Sunday, May 24, 2020

Assessment of Grandmothers Character in a Good Man Is...

An Assessment of the Grandmother from â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† by Flannery O’Connor The grandmother who remains unnamed all throughout in the story is the protagonist and the central character of Flannery O’Connor’s â€Å"A Good Man is hard to Find, a tragic story of a family who decided to go on vacation but got killed randomly on the road by a criminal on the loose named â€Å"The Misfit†. She is endowed with a joyful spirit, a passion in life in spite of her age. She is a non-stereotypical woman whose old fashion clothing and beliefs contradict her strong, manipulative mind, an opposite trait of a passive and complacent woman in her time. The Grandmother is a smart woman who knows how to assert herself by trying to use all the†¦show more content†¦Finally, when she realizes defeat, the grandmother is the first one all set to go the next morning, an indication of the dynamism and flexibility of her character. This same manipulative character is so important in the development of the plot that it will set fire and conflict of the stor y. The grandmother persuades her son Bailey to make a detour and let the family see an old house off road. When Bailey says no, she again uses her grandchildren by telling them lies about the secret panel in the house where the old family that used to stay in that house hid their silver. The grandmother knows she ignites the children’s imagination and senses winning this time. This sends the children to a frantic tantrum and ultimately changes Bailey’s mind. The detour causes them an accident and their encounter with The Misfit. In her encounter with The Misfit, still high with power over her ability to changer her son’s mind, she does the same tactic to The Misfit, and hopes not to get killed by persuading The Misfit to change his ways. She evangelizes on his morality and flatters him by constantly telling him he is a good man and that he comes from a nice people (364). Her desperation is overwhelming as she desperately tries to reach out with The Misfit by ca lling him â€Å"one of her children† and touching him on his shoulders. This desperate action brings her to her death in theShow MoreRelatedMy Family s Project : My Life Essay4373 Words   |  18 Pagespiece together my genogram. Although all things discovered and recollected are not always fortunate on the surface, they subsist as basis to my personal resilience and strength as a gay man. The Family Since I am the index person, this genogram focuses on the â€Å"Zupka† family. I am a fifty year old middleclass gay man who lives with his long term partner of seven years, so my contemporary family is my partner Dale and our two cats Necropolis and Pandemonium. Dale has minimal contact with his familyRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words   |  1617 Pages mymanagementlab is an online assessment and preparation solution for courses in Principles of Management, Human Resources, Strategy, and Organizational Behavior that helps you actively study and prepare material for class. Chapter-by-chapter activities, including built-in pretests and posttests, focus on what you need to learn and to review in order to succeed. Visit www.mymanagementlab.com to learn more. DEVELOPING MANAGEMENT SKILLS EIGHTH EDITION David A. Whetten BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

The Global Financial Crisis - 3204 Words

The Global Financial crisis, which is believed to have begun during July 2007 due to a credit crunch was caused because there was a large liquidity crisis due to lack of confidence amongst the US investors in judging the value of the subprime mortgages. (Davies, 2014) Now let’s look at what happened at the 2008 global financial crisis. I am not getting into the details but just giving a simple overall picture of what went wrong. The years just before the crisis saw a flood of irresponsible mortgage lending in America. Loans were given out to subprime borrowers without proper evaluation on their credit history and repayment ability. These risky mortgages were then converted into low risk securities by government appointed (or funded) agencies to attract investors. Low rate for short-term funds led investors to borrow more money and invested in these securities. Now, these mortgages were collateralised against houses and land property. When the property value plummeted, the collateral value diminished making it difficult to liquidate (McKibbin, W. and Stoeckel, 2009). This is just one of the reasons leading to the crisis. The government lending money to people who have relatively low credit rating and not evaluating with strict standards, as one would do if they were private lenders led to a large pool of bad mortgages. The problem here is loans were sanctioned to people with poorer risks (low interest were made to promote borrowing) and resulted in higher failure percentageShow MoreRelatedThe Global Financial Crisis And The Crisis Essay1244 Words   |  5 PagesIntroduction The Global Financial Crisis, also known as The Great Recession, broke out in the United States of America in the middle of 2007 and continued on until 2008. There were many factors that contributed to the cause of The Global Financial Crisis and many effects that emerged, because the impact it had on the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis started because of house market crash in 2007. There were many factors that contributed to the housing market crash in 2007. These factorsRead MoreFinancial Crisis : A Global Crisis Essay1729 Words   |  7 PagesOverview: The 2008 financial crisis is notably one of the worst financial disasters in American history. It began with a large financial bubble, in which many investment, real estate, and insurance companies made millions. When the bubble burst, stock markets fell, these companies collapsed, and economies of supposedly strong nations were brought to their knees. Not only did the financial crisis severely affect the economy of the United States, but the international markets as well. At the timeRead MoreGlobal Financial Crisis : Crisis1213 Words   |  5 PagesGlobal Financial Crisis In July of 2007, the global financial crisis was initiated from the property market in the United States. The crisis was criticized regarding to a security called sub-prime mortgages. Sub-prime mortgage is an idea created by the financial institutions to gain more profit by easily giving loans to lower income borrowers or low credit rating borrowers. When the borrowers default the loan, the bank then have the right to take away the ownership of the property and sell it forRead MoreThe Global Financial Crisis642 Words   |  3 PagesThe Global Financial Crisis has had a huge impact on the global economy. The American housing market collapses, the house price drops significantly and the bank is losing lots of money, however, people are not pursued in court for money or declared bankruptcy. People tend to spend less on the due to their houses worth less than the bank has loaned originally and some of them are still committed to clearing off their mortgages. This causes less activity in housing market and sales market, hence moreRead MoreThe Global Financial Crisis1580 Words   |  7 PagesIn the following essay, I will briefly summarize some of the main events leading up to the global financial crisis. Following this, I will discuss the effect this had on the banks and ergo the credit supply, then examine how this contributed to t he corporate failure. I will also pay some attention to how the market imperfection can affect firms real decisions. Finally, I will sum up the main points of the essay. The banking panic of the fall of 2008 set economies around the world into a severeRead MoreGlobal Financial Crisis1408 Words   |  6 Pagesis explained the occurrence of the global financial crisis in 2008. It has shown that lots of companies have bankrupted and millions of people lose their jobs and homes around the world. Such as United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore and China. There is a sentence in this film has make me impressed, which is â€Å" the poorest always pay the most.† The director has separated this film into five parts, which are How we get there, The Bubbles, The Crisis, Accountability and Where we are nowRead MoreThe Global Financial Crisis711 Words   |  3 PagesThere is no smoke without fire. The global financial crisis caused from hundreds of thousands of decisions and changes from different areas. The America government, Wall Street and the Rating Agencies put on this world-shaking show together. And to be more specific, the top officials in politics and finance pull strings behind the senses. Applying Mintzberg’s ten management roles model as a frame, the America government, Wall Street and the Rating Agencies are correspondingly divided into three categoriesRead MoreThe Global Financial Crisis1474 Words   |  6 PagesThe global financial crisis has raised many concerns for the need to restructure the approach of risk and regulation in the financial sector (KPMG 2011). Figure. 4 has shown the structures of Basel III. It aims to increase the capital and liquidity of banks and therefore maintaining the stability in banking sector with full effect in 2019 (Banks For International Settlements 2011). EUROPE - Preparedness On 26 June of 2013, Capital requirement regulation (CRR) and directive(CRD) has been adoptedRead MoreGlobal Financial Crisis 1067 Words   |  5 PagesThe best evidence so far for the existence of an American empire, despite denials to the contrary, is the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The persistent removal of restrictions and oversights on the domestic financial system of the US, combined with the decisions of individual firms, other governments and foreign financial organisations, culminated in the singe largest depreciation of assets and currency valuations in history, surpassing even the Great Depression in its extents. The United StatesRead MoreThe Global Financial Crisis2317 Words   |  10 PagesDuring the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) 2008 there were numerous contributing factors. One can observe the start of the crisis as a cascading timeline starting possibly decades earlier with the change to a deregulatory culture. The prevailing political environment in the lead up to the financial crisis was one of de-regulation with a focus to economic expansion. This political imperative towards deregulation started under President Reagan in the US and culminated at the turn of the

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

BMW case study Free Essays

Case went UP on BMW BMW is in the midst of implementing changes to increase its sales and improve its Image in the US market. In this phase BMW should target achieving 100,000 units by the year 1 996 in order to hold a competitive place in the US luxury car market. The mall problem BMW is facing in the US market Is poor customer satisfaction Index which Is negatively affecting the brand Image. We will write a custom essay sample on BMW case study or any similar topic only for you Order Now BMW should concentrate on Improving customer satisfaction by way of investing Into opening Its own exclusive showrooms In key locations in the US which will serve as an example for other dealers to emulate. By Investing In customer experience of buying and owning a BMW car from Its dealers the company can achieve Its target goal and entrench Itself strongly Into the US luxury car market. The goal BMW should strive to achieve Is to sell 100,000 units by end of the year 1996 which translates to about 10% year on year sales growth from the year 1992. This goal also means BMW gets about 8% market share of the luxury automobile sector In the year 1996 considering 3% annual growth rate n the luxury segment. This goal is realistically achievable given that the efforts of the Second Great Opportunity have already started yielding results with a 23% unit sales increase for the year 1992. This is also very important to have this goal in order to keep up the momentum gained by the recent revamped advertising campaigns and strategies implemented. There can be an argument to make the goal as to increase market share to 10% but to achieve this figure the number of unit sales needed is higher than the capacity of BMW to produce vehicles and makes it come close to a ass producer which is clearly not in the Bum’s global strategy. The primary impediment to achieving this goal is the abysmal customer satisfaction score of BMW as given by the JDK Power Consumer Satisfaction Survey which is way behind all of the competitors. This is an indication that though the product itself is brilliant the experience of buying and owning the car leaves a lot to be desired which directly means lesser sales. It sets a trend of negative feedback on the brand image and impacts sales growth. The other impediment of the introduction the new Lincoln Continental Mark VIII model leading to stiffer completion on the sentiments of â€Å"Buy American†, is less of a threat due to the fact that BMW has already started the plan to build a new manufacturing facility in Suppurating , South Carolina, which will be operational by 1995. Buyers of BMW cars as per company records, are from the younger age bracket and are very demanding customers, which directly means that they are harder to satisfy. The primary place of Interaction for a customer Is the dealerships and franchises. They are the face of the company as far as the customer Is concerned and all their experiences of buying and owning a BMW car stems from the dealer they went to. The solution to Improving the customer satisfaction Is best achieved by enhancing the dealer experience. The detailed plans laid out by the â€Å"Integrated BMW Network Development Concept† should be Implemented at the earliest and should be the primary area of Investment for BMW. The effort of putting together the ‘Retail Operations Concept’ with the detailed ‘Dealer Operating System’ (DOS) has already been done but hasn’t been fully implemented yet. BMW across US which can serve as the showpiece of how a showroom and dealer should function as laid out by the DOS. This will go a long way into establishing best practices among the dealers and introduce uniformity in customer experience as the other dealers follow the example set by BMW. Also they should audit the existing dealer network and terminate the underperforming dealerships. All this goes a long way towards increasing customer satisfaction which in turn will lead to direct sales increase. How to cite BMW case study, Free Case study samples

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Segmentation, Targeting and Position free essay sample

Strategies for the selection of Marketing All marketing strategy is built on STP Segmentation, Targeting and Position. A company discovers different needs and groups in the marketplace, targets those needs and groups that it can satisfy in a superior way, and then positions its offering so that the target market recognizes the company’s distinctive offering and image (Kotler and Keller, 2006). a) Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning Segmentation A market segment consists of a group of customers who share a similar set of needs and wants (Kotler and Keller, 2006). According to the segmenting consumer markets, we choose to identify the distinct groups of customers on geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral. For geographic segmentation, it is dividing the market into different geographical units such as nations, status, regions, counties, cities or neighborhoods. We decide to focus on the markets of Hong Kong because we believe that Hong Kong is a potential market for fresh and healthy food. For demographic segmentation, it is dividing the market into groups on the basis of variables such as age, life cycle, life stage, gender, income, generation, education or social class. We identify that as the well-education, people understand the importance of health, people increase their health conscious and people started moving towards low fat and high fiber products to avoid heart disease and certain types of cancer. For psychographic segmentation, costumers are divided into different group on the basis of personality traits, lifestyle or values. As the improvement of the quality of life in recent year, people pursuing health lifestyle, people want to eat healthily so they care about how much calories and nutrition that they are absorbed. For behavioral segmentation, customers are divided into groups on the basis of their knowledge of, attitude toward, use of, or response to a product. As the change of the knowledge of a product, people know which products are unhealthy so that they can avoid it and choose the healthy products. Based on the above points, we can know that the trend towards being healthy is more and more important. However, people are more and more busy of work, they do not have time to cook for themselves so they always skip the breakfast. There is no doubt that breakfast is very important to our health, so we recommend Garden to create a new line to provide convenience, fresh and healthy food to customers. Targeting After a company has defined market segments, it can enter one or many segments of a given market and should make decision about how many and which customer groups to target (Dibb and Simkin, 1996). The selection of potential customers to whom a business wishes to sell products or services is called targeting. According to the segment marketing, we decide to concentrate the targeting on consumers who have health conscious. There are five patterns of target market selection. They are single-segment concentration, selective specialization, product specialization, market specialization and full market specialization. We choose the single-segment concentration to be the target market selection. That’s means we concentrate the marketing effort on one segment of the market. The firm will develop a product that caters for the needs of that particular group. Positioning Position is the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. The goal is to locate the brand in the minds of consumers to maximize the potential benefit to the firm. (Kotler and Keller, 2006). The position of the product is convenience, fresh and healthy food. There are some approaches of position. For attribute, we provide a meal for customers, not only to eat, but also healthy. For benefit, customers can seek the taste, nutrition, good value and freshness. For value, it’s fresh and good for customers healthy. For culture, this can raise the conscious of healthy in the social culture. For personality, the product is on behalf of fresh and health. ) Marketing Mix Strategies The marketing mix is a business tool used in marketing and by marketing professionals. This marketing mix comprises four components namely; Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These four components are popularly known as the 4Ps of marketing mix. Product A product is anything that can be offered to a market satisfy a want or need. Products that marketed can be a ta ngible good or an intangible service. At the heart of a great brand is a great product, product is a key element in the market offering (Needham, Dave, 1996). As product is very important to a company, we focus on the product differentiation strategies. As we are selling fresh and healthy food, we want to make a difference with the other competitors. Many different bakery stores provide a variety of bread and cake to consumer. All the bread has been earlier made by the store and the ingredient of the bread are limited and no choice with fresh vegetable and meat. Therefore, we focus on providing fresh and healthy food. We prepare a variety of bread such as multigrain, wholemeal and rye. These kinds of bread are all high fiber. And also prepare a variety of ingredient such as fresh vegetable, corn, egg, tomato, celery, cucumber, ham, chicken, salmon, tuna and so on. Thus, consumers can choose which bread and ingredient that they wants, then combine to a fresh and health sandwich. Not only provide sandwich, but also drinks. We focus on traditional Chinese drinks such as red date tea, wolfberry tea and so on. These kinds of tea are helps replenish vital essences and improve vision. The other drinks like honey green tea, wheat grass juice drink are also good for health. All the products that we provide are low oil, low fat, low salt and low sugar formula in order to achieve the needs and wants that consumers who have healthy conscious. Price Price is the amount a consumers pays for the product. The price is very important as it determines the companys profit and hence, survival. Adjusting the price has a profound impact on the marketing strategy, and depending on the price elasticity of the product, often it will affect the demand and sales as well. The marketer should set a price that complements the other elements of the marketing mix (Needham, Dave, 1996). As the price will affect the profit and sales, it is important to us to work out the price strategies. As we are not provide a fixed product, it depends on how many ingredient consumers choose, so we want to set a price by each ingredient. Firstly, we set the maximum current profit as our pricing objective so that we can estimate the demand and costs associated with alternative prices and choose the price produces maximum current profit, cash flow, or rate of return on investment. Then we select the markup pricing as our pricing method so that we can add a standard markup to the product’s cost for profit. Thus, it is easy and uncomplicated for us to formulate the selling price. Place The marketing channels are sets of interdependent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption (Kotler and Keller, 2006). The producer and the final consumers are part of every channel. As we are selling directly to the final consumers, we are on a zero-level channel, this is also known as direct-marketing channel. Place refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access. As we are selling products to consumers directly, we want to located our shop at convenient place such as alongside the railway or near a business park, for example, most of the consumers are likely to be office workers or students, they are hurry to work, to school and no time to prepare their breakfast, so located near the railway or business park is convenient for consumers dropping in for a breakfast, a sandwich during lunch. Promotion Promotion is all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product. Promotion comprises elements such as advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion (Needham, Dave, 1996). A successful product should be communicated clearly to the target market, that’s why promotion is an indispensable part. In order to promotion the product and penetrate the market, we suggest to use advertising to impress consumers what our product positioning is. Web-site is also a method to let consumers know more about product. As internet is well developed, social media provide a chance to us, we can connect with consumers through Twitter and Facebook to promote our product. We can create accounts on Twitter and Facebook, then advertise these accounts and encourage consumers to â€Å"Like† or â€Å"Subscribe†. We can use these social media to announce special deals and offer one-time discounts or free item to consumers. In addition, we can provide some sales promotion, such as increase word-of-mouth publicity for our product through free tastings, or create a card to consumers, when they buy our product they can get one chop. When consumers collect ten chops, they can obtain one free product. This can raise the sales in short term and increase the promotion of product. ttp://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Marketing_mix http://www. buzzle. com/articles/marketing-mix-strategy. html c) Brand Building Strategies Brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors (Kotler and Keller, 2006). Brands offer a number of benefits to consumers and firms and brands are valuable intangible assets that need to be managed carefully. As brand building can create a strong brand, it is necessary to build and communicate the brand messages. As we want to convey fresh and health as our brand messages, we create a symbol for the new line of Garden. The symbol is combined with original Garden logo and leaves. That’s means we use original Garden bread and add fresh ingredient to combine a fresh and healthy product provide to consumers. The reason we still keep the original logo because the logo already built up a strong brand image to consumers, when they see this logo they will think about the product produce by Garden. And the leaves make consumers think of freshness. A great logo is a key to create the kind of branding that lets our product impress in the minds of our customers.