unsustainable due to range of products at Amazon. The automated programme generates keywords, writes ad creative, determines best landing page, manages bids, measure conversion rates, profit per converted visitor and updates bids. Again the problem of volume is there, Matt Round described how the book ‘How to Make Love Like a Porn Star’ by Jenna Jameson received tens of thousands of clicks from pornography-related searches, but few actually purchased the book. So the update cycle must be quick to avoid large losses. There is also an automated email measurement and optimization system. The campaign calendar used to be manually managed with relatively weak measurement and it was costly to schedule and use. A new system: Automatically optimizes content to improve customer experience Avoids sending an e-mail campaign that has low clickthrough or high unsubscribe rate Includes inbox management (avoid sending multiple emails/week) Has growing library of automated email programs covering new releases and recommendations But there are challenges if promotions are too successful if inventory isn’t available. Your Recommendations Customers Who Bought X†¦, also bought Y is Amazon’s signature feature. Round  (2004) describes how Amazon relies on acquiring and then crunching a massive amount of data. Every purchase, every page viewed and every search is recorded. So there are now to new version, customers who shopped for X also shopped for†¦ and Customers who searched for X also bought†¦ They also have a system codenamed ‘Goldbox’ which is a cross-sell and awareness raising tool. Items are discounted to encourage purchases in new categories! I have a more detailed article on Amazon personalisation / recommendation system He also describes the challenge of techniques for sifting patterns from noise (sensitivity filtering) and clothing and toy catalogues change frequently so recommendations become out of date. The main challenges though are the massive data size arising from millions of customers, millions of items and recommendations made in real time. Amazon Partnership strategy As Amazon grew, its share price growth enabled partnership or acquisition with a range of companies in different sectors. Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon partnered with Drugstore.com (pharmacy), Living.com (furniture), Pets.com (pet supplies), Wineshopper.com (wines), HomeGrocer.com (groceries), Sothebys.com (auctions) and Kozmo.com (urban home delivery). In most cases, Amazon purchased an equity stake in these partners, so that it would share in their prosperity. It also charged them fees for placements on the Amazon site to promote and drive traffic to their sites. Similarly, Amazon charged publishers for prime-position to promote books on its site which caused an initial hue-and-cry, but this abated when it was realised that paying for prominent placements was widespread in traditional booksellers and supermarkets. Many of these new online companies failed in 1999 and 2000, but Amazon had covered the potential for growth and was not pulled down by these partners, even though for some such as Pets.com it had an investment of 50%. Analysts sometimes refer to ‘Amazoning a sector’ meaning that one company becomes dominant in an online sector such as book retail such that it becomes very difficult for others to achieve market share. In addition to developing, communicating and delivering a very strong proposition, Amazon has been able to consolidate its strength in different sectors through its partnership arrangements and through using technology to facilitate product promotion and distribution via these partnerships. The Amazon retail platform enables other retailers to sell products online using  the Amazon user interface and infrastructure through their ‘Syndicated Stores’ programme. For example, in the UK, Waterstones (www.waterstones.co.uk) is one of the largest traditional bookstores. It found competition with online so expensive and challenging, that eventually it entered a partnership arrangement where Amazon markets and distributes its books online in return for a commission online. Similarly, in the US, Borders a large book retailer uses the Amazon merchant platform for distributing its products. Toy retailer Toys R’ Us have a similar arrangement. Such partnerships help Amazon extends its reach into the customer-base of other suppliers, and of course, customers who buy in one category such as books can be encouraged to purchase into other areas such as clothing or electronics. Another form of partnership referred to above is the Amazon Marketplace which enables Amazon customers and other retailers to sell their new and used books and other goods alongside the regular retail listings. A similar partnership approach is the Amazon ‘Merchants@’ program which enables third party merchants (typically larger than those who sell via the Amazon Marketplace) to sell their products via Amazon. Amazon earn fees either through fixed fees or sales commissions per-unit. This arrangement can help customers who get a wider choice of products from a range of suppliers with the convenience of purchasing them through a single checkout process. Finally, Amazon has also facilitated formation of partnerships with smaller companies through its affiliates programme. Internet legend records that Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon was chatting to someone at a cocktail party who wanted to sell books about divorce via her web site. Subsequently, Amazon.com launched its Associates Program in July 1996 and it is still going strong. Googling http://www.google.com/search?q=www.amazon.com+-site%3Awww.amazon.com for sites that link to the US site, shows over 4 million pages, many of which will be affiliates. Amazon does not use an affiliate network which would take commissions from sale, but thanks to the strength of its brand has developed its own affiliate programme. Amazon has created a tiered performance-based incentives to encourage affiliates to sell more Amazon products. Amazon Marketing communications In their SEC filings Amazon state that the aims of their communications  strategy are (unsurprisingly) to: Increase customer traffic to our websites Create awareness of our products and services Promote repeat purchases Develop incremental product and service revenue opportunities Strengthen and broaden the Amazon.com brand name. Amazon also believe that their most effective marketing communications are a consequence of their focus on continuously improving the customer experience. This then creates word-of-mouth promotion which is effective in acquiring new customers and may also encourage repeat customer visits. As well as this Marcus (2004) describes how Amazon used the personalisation enabled through technology to reach out to a difficult to reach market which Bezos originally called ‘the hard middle’. Bezos’s view was that it was easy to reach 10 people (you called them on the phone) or the ten million people who bought the most popular products (you placed a superbowl ad), but more difficult to reach those in between. The search facilities in the search engine and on the Amazon site, together with its product recommendation features meant that Amazon could connect its products with the interests of these people. Online advertising techniques include paid search marketing, interactive ads on portals, e-mail campaigns and search engine optimisation. These are automated as far as possible as described earlier in the case study. As previously mentioned, the affiliate programme is also important in driving visitors to Amazon and Amazon offers a wide range of methods of linking to its site to help improve conversion. For example, affiliates can use straight text links leading direct to a product page and they also offer a range of dynamic banners which feature different content such as books about Internet marketing or a search box.Amazon also use cooperative advertising arrangements, better known as ‘contra-deals’ with some vendors and other third parties. For example, a print advertisement in 2005 for a particular product such as a wireless router with a free wireless laptop card promotion will feature a specific Amazon URL in the ad. In product fulfilment packs, Amazon may include a leaflet for a non-competing online company such as Figleaves.com (lingerie) or Expedia (travel). In return, Amazon leaflets may be included in customer communications from the partner brands. Our Associates program directs customers to our websites by enabling independent websites to make millions of products available to their  audiences with fulfillment performed by us or third parties. We pay commissions to hundreds of thousands of participants in our Associates program when their customer referrals result in product sales. In addition, we offer everyday free shipping options worldwide and recently announced Amazon.com Prime in the U.S., our first membership program in which members receive free two-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping. Although marketing expenses do not include the costs of our free shipping or promotional offers, we view such offers as effective marketing tools. Marcus, J. (2004) Amazonia. Five years at the epicentre of the dot-com juggernaut, The New Press, New York, NY. Round, M. (2004) Presentation to E-metrics, London, May 2005. www.emetrics.org.

IBA Final Paper Group

In this simulation, we were tasked with successfully launch info Alleles in new markets over the next 7-10 years, effectively expanding the Alistair Brand into Latin America. Alistair Brands is doing well in its traditional markets of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, but the markets IR those countries are mature with lots of competition. Latin America is a region that provides great potential and a variety of trade enhancement actions have been struck in recent years. NONFAT for example, reduced the trade barriers between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.This allows for establishing production in Mexico to take advantage of low labor costs and seamless access to the U. S. And Canadian markets. The MERCURY agreement also provides similar ease of access among the South American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. These factors combined make Latin America a ripe market for Alistair Brands to enter. Initially, we entered the Mexican market and created five SKU that covered all four benefits to test the market for each type of benefit, as well as wanting to implement SKU that none of our competition was using, such as economy gel.Our primary target markets were families with kids focused on economy, and younger focused on whitening. No one had tapped into the kid's market, SC we created a SKU to fill that demand, which also created a niche in the mark hat We dominated. Our primary channels Were the traditional and hyper- market, with a small section focused in web. The traditional channel had the largest number of outlets; thus, we allocated 25 sales people to that channel and it generated 12. 1 % of our sales.Hypermarket had only one competitor and had the most growth potential, while the web had no real competition. We positioned ourselves in regards to pricing towards the lower spectrum with a 5% allowance. We set our MSP at double our production cost, still maintaining an economy price by being priced lower than our competito rs. Striving to get our name out there in the initial period, we also spent SSL 50 million in promotion and $76 million in advertising and our ad campaigns focused on highlighting two of our SKU (younger/white and families/ economy).Over the course of the simulation we entered three more Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina, and Chile), built a plant in Brazil, left the traditional channel and entered the wholesale channel, changed SKU and pricing, discontinued and created new ads in all countries, tried to make our products standard in each country, exited a country that was not performing ell, and added new products to our existing product lines. After implementing and tweaking our marketing plan each year in the simulation, we ended the simulation with a BEE of 76. We saw a 6. % growth in unit sale 18. 3% growth in manufacturer sales, 29. 7% growth in gross margin, and 60. 3% growth in net contribution. We finished in fifth place with a cumulative net contribution of $400. 6 million. In the following few pages, we will demonstrate what our marketing plan was and how we implemented it in each year Of the simulation from beginning to end to effectively demonstrate owe our decision criteria led us to the position that we ended in. Situation Analysis Throughout the study, the opportunities and threats varied among the 1 0 decision making periods.However, threats were mostly, actively controlled by a third party stimulator, while the opportunities describe our reaction to openings in the market for potential revenue. For example, a population product benefit without a SKIS to squelch the market need provided a clear opportunity for a new SKU with an updated promotional budget and campaign. The opportunities listed below detail the groups research for opportunities as well as the active response. After a forced entry in the Mexico market, one of the first opportunities was the cheap tariff and shipping costs from the US to Mexico. With a 0. % tariff, as a percent of CIFS and a shipping cost of approximately two cents per unit, entry into the market provided a strong base to grow our brand. There were also free trade agreements between the US and Mexico, making distribution, cost effective and permittivity seamless. With Brazil economic boom, it was impossible to ignore the specific opportunities in this market. With a surge in population, there began to arise product benefits that were not being met by competing products. Therefore, Alleles responded by implementing a SKIS that filled the family/healthy/ economy and size gap, as well as the kids market.With space in the hypermarket and web. The Alleles group capitalized on these channels and spiked the promotional budget to raise product awareness and our resulting As the success in Brazil continued, Alleles constructed a second plant in period 3 that would offset the high shipping costs to the later entered, Argentinean an Chilean, markets, combined with a free trade agreement. Furt her, entry into the Brazilian, Argentinean and Chilean market was titivated by low transportation costs and tariffs. However shipping costs, from the home plant, did not prove a lucrative. With an opportunities analysis, a weakness analysis must follow.Because Alleles was on a first mover into the South American toothpaste market, the company missed out on many of the advantages awarded to competitors, such as the ability to set standards concerning product expectation, the bill ¶y' to educate the public about the product, and capitalize on unused distributors and suppliers. However, these weaknesses also provided an opportunity for Alleles to responds in self-benefiting methods. First, being a late entering competitor to an already established market, much of the risk was alleviated associated with introducing existing markets to new products.There was also less of a need for an educational promotional budget. Alleles was allowed to piggyback off of the market penetration of earl y entry competitors. Another additive that come with entering a market post-establishment, is the ability to put pressure on existing products, forcing them to make adjustments to account increased market competitor. Some of the changes included, price reductions, increasing sales force and raising advertising expense, all efforts to attempt to solidify their, now threatened, position in the market.The Alleles response to increased opportunity was to lesson dependence on a single market by entering others. Finally, market threats perpetually interrupted the opportunity response progression for Alleles. For example, after entry into Chile, the brand began to notice a reoccurring cost that could not justify the company's market activity. Therefore, it became necessary to pull out of Chile in period 8. Also, the highly competitive arena in Brazil and Argentina provided the need to constantly adjust product SKILL, racing, production, promotion and advertising to account for competitor s uccess.The largest threat in the South American toothpaste market proved to reside in Venezuelan and Argentinean markets. Venezuela entered a recession walkway through the simulation, which prevented entrance from Alleles, and Argentina began to experience the impending effects of a recession, however, we had already invested too many resources to pull out of the country, so we had to adjust our skews to account for the change in shopping habits. Market Entry International market entry decisions are complicated. Most companies must rye to balance the benefits of increased control and the costs of resource commitment and risk [Country Manager].Factors such as international experience, firm size, market knowledge, and economic attractiveness must all be taken into account. Therefore, market entry is critical to Allele's success. Alleles is interested in entering Latin America. Due to its large population and a variety of trade enhancement actions (NONFAT, MERCURY) that have been estab lished in recent years Latin America has great potential. Before choosing which country to enter we wanted to perform a competitive analysis and selected macro-level indicators, such as economic development, to examine.We then weighed their importance. We also examined product markets, such as market size and the number of competitors. These can be seen in the country attractiveness analysis sheet in the appendix Of this report. After weighing all of our information, Alleles decided to enter Mexico market first. Alleles chose to enter Mexico through exporting the product from our home plant. Five Kiss were chosen to test the market for each type of benefit. We also wanted to implement SKU that no other competitor was using. Finally, we chose three distribution channels.In this first market, and I being essentially a test market, Alleles was somewhat successful in establishing our name in the market. After being in Mexico for a year, we decided to use the ‘X†tearful marke ting effect† to enter Brazil. Alleles chose Brazil because of its similarities to Mexico. Using a slight product adaptation, four SKU and three distribution channels were chosen for Allele's entry into Brazil. Continuing with the â€Å"waterfall marketing effect† and utilizing straight extension, we next entered Argentina. At this time we had been establishedMexico for a few years and in Brazil for one. With moderate success in previous markets, Alleles entered Argentina with the same SKU and distribution channels utilized in Brazil. We also weighed the cost and benefit of continuing to export from the home plant against the risk of building a plant locally to our markets. Indicators weighed in favor of building locally. Therefore, Alleles began building a plant in Brazil. In the fourth year of marketing in Latin America we decided not to enter a new market. We wanted to focus our time and attention on Mexico, Brazil AR Argentina, as well as the new plant.The plant also began to distribute to the Brazil and Argentina markets which lowered costs and increased profit. Year five did see a new endeavor for Alleles. We chose to enter the Chilean market further increasing our regional diversification.. The SKU and distribution channels were again a straight extension of the product. As we did in year four, years six and seven were spent focusing on our established markets. Alleles also took this time to increase capacity in our plant to accommodate the market need. Due to several issues, especially our sustained losses, Alleles exited Chill?s market.We had been in the country for three years and we continued to set in the red. Furthermore, after examining the competition, we knew it would take us years to compete as market leader and the markets in Brazil and Mexico had much greater potential. Exiting Chile was the last â€Å"market entry/exit† decision that Alleles made. We spent the new couple of years focusing on the markets that we had entere d and that were doing well. Overall, by utilizing the â€Å"waterfall† approach and using the money made in one market to help fund efforts in new markets, Alleles was successful with our market entries. Manufacturing location and sourcingThere were many factors to consider when our company was assessing the attractiveness of building a plant in another country. Political stability, shipping expenses, market economy, natural hazards and transportation were just a few indicators that needed to be examined. Understanding these influences enabled our company to make the right decision. Brazil is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations. It's economy outweighs that of all other South American countries and Brazil is expanding its presence in world markets. Shipping costs from Brazil to it's neighboring countries is quite cheap.According to Country Manager, hipping from Brazil to Mexico is the highest at . 040. Therefore, We would continue to ship to Mexico from o ur home Plant and use the Brazilian Plant to ship to Argentina (. 020) and Chile (. 020). A local plant, which Brazil would be for all but Mexico, results in fixed costs from depreciation and the per unit (variable) cost of production. Country Manager cost analysis has Brazil at the head of the pack in terms of fixed cost (1 5% cost reduction). Furthermore, building in Brazil would result in a 0% tariff in regards to Argentina and Chile. Both of these indicators pointed favorably to building in Brazil.Natural hazards are present in every country, however, it is an indicator that must be taken into account. Brazil is home to droughts in the northeast and frost in the south. These particular natural hazards aren't very severe in terms of affecting shipping further making Brazil our top choice in Plant location. Transportation was an important factor we took into account when deciding where to build Allele's plant. Having the means to transport/ship the product to market is essential. Brazil is home to 4,000 airports, 28,857 km of railways and 1 , 751 ,868 km of roadways and this doesn't take into account its shipping ports.Because there are so many options for transporting goods, the cost of goods sold can be kept reasonable. Utilizing all of these indicators, it was clear that Alleles should build in Brazil. The plant's capacity was set to the projected unit sales in Brazil for the following period because we did not want to have a large excess which would lead to avoidable loss. However, we increased our plant production capacity by 50 million units (100 million units total) after one year. This was done to meet the demand of our past sales and accommodate for our forecasted sales.We also began distributing to Argentina from our Brazil plant in effort f decreasing shipping and tariff expenses. As each period progressed we assessed the plant's capacity and adjusted accordingly, for example, we increased our plant production capacity again by 40 million units (1 40 million units total) in order to accommodate our entry into Chile. Once this capacity increase was accomplished there were no changes made to the production capacity for one year because our capacity perfectly lined up with the amount of units sold in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.However, the following year we increased production capacity by 15 million units to accommodate projected unit sales and a further 55 million units, eased on our need forecast for the next period, the year after that. With Alleles exiting Chile in year eight, we did not increase our plant capacity again. Building our plant in Brazil proved to be a success. Alleles was able to put pressure on all other competitors, especially other domestic companies. This helped drive share of mind and sales leadership in Brazil – enabling us to more effectively compete with the local and regional competitors which were two of the market leaders.Target Marketing Strategy Target marketing strategy was an important part to make Alleles achieve success when we enter and explore a new country. In target marketing strategy, we have to determine our main potential customers, try to attract attention from them, raise our target customers' interests, convince our customers' desires and lead our customers purchasing. Therefore, we had used MIMIC and AID (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model to help Alleles make a right target marketing strategy for each country that we entered. Mexico Alleles chose enter Mexico market first.Based on data provided from cross- section decision analysis in Mexico, price was customer most care about with 50. % weight and product effect was second with 27. 6%. For demographic, the families was most demographics population which was 55. 9% Of customers with 62. 2% of demand. The younger was second largest demographic population (27%) with 23. 7% of demand. See demographics with benefits, families/economy are largest market with 34. 6%pop and 36. 7% demand; younger/wh ite are second with 6. 9% pop and 10. 2% demand. By benefits view, the economy and white are majority benefits that Mexican customers would like to buy.

Heres why chasing happiness won’t make you happy

Heres why chasing happiness won’t make you happy This country was founded partially on the â€Å"pursuit of happiness,† a goal that many people still strive toward on a daily basis. In fact, it seems that people seek constant joy even when they aren’t sure what happiness looks like for their individual lives. Are you so keen on chasing a foggy idea of â€Å"happiness† that you forget to live your life? Do you spend your days trying to avoid all pain, all sadness, and all roadblocks? Happiness is not some kind of prey that can be trapped and held onto for a lifetime. Figure out how to have a healthier relationship with the idea of what it means to have a fulfilling life- which isn’t necessarily a 100% happy one.You’ll never know joy if you never know sadness.Understand that positive emotions aren’t the only ones that make us human. We need the negative ones for balance. Constant happiness would prevent you from accessing the many other emotions that live below your bubbly, Insta-worthy surfa ce. Remember that these other- sometimes undesirable- emotions are often lead to the most productivity. Overcoming challenges can only add to your quality of life, so don’t ignore them! Swim into the current, learn life lessons, and come out a better person.There’s no finish line.The minute you start chasing happiness (or the idea of happiness you have in your head) is the moment you doom yourself never to reach it. Think of happiness more as an activity than a pursuit. You can’t win it and move on, like a prize at the end of a long race. Rather, you cultivate it gently and slowly over the course of your whole life. You learn to discover the people, achievements, and hobbies that bring you joy in the thick of other, more negative feelings and realities of life.Happiness does not equal achievement.You may think if you just keep doing, doing, doing and earning, earning, earning and winning, winning, winning, that happiness will be automatic. But it isn’t ne cessarily equated to success. You will feel great pride with your biggest achievements, but this isn’t the only path to happiness. And excessive pride can lead to selfishness and greed. Stop focusing so hard on your personal advancement and focus on what kind of person you are within every interaction instead.You can’t ever be 100% happy.There will always be something going on in your life that’s unpleasant. Nobody’s life is perfect. Just focus on the positive, feel the emotions you need to process the negative, and remember that happiness isn’t a zero sum game. It’s possible to be mostly happy most of the time. Just don’t try to be perfectly happy all of the time.If you leave a window open for happiness, you’ll find that it finds you fairly easily. Stop to enjoy the little things. Practice more mindfulness. Take joy in the small, the pleasant, the minutiae of your life. Let your cup fill up slowly, by tiny increments, rather t han waiting for one big flood to do it for you.

Political Socialization and The Environment essays

Political Socialization and The Environment essays Political Socialization and The Environment The political socialization of the population has become a large concern for society today. With out a change in the political socialization in a way favorable to the preservation of the world disaster can occur. Political Socialization is an efficient means in predicting and controlling the political ideals and values of future generations. As people grow more environmentally conscious, socialization could be a useful tool in ensuring the protection of the environment for future generations. Political socialization could also predict what will be faced by future generations as a result of the worlds destruction of the environment. Whether or not health problems resulting from pollution will affect socialization or the absence of forests and the natural world will effect socialization. Although, it is obvious to say that it will but socialization can explain how it will. If socialization is not geared towards environmental awareness and conservation then the world can only ex pect a greater deterioration of its surroundings as well as greater pollution, which will cause more health problems. Socialization is the most effective way to ensure how future generations will deal with and perceive the world; if that perception is to protect the environment then the possibility that natural resources will be protected is greatly enhanced. The socialization of those active in the environmental movement or those concerned with conservation as well as those with an environmental consciousness comes from many factors, the condition of their political leaders and state, the presence of an environmental danger or disaster, and the role of education in teaching the youth environmental preservation. It has been held for thousands of years by primitive tribes and cultures that human kind should live harmoniously with nature, living with nature is practiced still in the aboriginal tribes of ...