Business Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Business Research - Essay Example This trend of use of celebrities in adverts is not likely to change in the near future. The media have contributed to this obsession through overloading the society with information and demonstrations of celebrities and giving them entertainment. The use of celebrities in adverts accrues benefits not only to the organization but also to the celebrity. Through the use of a celebrity, the consumer feels a positive feeling of association and security. The consumers deem their celebrities as idols, and once they recommend the use of a product, they deem such products as of high quality. Consumers like to be associated with celebrities, and they end up buying such products because they would like to be like the celebrity. In essence, the use of a celebrity makes a product stand out and be recalled by the consumers. The use of a celebrity makes the products or services stand out. Celebrity endorsement has been regarded as a way of getting the brand noticed amidst the high competition in th e market environment. There are huge impacts of the use of celebrities in adverts among consumers through audio visual commercials. ... Relevance of the Research Numerous studies have been carried out to identify the impact of celebrity endorsements on sales and marketing. Nevertheless, there is disagreement and debate on the precise role of celebrity endorsement on customer discernment towards the brand. Customer attitudes form the basis for increased sales and marketing of a product. Some studies note that there is a weak correlation between the two while others state that there is a strong correlation between the two. This research proposal will provide a basis on the acquisition of insights in the field of consumer discernments towards a brand or product and the impact of celebrity endorsements on them to influence sales and marketing. This proposal will structure a systematic review with respect to these associations to offer marketing economists a useful guide on celebrity endorsement. Because this proposal will assist clarify the role of celebrity endorsement in adverts, it will also serve societal and practic al relevance. For organizations, it is particularly significant to identify the positive and negative effects of celebrity endorsement on the discernment of the customer towards the product and brand so purchase decision making and purchasing behavior can be increased. This paper will give insights on the significance of celebrity endorsement through giving reference to an example of celebrity endorsements such as David Beckham by Adidas. An enhanced comprehension of celebrity endorsement unquestionably prompts managers to take on an effective policy by which sufficient customer discernment will be engendered. This will lead to increased customer purchase intents, which will positively affect the

Ethic week 3 Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Ethic week 3 Project - Essay Example According to Siekman (2011), women are denied advancement to higher positions as evident in Duke’s case yet women employees account for about 72% of the company’s hourly employees and with only 33% of Wal-Mart store managers. The Supreme Court ruled in favor or Wal-Mart and against women’s class action this has helped Wal-Mart in maintaining its policy of no unionized workers since this would give them a bargaining power. Legal issues refer to matters that are protected by law or regulation and involve all persons within their jurisdiction (Lehman & DuFrene, 2010). Ethical issues are matters concerned with doing what is morally right. However, an overlapping relationship exists between them in that what is unethical is considered to be illegal in some instances while in others, unethical issues are considered to be legal. In others, what is illegal is considered to be ethical. In this regard, businesses have to consider law and ethics as two different things. An example of unethical but legal issue is Wal-Mart’s labor practices and policy which has forced most vendors to set their commodities at extremely low prices for them to be sold in Wal-Mart Stores. For vendors, the best way was consider aligning their production costs to those of Wal-Mart since it is within its standards of ethical conduct. An illegal but ethical issue includes the recent Vermont that makes it illegal for pharmaceutical company to give $25 or more gifts to personnel or doctors and imposes $10,000 for each violation. For the pharmaceutical companies, the best way is to act within the law as they lobby legal changes. Often, credit history check on new employees is used to gauge their responsibility level in that employees should be reliable and their past credit conduct like paying bills would be best to proof reliability. Credit checks also include information about an applicant’s former employers who

catalina figueroa iglesias

catalina figueroa iglesias  ¿Es mà ¡s barato comer comida rà ¡pida en tiempos de crisis econà ³mica? Estudios demuestran que, durante este perà ­odo de crisis econà ³mica, las tiendas de comida rà ¡pida han visto aumentar sus ganancias de manera considerable.  ¿Quà © factores inciden en el aumento del consumo? El servicio es mà ¡s rà ¡pido que el de un restaurant tradicional, y los precios son mucho mà ¡s baratos. Tambià ©n es mà ¡s barato que comer en la casa, ya que el gasto que se produce, en conjunto, abarca los productos comprados, el tiempo invertido en comprarlos y cocinarlos y hasta el gas utilizado en la cocina o la electricidad del microondas. Parece la solucià ³n mà ¡s adecuada para quienes buscan gastar menos y quedar mà ¡s satisfechos, ya que debido al alto contenido calà ³rico de la comida es mayor la sensacià ³n de saciedad. En tiempos de crisis hay mayor conciencia del gasto, en cada aspecto de la vida, tanto en lo monetario como en lo no monetario, como el tiempo. Ademà ¡s, en tiempos de crisis el gobierno no cuenta con fondos suficientes para gastar en fines â€Å"menos importantes† como campaà ±as para promover una vida saludable y evitar el sobrepeso, lo que tambià ©n condiciona la conducta de los consumidores. La posibilidad de que aumente la tasa de obesidad es bastante alta. Sin embargo, a nivel individual como estatal, este eventual sobrepeso se traduce en mayores gastos estatales en salud y campaà ±as que apunten a evitar la obesidad, y en un costo muy elevado para los consumidores, ya que arriesgan su bienestar fà ­sico, psicolà ³gico y otros como su apariencia fà ­sica. Comparativamente hablando, es mucho mà ¡s valioso para la mayorà ­a de los seres humanos racionales llevar una vida saludable y conservarse bien fà ­sica y mentalmente que ahorrarse unos cuantos pesos en el almuerzo. En el corto plazo parece muy conveniente la alternativa de la comida rà ¡pida, sin embargo, al largo plazo perjudica tanto al individuo como al Estado.

History of Costa Rica :: Culture Cultural History Essays

History of Costa Rica Human habitation can be traced back more than 10,000 years but it appears Costa Rica was sparsely populated and a relative backwater in the pre-Columbian era. There is little sign of major communities and none of the impressive stone architecture that characterized the more advanced civilizations of Mesoamerica to the north and the Andes to the south. When Columbus arrived near Lim ¢Ã‚ ¢n on September 18, 1502 on his third and last voyage to the Americas, there were probably no more than 20,000 indigenous inhabitants They lived in several autonomous tribes, all with distinct cultures and customs. Costa Rica's only major archaeological site is at Guayabo, 30 miles east of San Jos‚‚, where an ancient city, dating back to 1000 B.C. and though to have contained 10,000 people at its peak, is currently being excavated. Many interesting gold, jade and pottery artefacts have been found throughout the region and are on display in several museums in San Jose. The Indians gave Columbus gold and he returned to Europe with reports of a plentiful supply of the yellow metal. But the adventurers who arrived to cash in found only hostile Indians, swamps and disease for their trouble. Several early attempts to colonize the Atlantic coast failed for the same reasons and for almost half a century Costa Rica was passed over while colonization gathered pace in countries to the north and south. In 1562, the Spanish main's administrative center in Guatemala sent Juan Vasquez de Coronado to Costa Rica as governor and Cartago was established as the capital the following year. With no Indian slaves to work the land, the colonists were forced to work the land themselves, scratching out a meagre subsistence by tilling small plots. The impoverished colony grew slowly and was virtually ignored by the Spanish rulers in Guatemala. By the late 18th century, the settlements that would buela had been founded and exports of wheat and tobacco were making economic conditions somewhat better. Central America gained independence from Spain on September 15, 1821. The news reached Costa Rica a month after the event. The question of whether Costa Rica should join newly independent Mexico or join a new confederation of Central American states resulted in a bitter quarrel between the leaders of San Jose and their counterparts in Cartago and Heredia. A brief civil war in 1823 was won by San Jose and Costa Rica joined the confederation.

The Evolution of Total Quality Management

Until the industrial revolution in the mid 18th century, most goods were custom made. Industrialisation brought about a fundamental shift from cottage industry production to large scale manufacturing. Simultaneously, industrial activity underwent extensive mechanisation. As explained by Ho, ‘craftsmen were diminishing and being replaced by mass production and repetitive work practices.’ The aim with the new industrial era was to produce large numbers of the same product which required processes to be put in place to control quality as it could not be left up to individuals. Cali explains that the shift away from the production of goods by individual craftsmen bought about the introduction of the assembly line between 1900 and1940 in America where products passed consecutively through various operations. Cali describes how ‘Standardisation became the trend’ adding that the prevailing management thinking at this time centred around keeping jobs simple and under close supervision. The expectation was that workers would meet standards only if closely supervised. The 2nd world war played a key role in the evolution of TQM. Factories geared up for mass production and were split into functional departments. At the end of the war, America undertook the rebuilding of Japan’s shattered economy. Amongst the many Americans that were sent to Japan to support this effort was Dr W Edwards Deming. He was instrumental in convincing the Japanese to adopt the principles of industrial efficiency and thus the development of the TQM theory was born. He advocated a climate of ‘continuous improvement’. â€Å"Listen to me† Deming told the Japanese â€Å"†¦and in 5 yrs you will be competing with the West. Keep listening and soon the West will be demanding protection from you†. Using his TQM principles, firstly with manufacturing and then to sales and other areas, the Japanese gradually developed their own version of TQM so that by the 1970s, they had begun to dominate some of the manufacturing markets. Deming believed they had done this because they had learned a fundamental principle of TQM that was summed up by Deming: â€Å"Nobody except the Japanese understand that as you improve quality, you also improve productivity.† During the 1970s, American’s position as the world’s foremost industrial power had begun to decline. For example, the U.S. share of the manufacturing market in 1970 was down to 17% from a high in the 1950s of 35% (Cali pg16). Brown believes that the reason for this decline can be partly explained by the way American companies practised the art of inspections in manufacturing products whilst their Japanese counterparts embraced the TQM consumer needs messages promoted by quality gurus including Feigenbaum who promoted the principle that â€Å"The total composite product and service characteristics †¦ through which the product or service in use will meet the expectation of the customer† (Feigenbaum in Brown et al, 2000, pg 194). The reaction by American firms to the success of Japanese was to adopt more of the principles taught by the American TQM gurus. Cali describes how ‘Many American companies achieved success by refocusing their attention on quality and by making satisfied customers their top priority.’ During the early days of manufacturing, inspections were seen as the best way to insure quality within a business. Ho explains that this is a process by which an operative’s work was inspected on a frequent bases and a decision was made on whether or not the individuals work was at a high enough standard. At the time this was seen as an acceptable way of insuring quality in a business, it become larger as the business grew and it created many inspection jobs. However, often as a business progresses, problems can be more advanced and therefore require more technical skill which quite often inspectors did not have due to a lack of training. This resulted in inspectors ignoring problems with products in order to increase output, which obviously led to poor products giving the business a bad image. So gradually, during the post-war years (as Cali explains) â€Å"†¦ a sea change began taking place in American management philosophy.† as managers began to understand that work of employees needed to be acknowledged and that workers needed to be consulted if quality was to be improved. In Deming’s book ‘Out of the Crisis’ he explains in his fourteen principles that inspection is not the way forward if a businesses is to ensure quality. He says â€Å"Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place† It is around the time that we begin to see the emergence of quality assurance with more emphasis focused on the training and development of staff, recording of data and the accuracy in which things were measured. Brown et all describes how â€Å"In the 1980s, leading-edge corporations sparked a revolution as they implemented Total Quality programmes across entire organisations. In such a programme the responsibility for quality is with the whole workforce. Each employee is responsible for the quality of their own job, their own actions. It could be said that responsibility for quality lies with 100% of the workforce. Another TQM guru, Joseph Juran also influenced the thinking at this time by promoting the need for education and training in the workforce so there is no need for inspection. He added that quality should be about â€Å"Fitness for purpose or use†. By the 1990s, TQM was becoming the buzz word in the global business world. Cali says in his introduction to TQM that â€Å"TQM is destined to become one of the most frequently used acronyms of the 1990s.† He went on to say that growing numbers of CEOs in the USA and abroad believed that TQM was the â€Å"†¦wave of the future.† Part of the evolution of TQM practice was the use of statistical quality control. This was quality control by using statistical methods. It was first introduced by an American physicist and statistician called Walter A. Stewart, famously known as the ‘father of statistical control’. His work was later progressed by Deming who applied statistical control methods in America during World War 2; he applied his methods to many strategically important products thus improving the quality and output of manufacturing. The term Statistical Quality Control (SQC) is used to describe the set of statistical tools used by quality professionals in modern quality management practice. An example of this method is Six Sigma. According to Motorola: â€Å"Six Sigma has evolved over the last two decades and so has its definition.† The UK Department for Trade & Industry explains that â€Å"Six sigma is a data driven method for achieving near perfect quality†. According to Berger, Six Sigma which began in 1986 as a statistically based method to reduce variation in electronic manufacturing processes in Motorola Inc is now considered to be the most popular TQM method in the history of TQM. Six sigma is an enormous brand in the world of corporate development. Today, more than 20 years on, Six Sigma is used as an all encompassing business performance methodology, all over the world, in organisations as diverse as local government departments, hospitals, banks and multi national co operations. The establishment of modern day TQM tools and technologies such as Six Sigma brings the evolution of TQM full circle. We’ve seen that quality evolution has become the quality revolution. In a relatively short time many companies have chosen quality as a strategic goal. As noted in Tom Peters’ and Nancy Austin’s seminal work, A Passion for Excellence, explains that ‘†¦. winners compete by delivering a product that supplies superior value, rather than one that costs less’ We’ve seen from the Japanese that a focus on quality can bring success in terms of market share and profits. Companies in the West such as M & S and Mercedes Benz have shown that improved market share comes from doing the right things, all the time. Crosby very interestingly emphasizes the principle of â€Å"doing it right the first time† which means instead of having an inspection on quality, just make sure it is already up to scratch. Cali believes that the ‘process of continued improvement’ was a key stage in the evolution of TQM. He suggests that the Japanese consider quality an integral part of product and process design. Cali adds â€Å"In the United States 20-25% of production cost goes to the quality assurance personnel who find and correct mistakes. In Japan, only 3 per cent of production cost is spent this way.† Cali explains that the Japanese use TQM methods by assigning the in-process inspection to individual production workers who complete elementary statistical analyses and are authorised to take basic corrective action. â€Å"The result is greater individual pride in workmanship and higher employee motivation† says Cali. . Surely this is the essence of TQM and brings the evolution of TQM full circle? In conclusion, this discussion has attempted to explain how the evolution of TQM can be traced back to the early days of the industrial revolution with its principles of inspection and focus on measuring the product to the sophisticated systems for improving and managing quality which we have come to know today. The key point to conclude with is that the change in quality management culture from ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ to ‘if it ain’t perfect, continue to improve it’ was not sequential nor was it down to an individual guru or country but as this discussion has outlined it evolved more through a combination of developments in inspections, quality control, quality assurance and ultimately in the way these processes were managed and delivered.

The European Parliament

The Efficiency of the Decision Making Process of EU Parliament Last Name First Name Course Name Course Number 08 October 2012 The European Parliament is separated into two legislations, primary and secondary. The primary legislation are the ground rules and basis for all EU action. The secondary legislation involves decisions, directives and regulations which are based on the objectives and principle in the treaties (Bungenberg, 2011). How does the EU parliament make a decision? The standard decision-making process is called â€Å"Ordinary Legislative Procedure† or the co-decision.This presents the direct election in the EU Parliament that decides together in the EU legislation in the Council, both the EU legislation and Commission Drafts. The EU treaties is the foundation of the rule of law, this defines every taken action by the EU which is founded on treaties that have been decided on democratic and voluntary approval of the EU countries. This is the Treaty of Lisbon, which developed the policy number of areas where the co-decision is employed (Bermann, 2011) The UE parliament also has more control to disapprove any proposal in the Council.The directives, regulations and other acts are established to set new EU treaties which are obtained by different forms of legal decisions. These legislation involve opinions, recommendations, directives and regulations, Some are creating, others are binding, some can be implemented to all EU nations, others not. The combined decision-making process of the EU parliament has shared to develop the effectiveness of EU policy when it comes to the environmental legislation in EU countries. The parliament, as veto power with co-legislator in the procedure of co-decision, has been important to organizational actors.It is connected to the EU commission, which is a non-voted body, to delegate with its concern rights to the drafting of the election (Avbelj, 2011). Moreover, its informal institutions and interactions with othe r nations, the Council of Ministers, National Parliament and the EU Commission, have been specifically significant in creating more legitimate and appropriate benefits for the proper application of internalizing many environmental externalities, common policies (Campuzano, 2011).The decision making of the EU Parliament is efficient because they are guided by the objectives, cohesion and sustainable growth of the organization. References AVBELJ Matej, KOMAREK Jan (eds. ). Constitutional pluralism in the European Union and beyond. Oxford:  Hart,  2011. BERMANN George (et al. ). Cases and materials on European Union law. St. Paul, MN:  Thomson/West,  2011. BUNGENBERG Marc, GRIEBEL Jorn, HINDELANG Sreefen (eds. ). International investment law and EU law. Berlin:  Springer,  2011. CAMPUZANO DIAZ Beatriz (et al. ). Latest developments in EU private international law. Cambridge:  Intersentia,  2011.