How to Use 2g and 3g Gprs Mobile Internet on Your Computer Essay

Imagine a situation where you have to send an important email to your friend or boss and your internet doesn’t work. Imagine the helplessness, the frustration, the anger. I am pretty sure you didn’t imagine it but recalled a moment when something of the sort actually happened to you. Internet connectivity, although becoming better with each passing day is still a luxury in many parts of the world, especially in rural areas. But the advent of smartphones is changing that. Nowadays, you can connect to the internet very easily using your mobile phone. I hope I am not the only one to feel this but using the internet on the mobile is just not as fun or convenient as using it on a computer. So today, I will teach you how to connect to the internet on your computer using the GPRS internet pack you have on your mobile phone. The recipe is simple. Here’s the ingredients: 1. A datacable OR a bluetooth enabled mobile phone(your computer should be bluetooth enabled too in this case). 2. The necessary drivers to use your mobile as a modem. Make sure the internet on your mobile phone is working before actually going through the next steps. Installing the drivers First lets install the drivers necessary to use your phone as a modem. To check if they are already installed, go to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Modems If you can see the modem for your mobile phone, then you can skip the next few paragraphs. If not, then install the PC suite for your mobile phone on your computer and connect your phone to it and the drivers will be installed automatically. If you don’t have the PC suite, either download it from another PC with an internet connection or if you are a geek, you can download the specific drivers for only the modem from the internet. Go back to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Modems to double check if the modem is installed. CONFIGURING YOUR PHONE’S MODEM I will first explain the connection procedure using a data cable. * Go to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Dialing Rules. Click on New and select â€Å"India† as the country and write the ZIP code of the place where you are going to use the internet. Leave the other fields as they are and press OK. Now click on the Modems tab again. Select the modem you are going to use and click properties. Choose the â€Å"Advanced† tab in the dialog box that follows in the space for â€Å"Extra Initialization Commands† type the following codes depending on your cable operator: AIRTEL AT+CGDCONT=1,†IP†,†airtelgprs.com† AIRCEL AT+CGDCONT=1,†IP†,†aircelgprs.com† IDEA AT+CGDCONT=1,†IP†,†ideagprs.com† TATA DOCOMO AT+CGDCONT=1,†IP†,†TATA.DOCOMO.INTERNET† VODAFONE AT+CGDCONT=1,â€Å"IP†, â€Å"www† Don’t get freaked out if the only two options in the drop down list below are Japan and Afghanistan(I did), you can leave it as it is and press OK. Please doublecheck the part after â€Å"IP† from your mobile internet’s settings before you continue. It is called APN(Access Point Name) and it allows you to access the internet from your mobile phone e.g. The APN for Airtel is â€Å"airtelgprs.com†. They may differ in your state from the ones I have shown here. CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET Now go to Control Panel->Network and Sharing Center and click â€Å"Set up a new connection or network†. In the menu that follows, choose Set-up a dial-up connection. Enter the phone number as â€Å"*99#† without the quotes. Leave everything else empty. You can change the name of the connection to whatever you want. You’re done! Now go to the network icon and double click on the connection you just created. Enjoy the internet. If an error #734 occurs, it means that either the internet on your mobile is not working right now or that you have entered the wrong APN. Check your APN and reconfigure the settings. Your internet should work fine. Also, don’t forget to mark â€Å"No Proxy† in your browser’s connection settings. Now lets move on to connection using bluetooth. Activate bluetooth on both your mobile phone and your computer. Pairing your mobile phone with your computer If your mobile is already paired, move on to the next section. If not, Go to Control Panel->Devices and Printers->Bluetooth Devices and click on â€Å"Add a device†. Let the setup find your bluetooth device and click on it to pair with it. Check your mobile phone and match the passkeys. Now, all the processes are the same as the data cable with a few differences. To set up the modem you can right click on the icon for your phone in the Bluetooth Devices folder and click on â€Å"modem† or you can go to â€Å"Phone and Modem† as before and select â€Å"Standard Modem Over Bluetooth Link† and do everything exactly the same way as I explained before. Now, we need to set up a dial-up connection. Go back to â€Å"Bluetooth Devices† and double-click on the icon for your phone. Click the â€Å"Connect† button which is next to â€Å"Use your phone to connect to the internet†. If it doesn’t work the first time, select the option to enter the details manually. Now enter the phone number as *99# and enjoy. The version of windows while writing this tutorial is Windows 7 Premium. The process is similar for other versions. I’ll be write another one for connecting your mobile internet to a computer with a linux-based operating system later. If you had any problems, please comment below and I will reply with a solution.

Microsoft: An Overview

There are many factors that must be considered when â€Å"scoping† out a company for a potential merger or acquisition. I being the CEO of a major competitive software manufacturing company look for many things. Things such as strategic planning, financial performance, technological advances and marketing opportunities are just some of the factors that must be looked at when considering another company for acquisition. In this case, Microsoft Corporation is our target. I will be examining the above-mentioned factors before making my decision on whether or not an acquisition will be feasible. Microsoft Corporation was founded in 1975 by William H. Gates III. The company, which was inspired by Gates, had a vision of computers powered by software developed by the company being a way of life. The goal was to integrate computers into people†s everyday lives. The company started out in Gates† garage with primitive technology and unlimited aspiration. Today the company has grown to be the world†s number one software developer and manufacturer. The company offers a very diverse line of products ranging from home user applications to high tech business software. Microsoft develops and manufactures a full line of games, web publishing, and most importantly, it†s number one piece of software, Windows 2000 and ever-popular Office 2000. The world basically runs on Microsoft software. The software is shipped with 70% of the world†s computers giving Microsoft a total of over 19 billion dollars in revenues for 1999. Microsoft has recently emerged in the world of Internet Service Providers (ISP†s) to become a competitor of the well-known America Online. The Microsoft Network (MSN) as it is known offers users the same advantages of the leading ISP†s while incorporating its own technology to make the online experience more user friendly and technologically advanced than the others. MSN allows users to interface their online work with their regular operating software to allow for easier web publishing, more advanced multimedia presentations, and quicker processing time. There have been many issues concerning Microsoft†s strategies. Many say that the company is only in the market to take over and monopolize. As a matter of fact, the United States Government is currently in a civil anti-trust case against the company. Evidence and criticism has been brought against them in order to try to stop them from monopolizing. In the past five years, Microsoft has made over forty acquisitions of companies of all sizes. It seems now that they are doing more investing in companies rather than taking over. Microsoft holds large investment positions in NBC, Nextel Communications, AT&T, NTL Inc. , Qwest Communications and United Pan-Europe Communications. Of course those are only the largest investment positions of 200 million dollars and over. There are many other small investment positions as well. This is just one of the strategies of the company, as a result of all of their investment positions, it allows them to increase their market share through exposure in different markets. Another strategy that Microsoft adheres to is to be the most technologically advanced software developer in the market. Microsoft has always been the leader in technology when it comes to all types of software, whether it is for home user or business. It is said that within the next few years, many people will begin to live in â€Å"smart homes. Microsoft is currently developing technology that will enable a computer to run an entire household, without the user being home! It is this type of technology that keeps Microsoft ahead of the rest of the competition. This goes hand in hand with the expected $3. 8 billion expected investment in R&D in fiscal 2000. It is no wonder why the government is trying to break up this enormous super power of a company! A critical strategy that Microsoft is part of is immense globalization. Microsoft has marketing locations in over 73 countries worldwide. This is a big part of Microsoft†s strategy because it allows them to gain exposure all over the world, which will influence businesses and homes all over the world to become part of the Microsoft network of software. Financially Microsoft has always been a top performer. Since the company went public in March of 1986, the company has grown to 325% of its original size. In fiscal year 1985, the company had a net income of $24 million, as of fourth quarter 1999; the company had a net income of $7. 7 billion. Total stockholders equity in fiscal 99 was over $28 billion. Numbers like these are not very common in the software developing and manufacturing business. Most of Microsoft†s revenues come from Licensing Agreements. Licensing Agreements are software agreements that companies enter into with Microsoft for the permission to install and use Microsoft software in their business. When new software is available, the company has a choice to renew their lease agreement of use other software, the latter not being too wise. This brings me to the topics of competition and threats. True there is competition in the world of software, lots of it. The biggest competitor with Microsoft is a company called Red Hat. Red Hat manufactures a platform known as Linux. Linux is strictly business application software that is used by large corporations for implementing inventory systems, databases, and the like. Another source of competition comes from a company known as Novell. Novell is known for Novell Netware. This is business application software that is used mainly in financial institutions like banks and brokerage firms. This software is used for logging transactions at banks and brokerage firms, while maintaining an internal network within the company. Red Hat and Novell only occupy about forty to fifty percent of the market share combined. One should keep in mind that behind these two software platforms is Microsoft†s NT Server Client software powering the servers that allow the companies to use this software! Basically, even thought there is competition, Microsoft still is able to gain a piece of the market share by being one step ahead of its competition. A big issue for Microsoft that is becoming a growing threat to the company is Software Piracy. Software Piracy is committed by making illegal copies of the software and perhaps even selling it. This is a very common act today with the ease of using a CD burner. In fact, many businesses operate on illegal software, which in turn hurts the revenues of Microsoft. Microsoft is currently working on programs that cannot be copied to blank disks in order to protect themselves from this threat. Currently, anyone who knows where to get the software from illegal web sites can download them absolutely free. Once this software is downloaded to a hard drive, it can be written to a CD and then re-written, an infinite number of times from that one CD that was originally used. It is clear to see that this can become quite harmful if not taken care of promptly. This is especially done with businesses. However, they do buy one copy of the software from Microsoft and then copy it onto all of the computers in the office, thereby saving themselves large amounts of money. It is a proven statistic that in some companies, there exists over five hundred copies of illegal software that are being used in normal business operation. It is easy to see how this can create a loss for Microsoft, no doubt that this problem will be resolved in the future. Another threat to Microsoft as I mentioned before is the ongoing Anti-trust case that is currently pending. In this case, the government is trying to break up Microsoft into perhaps a number of smaller companies, which would allow for more competition to enter the market. Bill gates sees this as a better opportunity to further diversify the line of product that Microsoft delivers. This will actually give Microsoft a better chance to scope out different markets and perhaps develop new products for PC†s and businesses that will better enable other countries to prosper. As the CEO of my firm, I have a very involved decision to make. I feel that the wisest decision would be to not acquire Microsoft. Microsoft is a company that is a pioneer of software and is fully established and in order to be able to take them over, my company needs to be able to continue what Microsoft started. My company does not have the type of funds to be able to take over Microsoft, nor do we have the market cap to cover a stock for stock purchase. However, there is one consideration that I may make, that is, to form a joint venture with Microsoft. I feel that this will benefit us both in many ways. First, our technology can be combined in order to make the worlds top software developer and manufacturer that will occupy every sector of the software industry. Our manufacturing plants can be consolidated and re-structured to cut costs, wile adapting to manufacture the new software line that my company would introduce. Our management team can be re-structured as well so that strategic planning and decision-making will better implement our new ideas and technological advances. Finally, our market share will be greatly increased because of the ability to be exposed to countries that we are not currently involved in. I feel that a combination of our companies would be probably the most beneficial event that could occur in my company. Microsoft has proven itself to be the number one software company in the world; together we would be unstoppable. One problem with this joint venture would be the matter with the pending Anti-Trust case, which would probably be further fueled by this joint venture. Whatever the outcome of the case, which by the way seems to be nearing a settlement, I feel that the newly formed company will be the best thing that has happened in software since 1975.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887 in ‘A Study in Scarlet’. Four years later, Sherlock Holmes grew to extremes in popularity thanks to its series of short stories in ‘The Strand Magazine’ in 1891. Over a hundred years later, Sherlock Holmes stories are still being read by a variety of different ages and cultures. But why is this? Why are people so ‘caught up’ in this series of books and short stories? Is it because of the stories’ nail-biting plots? Or is it because of the engrossing characters that the inventive Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has perfectly produced?Or is it both the plot and the characters? This is of course, is an opinion question, and answers will vary, but this is mine: During Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life, he enjoyed a very high level of popularity for his stories about Holmes, even in countries other than England. At that time, his great success would have been due to Conan Doyle's excellent writing abilities, Holmes' g reat abilities of deduction that could be used to solve any crime, and the fact that common and poor people of England and especially London could look to Holmes for inspiration, and as a national symbol of pride.But Conan Doyle wrote these stories over a century ago. Why are they still so popular today? Holmes became an icon, his analysis of Watson and other people's habits and activities seemed to them, baffling, but to him it was â€Å"Elementary. † His deerstalker cap, pipe, overcoat, and magnifying glass came to symbolize detectives and their art through Sherlock Holmes' early popularity. And simply put, people enjoy a good story, especially a mystery. In our modern time of fast living, modern conveniences, and computerised crime and detection, Sherlock Holmes represents the spirit an earlier, simpler and more romantic period. Perhaps, as Watson was to him, Holmes is to us â€Å"the one fixed point in a changing age. † [1] [1] Clive Hopwood? Sherlock Holmes Illust rated copyright 1981 by World International Publishing Limited. Published in Great Britain. Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887 in ‘A Study in Scarlet’. Four years later, Sherlock Holmes grew to extremes in popularity thanks to its series of short stories in ‘The Strand Magazine’ in 1891. Over a hundred years later, Sherlock Holmes stories are still being read by a variety of different ages and cultures. But why is this? Why are people so ‘caught up’ in this series of books and short stories? Is it because of the stories’ nail-biting plots? Or is it because of the engrossing characters that the inventive Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has perfectly produced?Or is it both the plot and the characters? This is of course, is an opinion question, and answers will vary, but this is mine: During Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life, he enjoyed a very high level of popularity for his stories about Holmes, even in countries other than England. At that time, his great success would have been due to Conan Doyle's excellent writing abilities, Holmes' g reat abilities of deduction that could be used to solve any crime, and the fact that common and poor people of England and especially London could look to Holmes for inspiration, and as a national symbol of pride.But Conan Doyle wrote these stories over a century ago. Why are they still so popular today? Holmes became an icon, his analysis of Watson and other people's habits and activities seemed to them, baffling, but to him it was â€Å"Elementary. † His deerstalker cap, pipe, overcoat, and magnifying glass came to symbolize detectives and their art through Sherlock Holmes' early popularity. And simply put, people enjoy a good story, especially a mystery. In our modern time of fast living, modern conveniences, and computerised crime and detection, Sherlock Holmes represents the spirit an earlier, simpler and more romantic period. Perhaps, as Watson was to him, Holmes is to us â€Å"the one fixed point in a changing age. † [1] [1] Clive Hopwood? Sherlock Holmes Illust rated copyright 1981 by World International Publishing Limited. Published in Great Britain.

Training and development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Training and development - Essay Example I will mail the self-administered questions to the customer service representatives in our organization. The customer service representatives will complete the mail-in survey within 3 days. I will tabulate, summarize, analyze, and discuss the results of the survey with the top management of the organization with a view of taking necessary actions in the future. I will use my self-administered questionnaires to establish the training needs of customer service representatives in our organization. The survey will help me to determine whether the training offered in the organization meets the needs of customer service representatives. The results of the survey will help me to develop and deliver effective training to this group of employees. I will also determine how to manage the trainees. The survey will equally determine if there is any need to outsource training with an aim of enhancing expertise in our organization. I chose to collect data using a mail-in survey that include both open-ended and close-ended questions. This method is beneficial since it allows me to poll all respondents within a short period. They are also cheap to administer and easy to analyze. The survey will offer first hand data that I can classify and explore further. The close-ended questions in the mail-in survey limit the respondents to specific parameters (Skillnets Ltd, 2013). It is easy to tabulate data collected from such questions since they required specific answers. On the other hand, the open-ended questions in the mail-in survey allow respondents to offer detailed feedback and present new ideas (Skillnets Ltd, 2013). However, tabulating the results from such questions will be challenging. Moreover, many respondents do not like completing such surveys and the return rate is mostly low. However, it is more effective to combine both close-ended and open-ended questions in this analysis. Ideally, it is important for a human

The 4 pillars of SMS Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The 4 pillars of SMS - Assignment Example In this regard, the 4 common pillars of SMS are safety policy, risk management, assurance and promotion. This component establishes the top management’s dedication to constantly improve safety. This is because it entails the organizational policies and structure that define the responsibilities of the management to ensure safety precautions (Waring, 2006). Organizations cannot effectively operate without the observation of safety policies, which help in reducing confusion and errors. The safety policy component is efficient for creating a proactive and predictive program because it offers new regulations that can help in improving equipment and system designs (Ludwig, 2007). For instance, the management can decide to employ new safety programs that will reduce the occurrence of risks. This SMS component determines the requirement for improved risk controls based on the appraisal of suitable risk. The pillar also offers a formal system of hazard recognition, risk evaluation, resource distribution and system monitoring. The component is suitable for creating a proactive and predictive safety program because it helps engineers develop, determine and administer a safety culture that decreases injuries (Waring, 2006). As a result, the safety risk management pillar provides a proactive response before the occurrence of risks. This is because it predicts and tries to prevent accidents through the appropriate response mechanisms. This SMS pillar comprises of coaching, communication and other activities to establish a favorable safety culture within all workforce levels. It is prudent that constant communication of safety values and performances help to support a sound safety culture. Its value in the predictive safety program is that the communication and training initiatives are essential for equipping workers with the required skills to tackle emerging threats (Ludwig, 2007). The workforce needs to acquire modern training facilities in order to prepare for

Positive Image of Nursing Profession Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Positive Image of Nursing Profession - Essay Example The National Association of employers and colleges conducted a survey and established that of the 50,000 new graduates; only 25.5 % of them got a job in the year 2011 (Grice & James, 2008). Â  Research shows that patients are discharged sicker and quicker. This implies that the rate of illness has increased and that health matters are at risk. The problem with this quick discharge of patients is an improper diagnosis, poor prescription of medicine and do follow-ups by the health facilities to avert this issue. Â  Patients can use the following measures as alternatives to hospitalization. One can adopt intensive outpatient treatment whereby he or she can do normal chores as he receives treatment on daily basis. Respite care is another way in which a patient is supported by peers at home with health tack ticks and with no medication. Day treatment programs can also be adopted. Here a patient receives care throughout the day and then goes home at night (Grice & James, 2008). Â  The strategies one can use to diversify nursing include measures such as presenting a positive image in the field. Intensive marketing of this career by the campaign is necessary. Besides, one can support the application process of a student who wants to do nursing. Facilitating the success of students is another strategy. In this case, the best students in the field are recruited for nursing jobs.

Family Business Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Family Business - Research Paper Example The other family members in family-run businesses do not often accord the same level of respect to the decisions made by their siblings or relatives who may be in charge of the family business. Many times, siblings will overrule the decision of a sibling who was chosen by the parents to hold a position of authority. This shows a lack of structure that is vital in ensuring that organizations realize their goals. This lack of structure is also to blame for the procrastination of important tasks within an organization. Procrastination can result in delayed succession planning which is detrimental to a company. According to the family business survey, which was meant to assess different how the different functions in family-run businesses are conducted, only 12% of the reviewed family businesses had documented plans dealing with succession planning (The Family Business Survey, 5). This is somewhat better than the survey of Australian KPMG and Family Businesses, conducted to further under stand the success of family businesses, which established that 80.7% of respondent family businesses did not have any succession planning program in effect (KPMG and Family Business Australia Survey of Family Businesses, 3). ... Another common concern is favoritism. According to a family survey conducted in the UK, it was discovered that 18% of the respondents felt that their lives were in some way hampered by their responsibilities towards the family business. 17% of the respondents also affirmed that it is easy for business disagreements to bet in the way of building strong family relationships (The Family Business Survey, 4). There were similar findings from the According to CBIA/UCONN Family Business Program Survey, which established that only 31% of the participants felt that the responsibilities were fairly allocated (Rathgeber and Nino, 12). The accusation of favoritism is common in most family organizations and can sometimes interfere with realizing organizational objectives. The employment of qualified workers is another issue that often causes misunderstandings within family run businesses. For the most part, the children or relatives of people who launch successful businesses expect that they will hold positions of authority in the said businesses even if they may not be qualified for them (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 39). However, for any business to succeed, it requires the input of skilled workers who are trained in professional institutions. Sometimes, parents have to hire workers from outside the family in order to keep their companies afloat while placating their children with junior positions. According to the Family Business Survey, 61% of the respondents had 2 or 3 relations who worked in the family-run companies (Family Business Survey, 7). The Australia KPMG and Family Business Survey’s results indicated that 40% of the surveyed

Consumption Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Consumption - Essay Example Every nation has a leader of its own who makes sure that all the citizens live as expected. The rules and regulations that govern each nation vary from one to the next. This is one factor giving a clear impression that individuals are expected to control consumerism basing on the type of life in their nation. The key factor that contributes to difference in how people consume is cash. The amount of cash will always determine the degree of consumerism. Thesis statement: Consumerism majorly depends on the character of an individual. This means that it is an individual who is supposed to control how he or she makes consumption without depending on other people. Consumerism is defined basing on the amount of money an individual has. People in the globe engage in different activities that earn them salaries that differ. This means that it is the individual who decides on how to manage what is available in order to have all needs catered for. The rate of consumerism many at times bases on peer pressure. In the contemporary society, it is clear that many individuals have the tendency of purchasing items in order to be in the same social class with the colleagues to avoid shame. Many individuals tend to suffer from inferiority complex when their friends succeed in many things and they are left behind. In this case, they tend to try their best to make certain that they live the way their friends live yet they are not able to do so. In such instances, an individual is forced to do what he or she has not planned for. This result in embezzlement of funds because they end up being used in fields they were not intended to. Those who have the behavior to follow what other do end up messing up their lives because they live their lives basing on what other people do and this makes it difficult for them to be and accept who they really are. In this essay I will specifically point out on the idea that I want to get a new iPhone. I was previously using a Samsung galaxy but as time goes by I needed a new phone because new and more advanced models are being produced. This gives a clear impression that i do not want to be left behind. I am the one who is following the trend of fashionable items which makes it difficult for me to have a perfect budget. I may therefore end up buying items that I did not intend for. This is an issue which affects many individuals in the society making it difficult for them to have perfect plans financially. Many individuals tend to go for modern things without unlimited wish. This means that when new products in the market many people tend to go for them regardless of the price to make sure they are not left behind. â€Å"The latest technology, the latest trend in fashion, the latest cars and laptops, we’ve got to have them†. Resisting financial peer pressure.†This is one illustration giving a clear impression that there are many individuals who tend to follow up on fashion. Youths on the other hand, tend to fo llow up on fashion because they want to fit well in the teen fashion scene. â€Å"Emotional shoppers tend to spend when they are sad to make themselves feel better. Emotional shoppers tend to shop when they are happy to celebrate. Emotional shoppers tend to shop when they are bored to give them something to do.† I used to be an emotional shopper Since it is money that is the main factor affecting consumerism, many individuals suffer

Health communication theory application paper Essay

Health communication theory application paper - Essay Example As suggested by estimates, billions of dollars are wasted due to the unnecessary medical procedures every year. Nine major groups of physicians have identified 45 medical procedures and tests that are recommended by doctors regularly but they have been proved to have no benefit for the majority of the patients, and at times such medical procedures can also prove to be detrimental for the medical condition of the patients. The article refers to an article by Dr. Howard Brody that sheds light upon the ethical issues in health care. Such articles help bring awareness among the patients which is one of the aspects of the article titled ‘Technology as the Representative Anecdote in Popular Discourse of Health and Medicine’ by Lynn M. Harter and Phyllis M. Japp. Technology, specifically mass media, plays an important role in making the patients aware regarding the medical procedures. According to Dr. Brody, one of the reasons behind the rising health care costs is that medical groups are not actively trying to bring the health care costs down and they are more concerned about keeping the incomes of the doctors too high. The article further suggests that medical groups should develop lists of medical procedures and treatments that have not proven to be beneficial in the process of diagnosis. The elimination of such tests and treatments will help in cutting down the health care costs without causing any deprivation of the medical benefits to the patient. Some of the specialty groups that were included in the list of the groups that used unnecessary medical procedures were; oncology, cardiology, radiology and primary care. Some of the tests and treatments that were proposed to be eliminated were; brain imaging scans after fainting, antibiotics for uncomplicated sinus infections, cardiac stress tests for annual checkups in patients who do not show any symptoms regar ding any cardiac problem, bone scans for early breast and prostate cancer patients who have low

Case study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 23

Case Study Example In ‘Our Product’ segment, I have given the available products in the market and emphasized of the prices and the after use results. The ‘Invite to Facebook page’ segment gives a description of how the consumers are expected to interact with their fellow consumers and the company in general especially in comments and criticism. As such, I am optimistic that the information in the page is effective towards the targeted social marketing for the company’s products. In this regard, I kindly request that you personally go through the page and give your final approval on the messaging before it is officially hosted. I write in reference to the ongoing company’s project that entails social marketing for the company’s beauty products. The memo comprises of the ways in which I have adapted the Facebook Page for the company, the reasons for using the messaging and design on the Facebook Page and its attractive purpose to the customers. Basically, my idea of adapting Facebook as the most effective tool in social marketing emerged after I conducted a thorough research on how our company was going to increase its sales, and further maintain a competitive advantage bearing in mind that there are numerous companies selling similar products across the country. The research articulated that a large numbers of our potential customers used Facebook as their official social media platform. In this regard, I chose the two main colors in the official website in order to maintain the brand image as stipulated in the company’s policy. In addition, I incorporated the two separate segments to give emphasis on the two main themes that were expected to appear on the Facebook page as discussed and approved by the team members in a series of meetings held in the past few days. The general design on graphics and animations was worked on by the company’s Creative Department to blend the messaging together in order to

Marketing Anthropology Essay Example for Free

Marketing Anthropology Essay Anthropology and marketing (together with consumer research) were once described as ‘linchpin disciplines in parallel intellectual domains’ (Sherry 1985a: 10). To judge from the prevalent literature, however, this view is not shared by many anthropologists, who tend to look at markets (for example, Carrier 1997) and exchange rather than at marketing per se (Lien 1997 is the obvious exception here). For their part, marketers, always open to new ideas, have over the decades made – albeit eclectic (de Groot 1980:131) – use of the work of anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas whose aims in promulgating their ideas on binary oppositions, totemism and grid and group were at the time far removed from the endeavour of marketing both as a discipline and as practice. Can anthropology really be of use to marketing? Can the discipline in effect market itself as an effective potential contributor to solving the problems faced by marketers? There is no reason why not. After all, it is anthropologists who point out that there is more than one market and that these markets, like the Free Market beloved by economists, are all socio-cultural constructions. In this respect, what they have to say about the social costs of markets, as well as about the non-market social institutions upon which markets depends and the social contexts that shape them (cf. Carruthers and Babb 2000:219-222), is extremely pertinent to marketers anxious to come up with definitive answers as to why certain people buy certain products and how to persuade the rest of the world to do so. At the same time, however, there are reasons why anthropology probably cannot be of direct use to marketing. In particular, as we shall see in the following discussion of marketing practices in a Japanese advertising agency, anthropology suffers from the fact that its conclusions are based on long-term immersion in a socio-cultural ‘field’ and that its methodology is frequently unscientific, subjective and imprecise. As part of their persuasive strategy, on the other hand, proponents of marketing need to present their discipline as objective, scientific, speedy and producing the necessary results. How they actually go about obtaining such results, however, and whether they really are as objective and scientific as they claim to their clients, are moot points. This paper focuses, by means of a case study, on how marketing is actually practised in a large advertising agency in Japan and has four main aims. Firstly, it outlines the organisational structure of the agency to show how marketing acts as a social mechanism to back up inter-firm ties based primarily on tenuous personal relationships. Secondly, it reveals how these same interpersonal relations can affect the construction of apparently ‘objective’ marketing strategies. Thirdly, it focuses on the problem of how all marketing campaigns are obliged to shift from ‘scientific’ to ‘artistic’ criteria as statistical data, information and analysis are converted into 1 linguistic and visual images for public consumption. Finally, it will make a few tentative comments on the relations between anthropology and marketing, with a view to developing a comparative theory of advertising as a marketing system, based on the cultural relativity of a specific marketing practice in a Japanese advertising agency (cf. Arnould 1995:110). The Discipline, Organisation and Practice of Marketing The Marketing Division is the engine room of the Japanese advertising agency in which I conducted my research in 1990. At the time, this agency handled more than 600 accounts a year, their value varying from several million to a few thousand dollars. The Marketing Division was almost invariably involved in some way in the ad campaigns, cultural and sporting events, merchandising opportunities, special promotions, POP constructions, and various other activities that the agency carried out on behalf of its clients. Exceptions were those accounts involving media placement or certain kinds of work expressly requested by a client – like, for example, the organisation of a national sales force meeting for a car manufacturer. Even here, however, there was often information that could be usefully relayed back to the Marketing Division (the number and regional distribution of the manufacturer’s sales representatives, as well as possible advance information on new products and/or services to be offered in the coming year). Marketing Discipline As Marianne Lien (1997:11) points out, marketing is both a discipline and a practice. The main aims as a discipline of the Marketing Division were (and, of course, still are): firstly, to acquire as much information as possible from consumers about their clients’ products and services; secondly, to acquire as much information as possible, too, from clients about their own products and services; and, thirdly, to use strategically both kinds of information acquired to develop new accounts. Marketing thus provided those working in the Marketing Division with the dispassionate data that account executives needed in their personal networking with (potential) clients whom they cajoled, persuaded, impressed and pleaded with to part with (more) money. Marketing Organisation In order to achieve the three overall objectives outlined above, the agency established a certain set of organisational features to enable marketing practice to take place. Firstly, the Marketing Division, which consisted of almost 90 members, was structured into three separate, but interlocking, sub-divisions. These consisted of Computer Systems; Market Development and Merchandising; and Marketing. The last was itself sub-divided into three departments, each of which was broken down into three or four sections. 1 Each section consisted of from six to a dozen members, led by a Section Leader, under whom they worked in teams of two to three on an account. These teams were not fixed. Thus one member, A, might work with another, B, under the Section Leader (SL) on a contact lens advertising campaign, but find herself assigned to worked with C under SL on an airline company’s business class service account, and with D under SL on a computer manufacturer’s consumer survey. In this respect, the daily life of members of the Marketing Note that, unlike the Marketing department in Viking foods discussed by Lien. Department was similar to that of product managers described by Lien (1997:69), being characterised by ‘frequent shifts from one activity to another, a wide network of communications, and a considerable amount of time spent in meetings or talking on the telephone’. Secondly, tasks (or accounts) were allocated formally through the hierarchical divisional structure – by departments first, then by sections – according to their existing responsibilities and perceived suitability for the job in hand. Each SL then distributed these tasks to individual members on the basis of their current overall workloads. At the same time, however, there was an informal allocation of accounts involving individuals. Each SL or DL could take on a job directly from account executives handling particular accounts on behalf of their clients. Here, prior experiences and personal contacts were important influences on AEs’ decisions as to whether to go through formal or informal channels of recruitment. The account executive in charge of the NFC contact lens campaign described in my book (Moeran 1996), for example, went directly to a particular SL in the Marketing Department because of some smart work that the latter had done for the AE on a different account some months previously. Mutual respect had been established and the contact lens campaign provided both parties with an opportunity to assess and, in the event, positively validate their working relationship. There were certain organisational advantages to the ways in which accounts were distributed in the manner described here. Firstly, by freely permitting interpersonal relations between account executives and marketers, the Agency ensured that there was competitiveness at each structural level of department and section. Such competition was felt to be healthy for the Agency as a whole, and to encourage its continued growth. Secondly, by assigning individual members of each section in the Marketing Department to working in different combinations of people on different tasks, the Agency ensured that each member of the Marketing Department received training in a wide variety of marketing problems and was obliged to interact fully with fellow section members, thereby promoting a sense of cooperation, cohesion and mutual understanding. This in itself meant that each section developed the broadest possible shared knowledge of marketing issues, because of the knowledge gained by individual members and the interaction among them. Marketing Practice Accounts were won by the Agency primarily through the liaison work conducted with a (potential) client by an account executive (who might be a very senior manager or junior ‘salesman’ recruited only a few years earlier). Once an agreement was made between Agency and client – and such an agreement might be limited to the Agency’s participation in a competitive presentation, the outcome of which might lead to an account being established – the AE concerned would put together an account team. An account team consists of the AE in charge (possibly with assistants); the Marketing Team (generally of 2 persons under a Marketing Director [MD], but sometimes much larger, depending on the size of the account and the work to be done); the Creative Team (consisting of Creative Director [CD], Copywriter, and Art Director [AD] as a minimum, but usually including two ADs – one for print-, the other for TV-related work); and Media Planner/Buyer(s). The job of the account team is to carry out successfully the task set by the client, and to this end meets initially for an orientation meeting in which the issues and problems relayed by the client to the AE are explained and discussed to all members. 2 Prior to this, however, the AE provides the marketing team with all the information and data that he has been able to extract from the client (a lot of it highly confidential to the company concerned). The marketing team, therefore, tends to come prepared and to have certain quite specific questions regarding the nature of the statistics provided, the target market, retail outlets, and so on. If it has done its homework properly – which is not always the case, given the number of different accounts on which the team’s members are working and the pressure of work that they are under – the marketing team may well have several pertinent suggestions for further research. It is on the basis of these discussions that the AE then asks the MD to carry out such research as is thought necessary for the matter in hand. In the meantime, the creative team is asked to mull over the issues generally and to think of possible ways of coping ‘creatively’ (that is, linguistically and visually) with the client’s marketing problems. Back in the Marketing Department, the MD will tell his subordinates to carry out specific tasks, such as a consumer survey to find out who precisely makes use of a particular product and why. This kind of task is fairly mechanical in its general form, since the Agency does this sort of work for dozens of clients every year, but has to be tailored to the present client’s particular situation, needs and expectations. The MD will therefore discuss his subordinate’s proposal, make some suggestions to ensure that all points are overed (and that may well include some additional questions to elicit further information from the target audience that has taken on importance during their discussion), and then give them permission to have the work carried out. All surveys of this kind are subcontracted by the Agency to marketing firms and research organisations of one sort or another. This means that the marketing team’s members are rarely involved in direct face-to-face contact or interaction with the consumers of the products that they wish to advertise,3 except when small ‘focus group’ interviews take place (usually in one of the Agency’s buildings). The informal nature of such groups, the different kinds of insights that they can yield, and the need to spot and pursue particular comments mean that members of the marketing team should be present to listen to and, as warranted, direct the discussion so that the Agency’s particular objectives are achieved. In general, however, the only evidence of consumers in the Agency is indirect, through reports, statistics, figures, data analyses and other information that, paradoxically, are always seen to be insufficient or ‘incomplete’ (cf. Lien 1997:112). Once the results of the survey are returned, the marketers enter them into their computers (since all such information is stored and can be used to generate comparative data for other accounts as and when required). They can make use of particular programmes to sort and analyse such data, but ultimately they need to be able to present their results in readily comprehensible form to other members of the account team. Here again, the MD tends to ensure that the information presented at the next meeting is to the point and properly hierarchised in terms of importance. This leads to the marketing team’s putting forward things like: a positioning statement, slogan, purchasing decision The Media Planners do not usually participate in these early meetings since their task is primarily to provide information of suitable media, and slots therein, for the finished campaign to be placed in. 3 A similar point is made by Lien (1997. 11) in her study of Viking Foods. Focus Groups usually consist of about half a dozen people who represent by age, gender, socio-economic grouping and so on the type of target audience being addressed, and who have agreed to talk about (their attitudes towards) a particular product or product range – usually in exchange for some gift or money. Interviews are carried out in a small meeting room (that may have a one-way mirror to enable outside observation) and tend to last between one and two hours. 4 2 4 odel (high/low involvement; think/feel product relationship), product message concept, and creative frame. One of the main objectives of this initial – and, if properly done, only – round of research is to discover the balance between what are terms product, user and end benefits, since it is these factors that determine the way in which an ad campaign should be presented and, therefore, how the creative team should visualise the marketing problems analysed and ensuing suggestions from the marketing team. It is here that we come to the crux of marketing as practised in an advertising agency (whether in Japan or elsewhere). Creative people tend to be suspicious of marketing people and vice-versa. This is primarily because marketers believe that they work rationally and that the creative frames that they produce are founded on objective data and analyses. Creative people, on the other hand, believe that their work should be ‘inspired’, and that such inspiration can take the place at the expense of the data and analyses provided for their consideration. As a result, when it comes to producing creative work for an ad campaign, copywriters and creative directors tend not to pay strict attention to what the marketing team has told them. For example, attracted by the idea of a particular celebrity or filming location, they may come up with ideas that in no way meet the pragmatic demands of a particular ad campaign that may require emphasis on product benefits that are irrelevant to the chosen location or celebrity suggested for endorsement. This does not always happen, of course. A good and professional creative team – and such teams are not infrequent – will follow the marketing team’s instructions. In such cases, their success is based on a creative interpretation of the data and analyses provided. Agency-Client Interaction If there is some indecision and argument among different elements of the account team – and it is the presiding account executive’s job to ensure that marketers and creatives do not come to blows over their disagreements – they almost invariably band together when meeting and presenting their plans to the client. Such meetings can take place several, even more than a dozen, times during the course of an account team’s preparations for an ad campaign. At most of them the MD will be present, until such time as it is clear that the client has accepted the Agency’s campaign strategy and the creative team has to fine-tune the objectives outlined therein. Very often, therefore, the marketing team will not stay on a particular account long enough to learn of its finished result, although a good AE will keep his MD abreast of creative developments and show him the (near) finalised campaign prior to the client’s final approval. But marketers do not get involved in the production side of a campaign (studio photography, television commercial filming, and so on) – unless one of those concerned knows what is going on when, happens to be nearby at the time, and drops in to see how things are going. In other words, the marketing team’s job is to see a project through until accepted by the client. It will then dissolve and its members will be assigned to new accounts. Advertising Campaigns: A Case Study To illustrate in more detail particular examples of marketing practice in the Agency, let me cite as a case study the preparation of contact lens campaign in Japan. This example is illuminating because it reveals a number of typical problems faced by an advertising agency in the formulation and execution of campaigns on behalf of its clients. These include the interface between marketing and creative people within an agency and the interpretation of marketing analysis and data; the 5 transposition of marketing analysis into ‘creative’ (i. e. linguistic, visual and design) ideas; the interface between agency and client in the ‘selling’ of a campaign proposal; and the problems of having to appeal to more than one ‘consumer’ target. When the Nihon Fibre Corporation asked the Agency to prepare an advertising campaign for its new Ikon Breath O2 oxygen-passing GCL hard contact lenses in early 1990, it provided a considerable amount of product information with which to help and guide those concerned. This information included the following facts: firstly, with a differential coefficient (DK factor) of 150, Ikon Breath O2 had the highest rate of oxygen permeation of all lenses currently manufactured and marketed in Japan. As a result, secondly, Ikon Breath O2 was the first lens authorized for continuous wear by Japan’s Ministry of Health. Thirdly, the lens was particularly flexible, dirt and water resistant, durable, and of extremely high quality. The client asked the Agency to confirm that the targeted market consisted of young people and to create a campaign that would help NFC capture initially a minimum three per cent share of the market, rising to ten per cent over three years. The Agency immediately formed an account team, consisting of eight members all told. Their first step was to arrange for the marketing team to carry out its own consumer research before proceeding further. A detailed survey – of 500 men and women – was worked out in consultation with the account executive and the client, and was executed by a market research company subcontracted by the Agency. Results confirmed that the targeted audience for the Ikon Breath O2 advertising campaign should be young people, but particularly young women, between the ages of 18 and 27 years, since it was they who were most likely to wear contact lenses. At the same time, however, the survey also revealed that there was little brand loyalty among contact lens wearers so that, with effective advertising, it should be possible to persuade users to shift from their current brand to Ikon Breath O2 lenses. It also showed that young women were not overly concerned with price provided that lenses were safe and comfortable to wear, which meant that Ikon Breath O2’s comparatively high price in itself should not prove a major obstacle to brand switching or sales. On a less positive note, however, the account team also discovered that users were primarily concerned with comfort and were not interested in the technology that went into the manufacture of contact lenses (thereby obviating the apparent advantage of Ikon Breath O2’s high DK factor of which NFC was so proud); and that, because almost all contact lens users consulted medical specialists prior to purchase, the advertising campaign would have to address a second audience consisting mainly of middle-aged men. All in all, therefore, Ikon Breath O2 lenses had an advantage in being of superb quality, approved by medical experts and recognized, together with other GCL lenses, as being the safest for one’s eyes. Its disadvantages were that NFC had no ‘name’ in the contact lens market and that users knew very little about GCL lenses or contact lenses in general. This meant that the advertising campaign had to be backed up by point of purchase sales promotion (in the form of a brochure) to ensure that the product survived. Moreover, it was clear that Ikon Breath O2’s technical advantage (the DK 150 factor) would not last long because rival companies would soon be able to make lenses with a differential coefficient that surpassed that developed by NFC. 5 On this occasion, because the advertising budget was comparatively small, the media buyer was not brought in until later stages in the campaign’s preparations. The AE in charge of the NFC account interacted individually with the media buyer and presented the latter’s suggestions to the account team as a whole. 6 As a result of intense discussions following this survey, the account team moved slowly towards what it thought should be as the campaign’s overall ‘tone and manner’. Ideally, advertisements should be information-oriented: the campaign needed to put across a number of points about the special product benefits that differentiated it from similar lenses on the market (in particular, its flexibility and high rate of oxygen-permeation). Practically, however – as the marketing team had to emphasize time and time again – the campaign needed to stress the functional and emotional benefits that users would obtain from wearing Ikon Breath O2 lenses (for example, continuous wear, safety, release from anxiety and so on). This meant that the advertising itself should be emotional (and information left to the promotional brochure) and stress the end benefits to consumers, rather than the lenses’ product benefits. Because the marketing team had concluded that the product’s end benefits should be stressed, copywriter and art director opted for user imagery rather than product characteristics when thinking of ideas for copy and visuals. However, they were thwarted in their endeavours by a number of problems. Firstly, advertising industry self-policing regulations prohibited the use of certain words and images (for example, the notion of ‘safety’, plus a visual of someone asleep while wearing contact lenses), and insisted on the inclusion in all advertising of a warning that the Ikon Breath O2 lens was a medical product that should be purchased through a medical specialist. This constriction meant that the creative team’s could not use the idea of ‘continuous wear’ because, even though so certified by Japan’s Ministry of Health, opticians and doctors were generally of the opinion that Ikon Breath O2 lenses were bound to affect individual wearers in different ways. NFC was terrified of antagonizing the medical world which would often be recommending its product, so the product manager concerned refused to permit the use of any word or visual connected with ‘continuous wear’. Thus, to the account team’s collective dismay, the product’s end benefit to consumers could not be effectively advertised. Secondly, precisely because Ikon Breath O2 lenses had to be recommended by medical specialists, NFC’s advertising campaign needed to address the latter as well as young women users. In other words, the campaign’s tone and manner had to appeal to two totally different segments of the market, while at the same time satisfying those employed in the client company. This caused the creative team immense difficulties, especially because – thirdly – the product manager of NFC’s contact lens manufacturing division was convinced that the high differential coefficient set Ikon Breath O2 lenses apart from all other contact lenses on the market and would appeal to members of the medical profession. So he insisted on emphasizing what he saw as the unique technological qualities of the product. In other words, not only did he relegate young women who were expected to buy the product to secondary importance; he ignored the marketing team’s recommendation that user benefit be stressed. Instead, for a long time he insisted on the creative team’s focussing on product benefit, even though the DK factor was only a marginal and temporary advantage to NFC. As a result of these two sets of disagreements, the copywriter came up with two different key ideas. The first was based on the product’s characteristics, and thus supported the manufacturer’s (but went against his own marketing team’s) product benefit point of view, with the phrase ‘corneal physiology’ (kakumaku seiri). The second also stressed a feature of the product, but managed to emphasize the user benefits that young women could gain from wearing lenses that were both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ (yawarakai). The former headline was the only way to break brand parity and make Ikon Breath O2 temporarily distinct from all other lenses on the market (the product manager liked the distinction; the marketing team disliked the temporary nature of that distinction). At this stage in the negotiations, the account executive in charge felt obliged to tow an obsequious line, but needed to appease his marketing team and ensure that the creative team came up with something else if at all possible, since 7 corneal physiology gave Ikon Breath O2 lenses only a temporary advantage. As a result, the copywriter introduced the word ‘serious’ (majime) into discussions – on the grounds that NFC was a ‘serious’ (majime) manufacturer (it was, after all, a well-known and respected Japanese corporation) which had developed a product that, by a process of assimilation, could also be regarded as ‘serious’; moreover, by a further rubbing-off process, as the marketing team agreed, such ‘seriousness’ could be attributed to users who decided to buy and wear Ikon Breath O2 lenses. In this way, both the distinction between product benefit and user benefit might be overcome. The copywriter’s last idea was the one that broke the deadlock (and it was at certain moments an extremely tense deadlock) between the account team as a whole and members of NFC’s contact lens manufacturing division. After a series of meetings in which copywriter and designer desperately tried to convince the client that the idea of softness and hardness was not a product characteristic, but an image designed to support the benefits to consumers wearing Ikon Breath O2 lenses, the product manager accepted the account team’s proposals in principle, provided that ‘serious’ was used as a back-up selling point. Soft hard’ (yawaraka hard) was adopted as the key headline phrase for the campaign as a whole. It can be seen that the marketing team’s analysis of how NFC should successfully enter the contact lens market met two stumbling blocks during the early stages of preparation for the advertising campaign. The first was within the account team itself, where the copywriter in particular tended to opt for the manufacturer’s approach by emphasising the product benefit of Ikon Breath O2. The second was when the Agency’s account team had to persuade the client to accept its analysis and campaign proposal. But the next major problem facing the account team was how to convert this linguistic rendering of market analysis into visual terms. What sort of visual image would adequately fulfil the marketing aims of the campaign and make the campaign as a whole – including television commercial and promotional materials – readily recognizable to the targeted audience? It was almost immediately accepted by the account team that the safest way to achieve this important aim was to use a celebrity or personality (talent in Japanese) to endorse the product. Here there was little argument, because it is generally recognized in the advertising industry that celebrity endorsement is an excellent and readily appreciated linkage device in multi-media campaigns of the kind requested by NFC. Moreover, since television commercials in Japan are more often than not only fifteen seconds long and therefore cannot include any detailed product information, personalities have proved to be attention grabbers in an image-dominated medium and to have a useful, short-term effect on sales because of their popularity in other parts of the entertainment industry. At the same time, not all personalities come across equally well in the rather differing media of television and magazines or newspapers, so that the account team felt obliged to look for someone who was more than a mere pop idol and who could act. It was here that those concerned encountered the most difficulty. The presence of a famous personality was crucial since s/he would be able to attract public attention to a new product and hopefully draw people into retail outlets to buy Ikon Breath O2 lenses. It was agreed right from the start that the personality should be a young woman, in the same age group as the targeted audience, and Japanese. (After all, a ‘blue eyed foreigner’ endorsing Ikon Breath O2 contact lenses would hardly be appropriate for brown-eyed Japanese. ) Just who this woman should be, however, proved problematic. Tennis players (who could indulge in both ‘hard’ activities and ‘soft’ romance) were discarded early on because the professional season was already in full swing at the time the campaign was being prepared. Classical musicians, while romantic and thus ‘soft’, were not seen to be ‘hard’ enough, while the idea of using a Japanese ‘talent’, Miyazawa Rie (everyone on the account team’s favourite at the time), was reluctantly rejected because, even though photographs of her in the nude were at the time causing a 8 minor sensation among Japanese men interested in soft-porn, she was rather inappropriate for a medical product like a contact lens which was aimed at young women. Any personality chosen had to show certain distinct qualities. One of these was a ‘presence’ (sonzaikan) that would attract people’s attention on the page or screen. Another was ‘topicality’ (wadaisei) that stemmed from her professional activities. A third was ‘future potential’ (nobisei), meaning that the celebrity had not yet peaked in her career, but would attract further widespread media attention and so, it was hoped, indirectly promote Ikon Breath O2 lenses and NFC. Most importantly, however, she had to suit the product. In the early stages of the campaign’s preparations, the creative team found itself in a slight quandary. They wanted to choose a celebrity whose personality fitted the ‘soft-hard’ and ‘serious’ ideas and who would then anchor a particular image to Ikon Breath O2 lenses, although it proved difficult to find someone who would fit the product and appeal to all those concerned. Eventually, the woman chosen was an actress, Sekine Miho, who epitomized the kind of modern woman that the creative team was seeking, but who was also about to star in a national television (NHK) drama series that autumn – a series in which she played a starring role as a ‘soft’, romantic character. Although popularity in itself can act as a straightjacket when it comes to celebrity endorsement of a product, in this case it was judged – correctly, it transpired – that Sekine had enough ‘depth’ (fukasa) to bring a special image to Ikon Breath O2 lenses. Once the celebrity had been decided on, the creative team was able to fix the tone and manner, expression and style of the advertising campaign as a whole. Sekine was a ‘high class’ (or ‘one rank up’ in Japanese-English parlance) celebrity who matched NFC’s image of itself as a ‘high class’ (ichiryu) company and who was made to reflect that sense of eliteness in deportment and clothing. At the same time, NFC was a ‘serious’ manufacturer and wanted a serious, rather than frivolous, personality who could then be photographed in soft-focus, serious poses to suit the serious medical product being advertised. This seriousness was expressed further by means of ery slightly tinted black and white photographs which, to the art director’s – but, not initially, the product manager’s – eye made Sekine look even ‘softer’ in appearance and so match the campaign’s headline of yawaraka hard. This softness was further reinforced by the heart-shaped lens cut at the bottom of every print ad, and on the front of the brochure, which the art director m ade green rather than blue – partly to differentiate the Ikon Breath O2 campaign from all other contact lens campaigns run at that time, and partly to appeal to the fad for ‘ecological’ colours then-current among young women in particular. This case study shows that there is an extremely complex relationship linking marketing and creative aspects of any advertising campaign. In this case, market research showed that Ikon Breath O2 lenses were special because of the safety that derived from their technical quality, but that consumers themselves were not interested in technical matters since their major concern was with comfort. Hence the need to focus the advertising campaign on user benefit. Yet the client insisted on stressing product benefit – a stance made more difficult for the creative team because it could not legally use the only real consumer benefit available to it (continuous wear), and so had to find something that would appeal to both manufacturer and direct and indirect ‘consumers’ of the lens in question. In the end, the ideas of ‘soft hard’ and ‘serious’ were adopted as compromise positions for both client and agency, as well as for creative and marketing teams. Concluding Comments Let us in conclusion try to follow two separate lines of thought. One of these is, as promised, the relationship between marketing and anthropology; the other that between advertising and marketing. 9 Although convergence between anthropology, marketing and consumer research may be growing, the evidence suggested by the case study in this paper is that huge differences still exist. Marketing people in the advertising agency in which I studied may be interested in anthropology; they may even have dipped into the work of anthropologists here and there. But their view of the discipline tends to be rather old-fashioned, and they certainly do not have time to go in for the kind of intensive, detail ethnographic nquiry of consumers that anthropologists might encourage. If anthropologists are to make a useful contribution to marketing, therefore, they need to present their material and analyses succinctly and in readily digestible form, since marketing people hate things that are overcomplicated. It is, perhaps, for this rather than any other reason that someone like Mary Douglas (Douglas and Isherwood 1979) has been so favourably received. In the end, marketing people aim to be positivist, science-like (rather than scientific, as such), and rationalist in their ad campaigns. They aspire to measure and predict on the basis of observer categories, if only because this is the simplest way to sell a campaign to a client. In this respect, they are closer to the kind of sociology and anthropology advocated in the 1940s and 50s (which would explain their adoption of Talcott Parsons’s theory of action, for example), than to the present-day ‘interpretive’ trends in the discipline, and thus favour in their practices an outmoded – and among most anthropologists themselves, discredited – form of discourse. So, ‘if anthropologists are kings of the castle, it is a castle most other people have never heard of’ (Chapman and Buckley 1997: 234). As Malcolm Chapman and Peter Buckley wryly observe, we need perhaps to spend some time entirely outside social anthropology in order to be convinced of the truth of this fact. Secondly, as part of this positivist, science-like approach, marketers in the Japanese advertising agency tended to make clear-cut categories that would be easily understood by both their colleagues in other divisions in the Agency and by their clients. These categories tended to present the consumer world as a series of binary oppositions (between individual and group, modern and traditional, idealist and materialist, and so on [cf. Lien 1997: 202-8]) that they then presented as matrix or quadripartite structures (the Agency’s Purchase Decision Model, for example, was structured in terms of think/feel and high/low involvement axes). In this respect, their work could be said to exhibit a basic form of structuralism. One of these oppositions was that made between product benefit and user benefit (with its variant end benefit). As this case study has shown, this is a distinction that lies at the heart of all advertising and needs to be teased out if we are successfully to decode particular advertisements in a manner that goes beyond the work of Barthes (1977), Williamson (1978), Goffman (1979) and others. Thirdly, one of the factors anchoring marketing to the kind of structured thinking characteristic of modernist disciplines, perhaps, is that the creation of meaning in commodities is inextricably bound up with the establishment of a sense of difference between one object and all others of its class. After all, the three tasks of advertising are: to stand out from the surrounding competition to attract people’s attention; to communicate (both rationally and emotionally) what it is intended to communicate; and to predispose people to buy or keep on buying what is advertised. The sole preoccupation of those engaged in the Ikon Breath 02 campaign was to create what they referred to as the ‘parity break’: to set NFC’s contact lenses apart from all other contact lenses on sale in Japan, and from all other products on the market. At the same time, the idea of parity break extended to the style in which the campaign was to be presented (tinted monochrome photo, green logo, and so on). In this respect, the structure of meaning in advertising is akin to that found in the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of structural linguistics where particular choices of words and phrases are influenced by the overall structure and availability of meanings in the language in which a speaker is communicating. That the work of LeviStrauss should be known to most marketers, therefore, is hardly surprising. Marketing practice is in many respects an application of the principles of structural anthropology to the selling of products. 10 Fourthly, although those working in marketing and consumer research take it as given that there is one-way flow of activity stemming from the manufacturer and targeted at the end consumer, in fact, as this case study shows, advertising – as well as the marketing that an advertising agency conducts on behalf of a client – always addresses at least two audiences. One of these is, of course, the group of targeted consumers (even though they are somewhat removed from the direct experience of marketers in their work). In this particular case, to complicate the issue further, there were two groups of consumers, since the campaign had to address both young women and middle-aged male opticians. Another audience is the client. As we have seen, the assumed or proven dis/likes of both consumers and advertising client affect the final meaning of the products advertised, and the client in particular had to be satisfied with the Agency’s campaign approach before consumer ‘needs’ could be addressed. At the same time, we should recognise that a third audience exists among different members of the account team within the Agency itself, since each of the three separate parties involved in account servicing, marketing and creative work needed to be satisfied by the arguments of the other two. In this respect, perhaps, we should note that marketing people have spent a lot of time over the decades making use of insights developed in learning behaviour, personality theory and psychoanalysis which they then apply to individual consumers. In the process, however, they have tended to overlook the forms of social organisation of which these individuals are a part (cf. de Groot 1980:44). Yet it is precisely the ways in which individual consumers interact that is crucial to an understanding of consumption and thus of how marketing should address its targeted audience: how networks function, for example, reveals a lot about the vital role of word-of-mouth in marketing successes and failures; how status groups operate and on what grounds can tell marketers a lot about the motivations and practices of their targeted audience. Anthropologists should be able to help by providing sociological analyses of these and other mechanisms pertinent to the marketing endeavour. In particular, their extensive work on ritual and symbolism should be of use in foreign, ‘third world’ markets. Fifthly, most products are made to be sold. As a result, different manufacturers have in mind different kinds of sales strategies, target audiences, and marketing methods that have somehow to be translated into persuasive linguistic and visual images – not only in advertising, but also in packaging and product design. For the most part, producers of the commodities in question find themselves obliged to call on the specialized services of copywriters and art designers who are seen to be more in tune with the consumers than are they themselves. This is how advertising agencies market themselves. But within any agency, the creation of advertising involves an ever-present tension between sales and marketing people, on the one hand, and creative staff, on the other; between the not necessarily compatible demands for the dissemination of product and other market information, on the one hand, and for linguistic and visual images that will attract consumers’ attention and push them into retail outlets to make purchases, on the other. This is not always taken into account by those currently writing about advertising. More interestingly, perhaps, the opposition that is perceived to exist between data and statistical analysis, on the one hand, and the creation of images, on the other, parallels that seen to pertain between a social science like economics or marketing and a more humanities-like discipline such as anthropology. Perhaps the role for an anthropology of marketing is to bridge this great divide.

Human resource management activities in healthcare Essay Example for Free

Human resource management activities in healthcare Essay There are many external and internal factors that might affect the health care organizations; however they are more likely to be affected by external forces that in turn affect their daily operations. Some of the factors that affect the human resource department of a healthcare organization are mentioned below. †¢ Economic factors †¢ Social and cultural changes †¢ Technological changes †¢ Legal changes HR planning and analysis Premeditated planning is a procedure that allows the health care associations to direct their future actions utilizing the resources that are accessible to them while keeping in mind the goals of the organization. There are some internal and external strength that have to be taken care of by the association and then a SWOT Analysis should be carried out. Some of the advantages of Human Resource planning are that it permits effectual use of workers and assists to replace the significant vacancies that have to be filled. Furthermore, planning suggests realistic recruitment projections, facilitates the staffing resources to be utilized more proficiently and efficiently and it also allows a improved focused investment in training and retraining, growth, career counseling and efficiency enrichment and also assists to uphold as well as to get better the level of variety. Human Resource planning is a very fundamental part of premeditated planning in addition to strategic HR planning, it assists to examine and classify the need for and accessibility of HR so that the association can meet its goals. Pynes, 2004). Projections aids in appraising the current condition and to estimate future demand and affairs by looking at the history trends of the association and is significant for the associations in a way that it assists to predict the retirement plans of the staff whereas the demand estimate helps to foresee the labor force that would be required in the future. EEO compliance EEO stands for equal employment opportunity and this expression was shaped by President Lyndon B.  Johnson when he marked Executive Order 11246 on September 24, 1965, formed to forbid federal contractors from discerning against workers on the grounds of race, sex, creed, belief, color, or nationality. Recently most managers have also added sexual compass reading to the directory of non-discrimination. The Executive Order as well required contractors to put into practice affirmative achievement plans to augment the contribution of minorities and females in the place of work. Pursuant to federal policy, affirmative achievement plans must comprise of an equivalent opportunity plan statement, an examination of the existing work force, recognition of problem areas, the establishment of objectives and schedules for mounting employment prospects, definite action-oriented plans to tackle problem areas, support for society action plans and the establishment of an internal audit and reporting structure. (EEOC, n. d. ). The reason why employment opportunity equal is important is because it is morally a right way to conduct oneself in the workplace, moreover it also helps in making the business prosper. The way that I move toward civil rights laws and employment civil rights laws, is I in fact think that they are all connected, they are all civil rights laws, anti-discrimination laws in the place of work, whether anti-discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, age, creed or nationality they are all entrenched in the similar bedrock standard and i. e. , that individuals should be judged in the place of work, based upon their capability to carry out the job and not based upon the threats, myths and typecast that one may have because of their race, or gender, or disability, or age, belief or nationality. That is in fact the unifying feature of all of the regulations in which the EEOC puts into practice and imposes, I think that is really significant that is both rising out of my own personal understanding and what I feel is right; that people should be judged based upon their ability to do the job and thats really the very simple core of what we do. And if you sort of take that notion, that principle, one step further, or take it one step, it makes business better. To the extent that youre making employment decisions in the workplace, whether they be on the basis of hiring somebody for a job or promoting somebody for a job, or treating somebody on the job, you ground those workplace decisions in the ability of that individual to do the job, rather than on a stereotype, or a fear, or a myth, because that person is from a different race than you, or a different religion, or looks different, or is older, or doesnt walk, or moves around or communicates in a different way from you. If you base those workplace decisions, upon the ability of that individual to do the job, you will get the most qualified person. You wont let internal biases, or fears, or myths, or stereotypes get in the way of selecting the best qualified person. Therefore I think, it is in best interest of the business to strip away those typecasts, those threats and those myths, in order to obtain the best competent person, because then company will really be improved. The Quotations page, n. d. ). Other considerations Some of the other considerations the human resource management in the health care organizations has to take care of are staffing, development of employees, compensation, health, safety and employee and maintaining labor management relation. Staffing The HR department must ensure that a fair selection policy is being used when hiring a candidate and everyone should be given an equal opportunity. Moreover, the job should be made available for every person who has the potential to do it and for this both internal and external recruitment should be opted for. Other than this, it is also essential to provide clear job criteria for the vacancies that are being announced by the human resource department of a healthcare organization. Full supervision must be done to ensure that the right candidate has been hired after which training should be provided to him. (Shi, 2006). Development of employees Health care organizations should invest in training to augment individual performance and organizational productivity, moreover it should also focus on developing management skills/development and supervisory skills, technical skills and communication skills and provide training to the employees who are new in the organization especially the ones who are working or are hired for lower-level positions in order to augment their performance. Compensation This comprises the wages and bonuses, vacation payment, sick leave payments, recompense of the staff and insurance policies, etc. , it is HR Department that is in command to expand and to direct the benefits compensation structure for the workers that serve as an incentive to promise the staffing. Their objective does not just come to an end after staffing but they also have to work on retaining workers and make them stay on with the organization. Once the employee is hired, it is the duty of the benefits coordinator to explain the benefits and the incentives the employee can expect from the organization so that the employee is aware about it in the beginning and he does not get discouraged later onwards. Health and safety It is essential for the organization to ensure safety of employees at the workplace and the health care organizations must their employees’ health and medical benefits and the employees should be given free medical services. Employee management relation and Labor management relation It is essential for the HRM at the healthcare organization to avoid any kind of discrimination in context with the age, gender, race or religion of an employee and it is basically the duty of the HR department to take care of this so that fair treatment is given to each and every person. Moreover, the HR department must also provide the assistance of negotiation in case any issues arise between the employees working at any level in the organization in order to ensure a healthy work environment. In the same way, the HR department also has to manage the labor and have good terms with them as well. (Leat, 2001).

UK Mixed Economy: Advantages and Disadvantages

UK Mixed Economy: Advantages and Disadvantages OBJECTIVES England is a country of 63.7 million people. Her economy is the largest economy of the four countries of the UK. UK has importance in textiles and chemical products, beside these the automobiles, locomotives and aircrafts are also the important industrial products. UNITED KINGDOM has the the 3rd in the Europe and 6th largest national economy in the world by the nominal GDP. ENGLAND is a mixed economy’s country, beside other country such as ICELAND, SWEDEN, FRANCE UNITED STATES, RUSSIA, CHINA and HONG KONG. These are the countries’ economy is mixed, in those economy society some of the part is manged by the government and the rest it controlled by the private firms and the individuals. Being the mixed economy the ENGLAND has to face some advantage and the some disadvantage. In below we will find its total idea. Definition of pure command, free market and the mixed economy Pure command economy: When any economy is fully controlled by the government, the government decide the allocation of the resourses and they answer the three questions of allocation. This type of economy is theoretical extreme example of economy, it the real world it does not exits, we just use this type of theoretical example for the comparison of the real world economy. Through laws, restrictions, regulations and the involuntary taxes the government force all allocation. In this type of economy the Government set the rules for the people, and if they do not follow the rules they will be punished. The communistic CHAINA and the former SOVIET UNION are the good example for the pure command economy. Five characteristics of the pure command economy According to the need of the nations the government provides the goods The government regulated the all price and moreover the public good will be the available for the public needs The salaries, wealth will be the same for every body There will be common goals, the technology will be seen the greater advantage because of the resources are being allocated correctly to achieve the goal No unfinished project, no inflation and the low unemployment. Free market: This type of economy is based on with the little or without any government control on the supply and the demand. In this type of economy market, the buyers and the sellers are allowed to business freely, where the mutual understanding on price is found and we will not find any form of taxes, subsides or regulations. In the simple way a full free market is summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society, here the agreement is free and mutual understanding for service or good between two parties . Mixed economy: In the mixed economy system we will see variety of the government and the private control, its looks like the combination of the socialism and the capitalism. We can’t find a single mixed economy’s definition, where we will find a degree of the government regulation of the markets and the a degree of the economy freedom. We can describe the mixed economy as the market economies with the strong administrative overlooking. England as a mixed economy England has the one of the biggest economics of the world, in this economy the Private and the Public contribution is same. Here the public ownership has been reducing since last two decades. While England was first industrialization in the 1800, the economy of England has shifted towards the service sectors over the years.While the industrialization was growing up rapidly, the service sectors were also developing significantly. Under the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the most of the state owned enterprises in the service and the industrial sectors were privatised since it was nationalised at 1940s. Now UK government owns very few of the industries such as the Royal mail. Advantages of Mixed Economy There are many reasons why many country choose the mixed economy for the economic development. In below we can see some discussion about that. (1) Job security To maximise the profits is the aim of the private firms, they are sensitive to the market.During the boom time, when the demand of service and the goods are going up, the employment of the job market rise quickly, but when the market is down like the recession period the private company will not keep the excess labour as it will increase the production cost, for this reason the private workers works in a higher risk of unemployment. On the other hand the government sector, they have to follow the labour and the laws, in the government sector they have to appointment new employees every year, and the certain number of workers will get the promotion every year. As in the government invested company the chance of unemployment is very slim, people are not in risk in the retrenched. Therefore in the mixed economy, it is very important to have the part of government involvement for the security of the people’s life style. (2) Avoid exploitation As we know that, the private enterprise is always oriented for the profit, so they never give the priority about the basic rights of human being, such as education, health care, may be they give very few concentrations about those matters. If this problems and negligence always continuing, it will widen the gap of literacy rate and income inequality between the two society of lower and the upper social class. For this reason in the mixed economy society, the government setup the many facilities such as NHS and the various higher institution to narrow the gap. (3) Regulation of monopoly firms When there is a single seller for the service or the goods in the market we called it monopolist, if a company has the control on the market over than 25% we can consider it as a monopoly, it is the example of the classic market failure, by the business sense. The cost efficient has less of incentive as in the monopoly market the monopolist don’t have that much competition or no competitions, to over come this problems the government can make the product market bigger. To do this, the government can breaking down the barriers to entry and to make the other firms encourage the government can make contest in the market, this type of tape can boost the market supply and in this way the consumers can get the service or the goods in the cheaper price, the competitions, productivity and the investment can be increase by this type of actions. In UK there are some regulators such as Ofwat.ORR, Ofcom who are doing the privatising . (4) Economic policy In many responsibilities of government the economic policy is the one of the biggest. As  the Government and the state economic advisers are overlooking the economic conditions of the country, they can propose or invest more money for the public sectors, such as they can invest money for the road constrictions, repairing or making building or the bridge, in these ways they can make more job opportunities for the betterment of the public economy or we can say to make more jobs. On the other hand the government can lower the tax for the increase the buying power of the people. We can give here a good example, THE BANK OF ENGLAND has reduced the interest rate for the people as they can borrow more money and can setup more business, that will be increase the job sector. On the other side we can see that the private sectors are only invest for make the money, they are not involving their money for the economy development of the society, in the other way they are not capable to over come the government’s financial capability. (5) Regulation of water and air pollution In aspect environmental matter, the private companies are acting as â€Å" Environmental Villain†, for their own profit the private enterprise always using the dear natural resources, continuously. They are consuming the natural resource and then eject the smoke, dumping the polluted solid wastes insensibly and also pouring out the nature destroying liquid . This type of private enterprise producers are said to be only concern about the MPB (Marginal Private Benefits) and the MPC (Marginal Private costs) in their decision making. This way the government should be mediate, could be set some type of the agreements with the private companies. For paradigm, the UK government is in a agreement to the Global and the European for the reducing target of the emergence of carbon dioxide by 80% in the time of 2050. In the year 2002 the European government introduced a scheme named ETS (Emission carbon trading), in the aim of limiting the outflow of the carbon from the big industries such as the energy, glass, brick making, steel and others. As this emission carbon trading has the positive effect on the nature, many other countries are introducing this type of the program in there country. (6) Narrowing income inequality If we see the in the pure capitalist economy society, we will see that the rich people are getting more richer and the poor are getting more poor. As less or no intervention in this type of economy after a certain time we will see the pyramid of the income distribution, in this pyramid, a large proportion of the people’s wealth and the GDP is control by the very few of the rich people. The income can be distributed by the involving of the state, first is the introduction of the dynamic tax system, where the rich people have to pay greater amount of the tax, beside this the national minimum wage also have the great effects on the economic development. In UK the minimum wage is increasing every year, on the other hand the unemployment, sickness benefits also help to reduce the distance and the bad effects of the economic deference between the poor and the rich people. More over this type of the government involvement can balance the national economy in the mixed economic states. (7) Provision of public goods dynamic there are two features of the public goods, the 1st one is the non rivalry, it means that the amount of the goods for the other users will not decrease even though whatever the consumption of the public goods. Beside this non-excludability is the another one. If one time this type of facility provided, no one will be slipped from the benefit. The private company will not be interested fro this type of the benefits of the free riders or the publics. For the definition of the free rider we know that he who get the benefits from a area but not doing any contribution to it, actually if we count the end result of having the benefited, no one will pay for the facilities. Here the government has to pay it from the money of the taxpayers’, for the example of this type of the benefits is the public road, bridge, lighting on the streets and also we can mention here national defense. Disadvantages of Mixed Economy Even though there are many economic facilities in the mixed economy policy but besides this we can see some of the economic crisis what England have to face for being mixed economy country. In below there is some discussion about the coming disadvantage What collisions could be happen In the mixed economy we can see the balance between the capitalism and the socialism, the mixed economy tries to help for the advantage of the capitalism and the socialism, this aim can be understood if there is good combination and the understanding but the real situation is, there is continuous encounters going on between the two sectors. This can make the situation more bitter and the noncompliance. Some time the private sectors can think that the public sectors are having more priority than them. It could be happen some time that the public sectors tries to avoid their worthleness and the wastefulness to the private sectors. In a one word the faithfulness and the mutual understanding none can really works perfectly in this situation, Insubstantial The mixed economy is base on the two inimical ideologies, those are absolutely opposite to each other. Though the mixed economy tries to combine the two different ideology together but mixed economy can be find doing less to both of them. For the conflict in terms, the mixed economy has been criticized. For detail, there can’t be the middle way in between the central direction and the atomistic competition. For the mixed economy there will be the mixed of the central direction and the competition but the mixed economy can not works good. If they are incomplete, the competition and the central direction become poor, and than they used the inefficient tools. After this, they used the alternative principles to minimized the problems, and the mixer of the two meaning that none of them will work properly. If the two systems relays on each other the result will be worse. Nature of short live From the above discussions we can see that the mixed economy always runs on the risk of the nature of the short lived. As the time passes by, a violent struggle chases between the two sectors for the name of the supremacy. The state may be fall into fail to regulate the private sector properly when this sector is flourishing. On the other hand if the public sector loses the power, the mixed economy can turn in to a capitalist economy, and it can be a socialist economy if the public sectors become more powerful. The symbol of the weakness Some people says that the mixed economy has a disease as the capitalist, and the â€Å"Socialisation of investment† is one of the attempts to restore it. In this way of view the mixed economy is the diseased phase of the capitalist economy, for this reason it called as â€Å" Capitalism in the oxygen tent. By this sense the mixed economy is the spurious capitalism. Endangers freedom Capitalism. It could be happen that a mixed economy can go into or lead to abridgement of freedom of the individual. It also feared that the control of the economic life and the problems into the planning can lead the mixed economy in such a position where the individual could lose the identity. Inefficiency of the public sector There is a record of the poor performance in the mixed economy. Redtapism, waste, corruption and the inefficiency is the main point ; by those, the mixed economy suffers with. Therefore the public sectors suffer from two reason, To increase production volume or Reducing the cost. Failure for pluck up the economic inconstancy The theory of mixed economy has become popular in many countries, spatially in the capitalist; as this economic policy is believe to be the good solution for pluck up the economic inconstancy, but somehow the economic problem still goes all the way. The economic inconstancy can be cut out only when the central plan can cover the entire economy, but in the mixed economy, the kind of regimentations those are assigned on the private sector leaves much to be intention.