An Analysis of Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd and the Effect of the Credit Crunch on Its Performance

|Dissertation Proposal | |An analysis of Sainsbury’s supermarkets Ltd and the effect of the credit crunch on its performance | |Year: 1 | |Course code:MN5251 | |Assignment No: 1 | |Programme Title: MSc International Management | |Candidate No: 0901143 | | | TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 3 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 3 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 4 LITERATURE REVEIW†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 5 METHODOLOGY†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 6 PROPOSED CHAPTER HEADINGS†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 7 REFERECES†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 8 APPENDIX†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 9 1. Introduction This dissertation seeks to examine Sainsbury’s supermarkets plc (Sainsbury’s) as a company and how they can use their established brand to branch out and gain potential growth in the industry, and to explore how they are coping with the recent credit crunch. Sainsbury’s has come a long way from being the market leader to dropping to the third position which it is struggling to maintain. This can be attributed to a series of wrong decisions and lack of foresight leading to their current struggles. They suffered from poor management in the past and this has reflected on their effort to catch up with the industry leaders. In addition, because of the recent credit crunch, banks have cut back on lending to both individuals and firms thereby swaying consumers to demand cheaper products and curb their expenditures. A question springs to mind: prior to the crisis, supermarkets have passed on rising food prices to consumers but now more than ever prices are low, so why the sudden change in tactics? Small businesses are going under due to lack of finance which hinders them from competing and offering low prices but this loss to society becomes a gain to the big supermarkets. Does this mean that the supermarket industry has less risk than other industries or has the supermarket industry adjusted strategically to cope with the global downturn? 2. Background of the study Sainsbury’s supermarket, a subsidiary of J Sainsbury plc was first opened in 1869 and is one of UK’s most reputable stores. They own 509 supermarkets and 276 convenience stores around the UK according to their website and are best known for their quality products that are priced fairly. It operates as an oligopoly where only few firms in the industry have majority of the market shares. Historically they have had the advantage of been in the industry a lot longer than its competitors who have now taken over in both performance and market share. Over a consecutive three month period ending in June 2008, Sainsbury’s reported 3. 4% increase in like-for-like sales which exclude fuel. They have recently boosted their ‘basics’ range in order to meet the growing demand and attract new customers. They have promoted their brand with the help of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver In the current economic climate, the supermarket industry seems not to be affected financially by the lack of global credit but they have had to change their operations strategically to meet the demand of customers in the recent economic downturn. The food industry runs a low risk trade because majority of its products are necessities unlike other industries such as the banking sector who have suffered greatly from the credit crunch e. g. Lehman brothers. Across the continent and the UK, supermarkets have not been adversely affected by the economic crisis. Contrary to the recent events, the supermarket industry has in general employed more staff globally than any other sector. E. g. Asda has pledged to employ 7000 new workers in 2009 (BBC), Tesco also plans to take up 10,000 new workers (Sky News). Some of the supermarkets are making plans to expand and open new stores in the current economic climate impaired with lack of credit. Companies have had to improve efficiency in order to minimise their cost and to increase profitability. 3. The Aims of the research project are to: †¢ Provide an assessment and summary of Sainsbury’s supermarkets plc: -using financial, operational and business performance analysis to compare them against their competitors. †¢ Analyse its position in the industry before and during the credit crunch: – they are currently experiencing increased sales during a recession. †¢ Investigate the reasons why Sainsbury’s is not the market leader: – they were the pioneers of the industry and now they are struggling to maintain third position ranking. Put together recommendations for Sainsbury’s on opportunities available to them that could lead to potential growth and increase customer loyalty: – suggest poss ible solutions and strategies that could help rebrand and reposition them in the industry. Personal aims include: †¢ Gaining more knowledge and skills in performing research through various techniques. †¢ Complete a compulsory component to secure an MSc degree in International Management. The objectives of the research project are to: †¢ Evaluate the supermarket industry. †¢ Examine the role of Sainsbury’s in the industry. †¢ Establish if there are still market growth opportunities. †¢ Accessing the impact of the credit crunch on the industry. Reason behind the recent increase in sales during the credit crunch. †¢ The effectiveness of their marketing strategy and its impact on their sales. †¢ The role and contributions of operations to Sainsbury’s. 4. Literature Review and limitations of the study Sainsbury’s has recently been losing customers to discount stores like Aldi and Lidl who offer lower value products at cheap pr ices and since then the company has rebranded and improved on its financial and operational performance but has still not caught up with the market leader. Their own brand ‘basics’ is a core strength to the business but they seen to be losing the battle of drawing consumers to purchase upscale and premium products from them. Sainsbury’s grew rapidly after its first store was opened but suffered great losses after the Second World War when turnover fell drastically but the company evolved and grew once again till they experienced a change in management style in 1992. David Sainsbury and his successors made great decision mistakes under their administration including the rejection of branching into non-food retailing amongst others. During this downturn, their competitors grew rapidly. An opportunity that needs s to be explored is the increase in demand for organic products while striving to minimise the threat of their lack of international market exposure. It is important to point out that porters 5 forces has some weakness of been static, lacks guidance on how to define an industry and not forward looking. With these flaws, it is also considered to be a useful tool in identifying threats to profitability, strategic planning to outperform rivals and helps to identify less competitive segments. A limitation to the report will be the sample size used which will be small compared to the total population and maybe income, age and taste sensitive. The result from the survey will be biased because it will be focused in the south west region of the UK and only few stores will be used. 5. Methodology and methods The research aims will be achieved with a combination of primary and secondary research 5. 1 Literature review The research method will be reviewing the literature on the supermarket industry with its focus being on Sainsbury’s. This will be achieved from the use of secondary data collected from textbooks and journals through Royal Holloway university library and other relevant resources including the use of commercial databases and internet search engines. The dissertation will adopt a case study method. 5. 2 Data collection and sample This report will use qualitative and quantitative data as sources of primary research. An analysis of original documents will be utilised including carrying out a small sample survey of 30 individuals each for Sainsbury’s and its competitors. This will entail the use of questionnaires with closed questions imputed into Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Telephone and face-to-face interviewing techniques will also be used based on having good and reliable contacts within the companies. Data will also be gathered from electronic sources, books, journal articles; news achieves and interviews to. 5. 3 Data analysis A categorisation approach will be adopted where all data collected are grouped according the topic area best suited for its analysis. This report will examine the financial and operational performance of Sainsbury’s in comparison with its competitors. The use of financial information gathered from secondary research, Sainsbury’s and its competitors (such as audited reports) which are less biased will be used to measure the performance of the business. The financial performance will be evaluated using the following: Ratio analysis, Competitor analysis and Financial statements. The operational performance will be analysed by studying the following: Distribution networks, Product quality, Pricing strategies, Promotion strategies and Store location. The report will use the 4-stage model theory to rate the position of Sainsbury’s operation. This will determine where they fit into the model and how to further develop other aspects of their processes which could act as a support to gaining competitive advantage. Strategic analysis theory will be used to evaluate the strategic position of Sainsbury’s in the supermarket industry. These theories will include: Swot analysis, Pest analysis, Porter’s five forces and Risk analysis. The Sources Sainsbury’s website, Tesco, Asda and Morrison’s website, Textbooks, Journals, The World Wide Web, Databases, Royal Holloway University, News achieves and MINTEL. 6. Proposed chapter headings Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Background Chapter 3: Literature review Chapter 4: Methodology Chapter 5: Research results and analysis Chapter 6: Conclusion and recommendations References and appendices References Collin Fisher 2007. Researching and Writing a Dissertation: A Guidebook for Business Students. Prentice Hall BBC online Asda creating 7,000 new UK jobs http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/business/7855482. stm Accessed 28/01/2009 Datamonitor, August 2008. Company Spotlight: Sainsbury’s http://web. ebscohost. com/ehost/pdf? id=22&hid=16&sid=fc656bea-c31c-4043-bbc3-82640ca0cf52%40sessionmgr7 www. sainsburys. co. uk Wheelwright, S. and Hayes, R. (1985) Competing through manufacturing in Harvard Business Review, (Jan-Feb), pp. 99-109. Sky News Tesco to create 10,000 new j obs http://news. sky. com/skynews/Home/Business/Tesco-To-Create-10000-Jobs-But-Posts-Poor-Christmas-Sales-Figures/Article/200901215202210. Accessed 20/01/2009 Appendix Timetable of dissertation 30th of January, 2009: proposal deadline February 2009: – week 1-2: collect literature papers – week 3-4: review research methods literature and research strategy March 2009: – week 1-2: design questionnaires forms – week 3-4: examine literature review April 2009: week 1-4: contact company to make appointment schedules – week 3-4: revise the questions of questionnaires May 2009: – week 2-3: formal proceeding with questionnaires – week 4: final collection of questionnaire and analyse of primary data from the case company June 2009: – week 1-4: start writing dissertation – week 1-4: keep refining dissertation writing and start to finalise dissertation write up July 2009: – week 4: start proofreading, finalise dissertation wri te up – week 4: buffer for contingency and start up the plan of dissertation binding August 2009: – week 1: finalise dissertation binding – week 2: preparation for submission deadline

A play that demonstrates the emptiness of the American dream ‘Death of a Salesman’ Essay

â€Å"A play that demonstrates the emptiness of the American dream†. How far do you agree with this assessment of ‘Death of a Salesman’? It is evident from the first view of ‘death of a salesman’ that there are definite, negative realities in the American dream. From writing this play, Miller has strongly illustrated that the American dream produces an image that human worth and values can be measured in financial terms. During 1940’s America, capitalism and consumerism was at it’s strongest with the American dream acting as a predator to the unsuspicious, determined and success-hungry businessmen of America. Although some of these men prospered in creating a successful business and earned a lot of money, others failed and felt that their own small achievements were empty and insignificant. In the play, Willy (like other American salesmen) has focused his life and attention on achieving the American dream and being a successful role model to his sons. Willy, however, does not accomplish success and instead falls victim to capitalism. His main belief is that popularity leads to personal and business triumph, and materialistic items prove that he is well liked and loved by his friends and family. Even though Willy cannot afford expansive gifts, the American dream is based on materialising love and values and Willy does this when he buys Biff and Happy a punch bag branded with ‘Gene Tunney’s signature’. Although at first this gift seems appreciated, rather than flatter and excite, materialism and brand names haunted Willy with debt and insecurity, yet he felt obliged to provide for his sons and determined to succeed in the American dream. Willy is a failure and his suicide attempts displayed an unproductive, exhausted man. He feels that what he does attain are empty achievements and his bad points and reasons for failure were obvious; such as instilling false values into his sons. It can be interpreted that, because Willy was ineffective, when he did achieve something, it was insignificant and empty; although some critics may feel that his lack of success may mean he put more pride in his minor accomplishments such as DIY around the house. This is shown when Willy is trying to impress his neighbour Charley by saying ‘Did you see the ceiling I put in the living-room?’ Willy and Linda had only one payment left on their twenty five year mortgage before the house is their own, and Linda feels quite content and happy about this. But Willy is still unhappy, questioning the reason for owning the house in the first place: ‘What point?’. Owning the house is an empty accomplishment for Willy, even though it took so long to achieve. ‘Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody left to live in it’. this alone demonstrates the emptiness of consumerism and the American dream. It is also illustrated that the American dream is an empty achievement when, at the beginning of the play, Happy and Biff are discussing their employment and future. At this point, Happy indicates that his manager’s success is empty, with him building a house that ‘he can’t enjoy once it’s finished’. Happy states that he is generally achieving everything that he wanted, yet they are not important to him; they are empty accomplishments. He even questions the reason why he is working just as Willy questioned the point of the house, because all he is achieving from working is pointless and empty success. It could be argued that Miller is trying to pursue the idea that it is the process of success that is more important than success itself. This strongly questions American values, as many people follow the American dream which holds the belief that material items are more important and that they represent personal and business victory. However, Happy is successful personally to compensate for his empty achievements as a clerk. He seduces the fiancà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½e’s of his managers because he has an ‘over-developed sense of competition’ – Happy takes what he wants even though he apparently ‘hates himself for it’, indicating the use of the bad morals taught to the boys by Willy. This again could be construed as an purposeless success in the process of achieving the American dream. Another point of perspective is that the women, like materialistic items and commercialism, may produce status in the American social system, but they also produce stress and not necessarily happiness. Willy is in constant competition with his neighbour Charley, continuously aiming to be ‘bigger than Uncle Charley’ and promising his sons this success. This point suggests that materialism and the American dream are more important than general well-being and human worth, and some critics feel that through this neighbourly competition, Miller is questioning the values of America as a whole. Willy’s mind and psychology also breakdown because of his obsession with the American dream, and his dreams become illusions. Eventually, Willy is fighting with illusions and reality and believes all he is worth is his insurance money, stressing the idea that the American dream is empty and human values can be measured economically. The irony of Linda declaring ‘we’re free’ at the end of the play is both ironic and tragic as although she is now free of debt, the empty American dream the illuded both Willy and herself is still holding her and others ensnared. On the other hand, in contrast to Willy, Charley is successful and has a fulfilling career and achieved the American dream. Willy is very envious of Charley, so much so that his pride, jealousy and stubbornness prevents him from accepting a job off Charley, even when he is unemployed: ‘I just can’t work for you, Charley’. Similarly, Howard, although cruel to Willy and fires him, is very successful. He has a happy, idealistic family life. He is able to afford materialistic goods, can provide for his family, is not overridden by debt and is generally fulfilled by his success and the American dream. Howard is very proud and boastful to have achieved the American dream and this is shown when he boasts his tape recorder to Willy, who is obviously resentful. Howard’s other material possessions appear to be unimportant compared to the tape recorder and are no longer required, showing Howard to be a rather wasteful person. This again implies that, in difference to Willy, Howard is extremely successful and is relishing in consumerism, finding the American dream very rewarding. However, another point of view could be that Howard, like Willy, finds the American dream empty as he is not enjoying what he has achieved, and is just replacing everything with a more modern or expensive model. In dissimilarity to Willy, Charley is a genuine, kind and caring neighbour, and is not at all in competition with Willy. Therefore, Charley values human worth and this suggests that American values are not concentrated mainly on accomplishment. Charley has not let the American dream influence his ideas of human worth and values, and he does not think that human life can be measured financially. He actually seems genuinely worried at Willy’s hints towards suicide and says to him ‘nobody’s worth nothing’ dead’. Charley is realistic compared to Willy, who is idealistic and living in his own fantasy. Through his success, Charley sees Willy’s faults and reasons for his failure and tries to make Willy acknowledge this by constantly asking ‘Willy, when are you going to grow up?’. Charley recognises Willy’s fantasies are wrong and he tries to help him. This shows that the American dream has not diminished Charley’s character as it has Willy’s and Charley’s success mean she can help Willy financially. This can be interpreted as Charley using his satisfying achievements to help Willy. For Charley, his dream has become a reality not an illusion. Charley may have also become victim to capitalism but, in comparison to Willy, he is thriving off it whereas it is destroying Willy. He is content with his success and feels fulfilled by his achievements, suggesting that the play does not entirely demonstrate the emptiness of the American dream but the fulfilments also. Miller himself argues that the play is not entirely based on the faults of the American dream although it does question American values very powerfully. He strengthens his argument because, although Willy is defeated by the American dream, Charley is entirely successful without creating personal flaws from his dreams of success. Bernard, his son, is also a genuine (as well as successful) person; a complete difference from Willy’s sons. As a result, ‘Death of a salesman’ almost perfectly depicts aspects of the American dream today. Our twenty first century ideals, dreams and illusions echo, even more so perhaps, the prosperous America of fifty years ago. It can be related to by people of our culture today as well as those from the 1940’s, making the powerful reminders of the illusion focused on in ‘Death of a Salesman’ completely relevant to our world. It is from this that I have come to the conclusion that, although ‘Death of a Salesman’ subtly contains stories of success due to the American dream, this play is a textbook illustration of the emptiness of the American dream and consumerism; where failure and disappointment eats away at happiness and confidence, but success is, similarly, an empty accomplishment.

Business Behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

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What My Parents Told Me (How I learnt about sexuality) - Essay Example That solely depends on one’s experiences. The experiences of one who has been sexually abused in the childhood or at the hands of a spouse can never be compared to those experienced by one who has always seen healthy romantic and sexual relationships. Love or hate about sex depends on how one perceives sex, and how one experiences sex in life. I have always been deprived of proper sexual education right from my adolescence into my adulthood, which led to my suffering from fear of sex, and HSSD later on in life. In this paper, I reflect upon how I learned about sex and sexuality when I was an adolescent, and how the lack of parental support and sex education led to my deteriorated concept of sex. I would also reflect upon why there is a need for a full fledge program regarding sexual education in schools. I would also describe what HSSD is, to explain what I was going through. To me, sex had always been a taboo. My parents had never spoken to me openly about sex and sexual issu es. When I stepped into adolescence, sex became a mystery thing for me. With no sexual education at home or in school, I thought about sex as a dangerous activity. Aunt Sally was there to guide me a bit. She had told me to go to her if a boy approached me or tried to lure me into sexual activities. She said, â€Å"When you start feeling like you want to be kissed by a boy come to me first, you and I will discuss birth control.† She wanted to tell me about birth control; however, her warning struck me in a negative sense, so I started fearing the word of sex and thought of it as a harmful activity. I was 12 at that time. My mother had told me her stories of horrible experiences about sex, and thus, I was unconsciously fearful about the whole thing. She was sexually abused at the hands of my step-father, and for her, sex was all about a dick and getting fucked. This story got validated when I was myself raped at the age of sixteen by my boyfriend. I had become pregnant, and I l ost my child five months later. This deteriorated the concept of sex and romantic love in my view. I had my first alive child when I was eighteen, in California. Even that did not improve my concept of sex. I was afraid to indulge in sexual activities or have a partner. I lost interest in sex, which proved that I was suffering from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSSD). My body stopped responding to physical stimuli regarding sex. I never felt like advancing to solicit sexual desires, and I cringed when the sun would set. I gained no sexual knowledge from the media. Actually, I loathed media for exposing my and many others innocent children to a wrong perception of sex. When I reflect upon my life experiences about sex, I become convinced that United States should have a national policy on sex education (Lindberg & Maddow Zimet, 2012). Many advocates are working in collaboration with individuals from health sector and sexuality education, to bring forward national sexuality educa tion standards. The main objective of these national standards and policies is to offer understandable, reliable and simple assistance on the sexual education, which is right for the age and developmental phase of students belonging to Grades K–12. There is need for such a national policy that addresses the issue of minimum core content. In other words, educators and parents need to decide what minimum level of sexuality should be taught to what age. Should a second grader be taught what AIDS means and how it is transmitted? Should a third grader be made familiar with the birth control programs? There is need to devise such a policy that fosters age-appropriate sex education. Without such a national policy, it is very likely that our children will keep on getting indulged in

E-Marketing Report for www.northbrisbanelandscapes.com.au Assignment

E-Marketing Report for www.northbrisbanelandscapes.com.au - Assignment Example A ranking of the four companies, North Brisbane Landscape, C Price Landscapes, Australian Native Landscapes, and Frosts Garden Centres, chosen in this paper, has also been done to deduce the comparative position of each company. The overall result suggested a lowly position of North Brisbane Landscape, the company discussed in the paper. The company was found to lack in its 7 I’s and 6 C’s components. The recommendations have been done, keeping in focus the deficiencies observed in these two components respectively. Introduction E-marketing is the marketing using digital technologies in order to help selling of the products or services. E-marketing provides businesses houses of any size an easy access to the general mass market within an affordable price range. Specific benefits achieved from e-marketing include the following aspects: global reach, lower cost, results that can be tracked and measured, 24-hour marketing, personalization, one-to-one marketing, etc (Develo ping an E-Marketing Plan, 2005, pp.2-3). Business websites should be maintained by every running company in order to propagate their products and services online. As websites are so important for a company, this needs to be audited on regular basis in order to determine their effectiveness as well as any broken link, i.e. a link which cannot be accessed by the user. A good website audit report would provide information on how often the website is accessed by the users, whether by subscribing or paid advertisements, etc (Website Audit – an Analytical Approach, 2007). In this paper, we will talk about North Brisbane Landscape and compare it with three other websites at the local, national and international levels, namely at local level - C Price Landscapes, nationally - Australian Native Landscapes, and internationally - Frosts Garden Centres located in Oxfordshire, UK. In this research, two tools of the 6Is and the 7Cs will be used to compare and evaluate these three websites. These websites belong to the same industry. The audit report of North side Landscape supplies says that the website of North side Landscape has been experienced in their services for the past 36 years but not experienced in the effectiveness of their website. This is because the website requires more information and features for providing information for their customers or even in dealing with their suppliers. The company lacks in features such as identification, individualization and interaction with customers (North Brisbane Landscape, 2010). The local company, i.e. C Price Landscapes, is better in terms of its homepage contents (C Price Landscapes, 2010). The information is clear and it has communication with the social network users like Facebook. The company chosen at the national level, Australian Native Landscapes, is far better than the rest of the company websites going by its contents and features. The website has made good use of color combination and provides correct li nks to guide its customers (Australian Native Landscapes, 2011). The last company chosen at the international level is Frosts Garden Centres in Oxfordshire. The company has a well maintained website. Interactive marketing Interactive marketing is the ability to address the customer, remember what the customer has said, and address the custo

Implications of USA not Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol Research Paper

Implications of USA not Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol - Research Paper Example The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main purpose of the convention was to stabilize the emission of greenhouse gases. States agreed that they would lessen the green house emissions in their countries1. It was also recognized that developed countries were responsible for emitting high amounts of green house gases. The convention did not provide any plan for action2 instead it just encouraged countries to lessen their emissions. A forum was held in Berlin that came up with the Berlin mandate, which was mainly a mandate by several countries to set policies, and measure that would see the enforcement of the targets set for reduction of greenhouse gases. A second conference3 was held in Geneva Switzerland that led to a declaration, which stated the climate change levels were alarming, and needed strong commitments that were legally binding. There was then held a third conference in Kyoto in Japan whereby countries signed the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol gave targets for greenhouse gas emissions of specific countries. The protocol provided that upon the ratification by 55 industrialized countries it would come into full effect4. What did ratification imply? Ratification meant that countries would implement the protocol within their national institutions. The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement negotiated by countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Kyoto protocol is a protocol that is aimed at reducing emissions of carbon-dioxide gases and greenhouse gases. This is seen whereby the protocol sets targets for countries that emit carbon dioxide and green house gases. This carbon gases include gases such as Hydrofluorocarbons, Perflourocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, nitrous oxide and methane. The difference that is seen in the convention and the protocol is that the protocol encouraged industrialized countries to control or otherwise stabilize their green house emissions by co mmitting such countries to do so5. The protocol states that if the participating countries continue in the emission of the green house gases they should engage in trading of emission. The protocol uses both national and international mechanisms to ensure the reduction of green house gases. When it comes to national mechanisms, the protocol encourages countries to enact laws that will enhance the purpose of the protocol and therefore reduce the emission of these gases. On international mechanisms, the protocol has come up with three mechanisms that include emission trading, clean development mechanisms and joint implementation6. The protocol Emission trading is the buying of credits from the countries that have managed to exceed the targets set for reduction in order to offset their emissions. The protocol also has several means of monitoring it targets. To begin with is the keeping of a registry whereby countries keep a registry log in the United Nations Secretariat to ensure that c ountries comply with the rules of the protocol. Secondly, a compliance mechanism ensures that countries observe their specific commitments7. There is also adaptation mechanism in the countries that are still developing in that they are provided with assistance to adapt to their climatic changes. In addition, there is

Globalization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Globalization - Essay Example The problem today is not that there is too much globalization, but that there is far too little† (Wolf 2005, p: 17). The citation was taken from Wolf’s book, which I downloaded from rapidshare. I can’t find the link now. But it is very famous and can be found in many articles. Check, for instance http://www.up.ac.za/dspace/bitstream/2263/5186/1/Bedford-Strohm_Public(2007).pdf Briefly, in this paper globalization is considered as a â€Å"process fuelled by, and resulting in, growing cross-border flows of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture† (Taylor 2004, p: 24). The article was taken from www.questia.com Here is full text of it: The truth about globalization. by Timothy Taylor To keep my economist union card, I am required every morning when I arise to place my hand on the leather-bound family heirloom copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and swear a mighty oath of allegiance to globalization. I hereby do asseverate my solemn belie f that globalization, taken as a whole, is a positive economic force and well worth defending. I also believe that the economic and social effects of globalization are exaggerated by both its detractors and supporters. In media coverage of anti-globalization protests, "globalization" often becomes a catch-all term for capitalism and injustice. (Indeed, for some protestors, referring to capitalism and injustice would be redundant.) But economic globalization in fact describes a specific phenomenon: the growth in flows of trade and financial capital across national borders. The trend has consequences in many areas, including sovereignty, prosperity, jobs, wages, and social legislation. Globalization is too important to be consigned to buzzword status. One world? The degree to which national economies are integrated is not at all obvious. It depends on your choice of perspective. During the last few decades, international flows of goods and financial capital have certainly increased dr amatically. One snap measure of globalization is the share of economic production destined for sale in other countries. In the U.S. economy, exports of goods and services were 4.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1965, but 10.8 percent of GDP in 2000. From a global perspective, exports rose from 12 percent of world GDP in 1965 to 22 percent of world GDP in 2000. In round numbers, international trade of goods and services has doubled in about four decades. International financial markets are not tracked as easily as cross-border flows of goods and services. But by a variety of measures, they have also expanded considerably, especially in the last decade. Total assets held by U.S. investors in other nations nearly tripled from $2.3 trillion in 1991 to $6.2 trillion in 2000. Conversely, total foreign-owned assets in the U.S. economy quadrupled from $2 trillion in 1991 to $8 trillion in 2000. Annual global flows of "foreign direct investment"--that is, investment that crea tes a lasting management interest, often defined as more than 10 percent of voting stock in a company--rose from $200 billion in 1990 to nearly $900 billion in 1999. A 1998 survey by the Bank of International Settlements found that $1.5 trillion per day was traded on foreign-exchange markets. Since foreign-exchange trading has been growing at double-digit rates, its volume now must exceed $2 trillion per day. For many countries, international finan

Describe and then critically analyze a recently published Article

Describe and then critically analyze a recently published pathophysiology research - Article Example There are two main species of malaria worldwide which cause the majority of cases. Plasmodium vivax has been considered for a long time as a benign and self-limited species, while Plasmodium falciparum is the species known to cause serious disease and death. Plasmodium vivax accounts for the majority of malaria cases in the Brazilian Amazon region. Recently there have been reports that malaria caused by P. vivax may be as severe as P. falciparum. The complications of P. vivax infection represent a significant global health menace, which needs focused efforts to work for its resolution. In severe falciparum malaria, as in many other systemic infections, most of the pathology that is described seems to be a consequence of an intense inflammatory response, produced by a pathological over-activation of the immune system and excessive cytokine release. However, there have been no previous studies on the inflammatory and immunological status of both mild and severe vivax malaria disease. I n order to understand the immunopathological events in vivax malaria, and to differentiate its pathophysiology from P. falciparum, it is important to explore the pattern of cytokines released in patients suffering from P. vivax malaria. Discussion The purpose of the study by Andrade et al. was to investigate the inflammatory and immunological status of both mild and severe vivax malaria cases, and compare them, in order to understand the immunopathological events in malaria by Plasmodium vivax infection. The researchers conducted the study in south-western part of Brazilian Amazon, which has an unstable transmission of malaria. They determined the active and passive cases of malaria, in both healthy people and those visiting the hospital. They included in their study patients with malaria admitted at the Buritis Municipal Hospital, and approached individuals, aged 15 – 70 years, with home visits, who lived in high malaria transmission areas. They took an interview from the pa rticipants who agreed to be a part of the study with questions about the symptoms of malaria – fever, chills, jaundice, etc. They also took venous blood samples from the participants for investigations. These investigations included peripheral blood smear and PCR for malaria diagnosis, and inflammatory markers’ blood levels: plasma cytokines IL-10, interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF). They also measured ALT, creatinine, and C reactive protein (CRP) levels in the blood. They then analyzed the data and used chi-square test and Spearman’s correlation to compare the inflammatory markers’ levels between patients with severe malaria, non-severe malaria, and asymptomatic infection with P. vivax. They reported from their results that patients with severe P. vivax infection were younger, had lived for a shorter period of time in the endemic area of malaria, and had experienced less previous malaria episodes than individuals with no malari a infection or asymptomatic infection. Strong linear trends were found to associate inflammatory markers with severe disease. Increasing plasma levels of CRP, serum creatinine, bilirubin, TNF and IFN-gamma were associated with increasing disease severity. These laboratory parameters of organ dysfunction and inflammatory cytokines started to decrease in the patients with

Equilibrium Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Equilibrium - Essay Example r cover all its costs; it may only need to cover the total variable costs incurred thus the rising cost of milking equipment will not have any effect on the firms in the industry in the short run. Consequently, with marginal revenue being equal to marginal cost, super-normal profits will be realized. In the long run, due to freedom of entry and exit from the industry, the surplus profits inform of the supernormal profits realized by the firms in the industry will attract new firms into the industry thus increasing the supply of the product (Chiappori and Ekeland 2006). Increase in supply results to fall prices as explained by the law of supply. The fall in prices results to the individual firms facing a falling perfectly elastic demand curve consequently resulting to a reduction of the surplus profits. This will continue to the point where the firms will no longer be making surplus profits, realized when the firm is just covering its production costs as a result of the increase in the cost of milking equipments. During this time, no more firms will be attracted to the industry when the price is equal to the average cost while the demand curve is a tangent to the average cost curve at the minimum point, a point when the firm is making normal

Game and Sportsman Essay Example for Free

Game and Sportsman Essay Sportsmanship does not mean only taking part in sports and playing the game in conformity with the rules prescribed, but also playing the game of life in the spirit imbibed on the playing fields. A true sportsman is he who observes all those rules in life which he has been taught to observe in games. One who has achieved skill or proficiency in games but does not learn to apply the principles of sports to life in general does not deserve to be called a sportsman. On the contrary, a man who gives evidence of possessing a sporting spirit in games is still a sportsman. Usually those who play games develop into true sportsmen because their character is molded by the training they are given on the field. It implies fair play. Just in games if any player plays foul, the side to which he belongs is penalized, similarly in the bigger game of life one must always be fair in ones dealings with others. Fairness, honesty, integrity, openness of heart and frankness -these are the qualities that a sportsman must display in life. One should not practice deception, should not bluff, should not cheat others and should indulge in diplomacy or humility. A sportsman never takes undue advantage of the weakness of his adversary nor does he hit below the belt. The art implies obedience to the leader. In games the players have to obey their captain and yield to him on points on which they are in disagreement with him. They must repose the fullest confidence in him. In life too, a sportsman yields to his superior even if he does not agree with him. Respect for discipline is an essential part of sportsmanship. Team spirit is another important element of sportsmanship. In games the various players must cooperate with one another if they wish to win a match. Without mutual co-operation success is impossible. Similarly in whatever sphere of life one may be, one must aid and be aided by ones friends if one is a true sportsman. Sportsmanship consists in working in full harmony with others. In cooperation indeed lies strength. Wherever a common aim binds a number of people together, they must display their sportsmanship by working harmoniously, without friction or mutual jealousy. Finally, the spirit of sportsmanship demands cheerfulness even in the face of a defeat. When two players play a tennis match, the loser does not cherish any grudge against the winner. In fact the loser congratulates his opponent on his success and shakes hands with him. Fair play, respect for discipline, recognition of the need for teamwork and cheerfulness even in the event of defeat are thus the dominant marks of a sportsman. Sportsmanship is worthy of admiration.

Auditor Ethical Standards and Auditing Strategies

Auditor Ethical Standards and Auditing Strategies Discuss the ethical standards required of auditors. The Auditing Practices Board (APB) has issued new standards governing the ethical conduct of auditors which commenced on 15 December, 2004 (Cosserat, 2004). The following lists the new Ethical Standards: Integrity, Objectivity and independence These new ethical standards also include the fact that client’s must also facilitate policies new standards is that auditors of a control environment appoint an ethics partner. This position entails the review of the firm’s procedures and policies which regard to compliance and as such it provides the associated guidance for partners. The new Standards recognize that for smaller audit firms it might not be practical for an ethics partner to be designated. The new Ethical Standards are a result of a number of international developments represented by either international organizations and or countries that have helped to bring about the changes to Standards. These are represented by the following: The United States legislation termed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which lays down the independence requirements for auditors. In particular it addresses audit firms that audit SEC registrants or participant in significant parts of the foregoing. A report that is titled ‘Rebuilding Public Confidence in Financial Reporting’, which is an international perspective that was developed as a result of the commissioning by the IFAC of an independent group to address the preceding, and As a result of the publishing of the ‘Principles of Auditor Independence’ which was put forth by the International Organization of Securities Commissions. The new Standards are what are termed ‘principles-based’ as opposed to ‘rules-based’. The preceding means that there are clear requirements as well as prohibitions. The key underpinning of this change provides for stricter compliance with the ‘spirit of intention’ and thus prevent the possibility of either a firm or person attempting to evade or avoid conformity with the rule. The effect of the foregoing helps to ensure compliance with ethical standards in that ‘intention’ covers a broader ethical parameter. In effect, one could avoid or evade breaking a rule, however the intent through either actions or the change in former action(s) could point to the definitive attempt to do so. This broader interpretation widens the scope of ethics and requires auditors to conduct their actions accordingly throughout the process. In a speech delivered by Douglas Carmichael at the AICPA National Conference on 12 December, 2003 (Carmichael, 2003) he sets forth the examples of ‘alleged’ audit failures of National Student Marketing in 1969, Penn Central in 1970 and Equity Funding in 1973 as instances whereby principle based auditing might have forestalled the problems. The foregoing is true of Enron’s collapse in 2001 and indicates that the broader scope or ethics afforded auditors under the principle based methodology provides better rules and guidance from which auditors can act. Financial, business, employment and personal relationships This segment of the new Standards addressed the varied relationships that can and do exist between clients and audit firms and their staff. This limits the nature of relationships and threats to the objectivity and independence of audits and prohibits those which the APB believes that no effective safeguards can be introduced. Long association with the audit engagement Associations of long duration poses potential threats, in particular with regard to those represented by publicly listed companies. Thus, the new Standards set forth the rotation of audit firm partners to introduce objectivity as well as independence. The new Standards sets that term as five (5) years as the continuous period limit as well as a break period of five (5) years for the rotation. Fees, economic dependence, remuneration and evaluation policies, litigation, gifts and hospitality. One important, and highly debated point is the requirement that no single client shall account for more than ten percent (10%) of an audit company’s annual fee. This figure is fifteen percent (15%) for non-publicly listed firms. Non-audit services provided to audit clients This segment of the new Standards identifies the general approach to non-audit services and applies general principles to various specific non-audit aspects such as: Internal audit services Accounting services Information technology services Valuation services Recruitment and remuneration services Corporate services, and Tax services Explain what is meant by the term Risk Based Auditing  and the advantages that accrue to the auditor in  utilizing a risk based Risk based auditing entails the providing of â€Å"†¦ independent assurances on the management of risks, and forming an opinion †¦ which sound controls have been implemented †¦ maintained to mitigate those significant risks †¦. Management has agreed upon† (Association of Chartered Accountants, 2002). Risk based auditing addressed some important aspects and questions which controls-based auditing does not answer. The benefit of risk based auditing is that it provides a basis for the auditor to have an examination of the business process and its risks. The foregoing provides a context for the results. Risk based auditing changes the manner in which internal auditors think as well as converse regarding control and risk. The auditor anticipates change and examines the manner in which management deals or is dealing with risks (McNamee et al, 1999) An advantage of risk based auditing is that the auditor is typically looking at control activities that were designed at some previous point to deal with aspects which may have long since been forgotten. In other words the internal auditor might be examining activities which might or might not be relevant in terms of current risks. Said controls could actually be extraneous as a result of monitoring aspects which are either no longer important or in existence. Another aspect is that essential controls could very possibly be overlooked as in a sense they do not exist yet due to changes in the business process. A good number of internal auditors have implemented the utilization of control self-assessment (CSA) as a means to address some of the concerns of management in capturing the state of the business process with regard to risk and control. It is important to note that control models both limit and define CSA so as a result these applications usually start with controls to the right and to the left of the internal audit. The limit of CSA is in its ability to explore the future. Risked based auditing has internal auditors anticipating change. As opposed to the old approach of focusing upon history, the reports generated by auditors address the present as well as the company’s preparedness level with respect to dealing with the future. The advantage is that internal audits complete the circle with respect to assurance of control regarding present operation plans and provide input to risk assessment with regard to the strategic plan. As a result, management places a higher degree of value on risk based internal audits than those of the traditional controls based type. The failure of the United States based Enron during 2001 has been a major factor adding to the impetus for improved financial reporting and auditing /Crossert, 200). The essential elements of today’s financial reporting systems are business viability along with profitability assessments (Bell et al, 1997). The foregoing is accomplished by key audit steps, auditing procedures concern ing strategy analysis, key indicators that are required as well as necessary to effectively monitor performance and risk assessment. Enron’s collapse has brought about standards that strengthen the responsibility of auditors in detecting fraud. The preceding requires evaluation of the effectiveness of an entities first management in preventing such misstatements as a result of fraud or other means. It also calls more attention to irregularities of a minor nature and thus appreciate their significance as the multiplicity of such small irregularities can be significant. Describe three (separate) codes of legislation under which statutory auditors may be required to make a report to the regulator in the event of non-compliance on the part of  a client with the law and provide examples where an auditor would be required to issue a report The Criminal Justice Act (Irish Statute Book, 20053) under Section 59 â€Å"Reporting of Offences† sets forth legislation whereby auditors may be required to issue a report to the regulator as a result of non-compliance by a client with statutes of the law. It describes under â€Å"relevant person† (Irish Statute Book, 20053) â€Å"(a) who audits the accounts of a firm†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Under the Act, an auditor is required to issue a report for the following: â€Å"(2) Where the accounts of a firm, or as the case may be any information or document mentioned in subsection (1)(b), indicate that – an offence under this Act (other than sections 8, 12 to 15, 49(1) and 52(8) may have been committed by the firm concerned, or such an offense may have been committed in relation to its affairs by a partner in the firm or, in the case of a corporate or unincorporated body, by a director, manager, secretary or other employee thereof, or by the self-employed individual concerned, the relevant person (which in this instance includes the auditor as described above), shall, notwithstanding any professional obligations of privilege or confidentiality, report that fact to a member of the Garda Siochana.† The instances referred to by the preceding are described as â€Å" (2) For the purposes of this Act a person deceives if he or she –â€Å" are as follows (Irish Statute Book, 20053): â€Å" 1. (a) creates or reinforces a false impression, including a false impression as to law, value or intention or other state of mind, (b) prevents another person from acquiring information which would affect that person’s judgment of a transaction, or (c) fails to correct a false impressions which the deceiver previously created or reinforced or which the deceiver knows to be influencing another to whom he or she stands in a fiduciary or confidential relationship â€Å" An example of the preceding shall be addressed under section (a). This refers to an instance whereby either contracts, or real property value of a corporations assets are miss-stated. Such can be accomplished through the utilization of a qualified or recognized third party or in collusion whereby said third party conducting said valuation is unaware of the addition of material miss-statements that inflate the value or price under said instances. A contract, for example, could be altered as to the agreed upon terms, payment, and thus said inflated price affects the outcome of an audit whereby the firm’s value of income is thereby heightened. The same type of back office procedure could also relate to an appraisal of real property such as plant, real estate or equipment whereby either its price, terms of sale or existence has been altered. These types of misconduct are the sustentative underpinnings. The foregoing broad examples represent the activities which resulted in the United States affecting such companies as WorldCom and Global Crossing. The miss-statement of various financial reporting areas caused the valuations of these companies to be inflated thus increasing the stock price before subsequent investigations uncovered the miss-statement errors. The bankruptcy proceedings and drop in stock price affected millions of shareholders and caused significant financial loss. Bibliography Association of Chartered Accountants. 2002. Definition of Risk Based Auditing. http://www.accaglobal.com/technical/responses/archive/650602 Bell, , T., Mars, F., Solomon, I. Thomas, H. 1997. Auditing Organizations Through a Strategic Systems Lens: The KPMG Business Measurement Process. KPMG Peat Marwick LLP, Illinois, Carmichael, Douglas. 2003. Professionalism is Primary. Speech delivered before AICPA National Conference 12, December, 2003, Washington D.C. Cosserat, Graham. 2000. Modern Auditing. John Wiley Sons. ISBN: 0470863226 Irish Statute Book. 2003. Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offenses) Act. www.irishstatutebook.ie McNamee, David, Selim, Georges. 1999. The next step in risk management – risk-based auditing. Internal Auditor, published by The Institute of Internal Auditors, Altamonte Springs, Florida, The United States

Social Media Approach As A Marketing Tool Media Essay

Social Media Approach As A Marketing Tool Media Essay Social media isnt a new Internet Hip that just popped up, but it has been around for years in the shape of forums and newsgroups. So what has changed? The introduction of various new tools and the tremendous increase of the internet user base in the last decade along with easier internet access gave the big push. To best define social media, we need to break it down. Social is relating to human society; the interaction of the individual and the group. Media is a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary). So, social media is a media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one-to-many aka traditional media) into social media dialogues (many-to-many). Primarily, social media depends on interactions between people -as discussions and integration of words -using tech nology as a conduit. Social media has been touted as presenting a fresh direction for marketing by allowing companies to talk with consumers, as opposed to talking at them (Wikipedia). It lives on the contributions and feedback of everyone. It eliminates the gap between the writers and the readers and forms a conversation-like content. As mentioned earlier, social media comes in the forms of various online tools or services. These can be categorized into numerous groups each with its own characteristics and usages. To elaborate, blogs, for example, aka web logs are an online journal for the writers to share their experiences, opinions, and thoughts while providing the readers the option add their feedback and comments to the topic. Social networks are online service websites consists of personal or commercial profiles of their users, their social relationships, and offer a variety of other activities (Wikipedia). Micro-blogging is a networking service that allows mobile users of cell phones and other Internet connected devices to stay attentive of activities within a group by receiving frequently published updates, typically of 140 characters or less. Text messages are uploaded to a micro-blogging server, and then distributed to group members (R. Kayne). Social bookmarking is a service that provides its users with the ability to store, organize, share, search, and rate bookmarks for web pages. There is also a specialized form of social bookmarking sites known as social news where users vote on articles and news. These are some of the social media variations available and are the most influential ones for businesses, There are others but are not mentioned as they are either hold no significant use toward the purpose of this document or reside outside its scope. 2. The gain of adopting Social Media Marketing Social media provides companies with the capability to closely reach a large number of consumers providing similar experience to direct marketing with much lower costs. It gives you the opportunity to take advantage of the power of word of mouth (WOM) or in this case electronic one. According to a study done by Steffes and Burgee from Towson University, the information the students gained from eWOM is more in ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡uential in their decision than speaking with friends in person (2008). Also, according to Alexa, A web traffic monitoring company, out of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, four are social ones and the rest are general search engines. Looking at Malaysias top 10, the number increases to five with the first spot occupied by Facebook -a social networking website (Alexa.com). Social networks like Facebook has over 350 million active users of which 70% are international ones with an average time spend of 55 minutes per day (facebook.com); MySpace -another socia l network -has over 100 million active users (myspace.com); Technorati has more than 133 million indexed blogs (January 2009) and 77% of active internet users are reading blogs (Adam Singer, 2009). Being able to influence even a small portion of a consumer base of this magnitude will produce noticeable results despite the difficulty of relating social activities to a percentage of revenue. Bear in mind that Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not to be used to sell, at least not directly. However, SMM is used to generate awareness and exposure to the business, reduce overall marketing expenses, increase traffic or subscribers to own website, create new business partnership, rise up in search ranking, improved PR, and an ending with more loyal customers (Michael Stelzner, 2009). If approached with intent to sell, internet users are now are savvy, they will be able to smell you coming and will shun you immediately. 3. The Way to Successful Social Media Utilization The use of social media as a marketing tool -if done right can yield into huge benefits. To fully utilize the social media, the organization should include it in their marketing planning as it needs a careful preparation to know the medium best suited for the companys activities. Unfortunately, lots of people look at social media as a free marketing tool, leading into little planning which in return yields no benefits and in some cases even negative ones. While it might not take much -if any- financial wise, social media marketing do consume a lot of time. On the other hand, the financial requirement makes it the best choice for start up companies and individuals. The first step in the plan is to see if social media is suitable for you as it is not for everybody. Businesses with products targeted at elderly or retired people, wont generate much benefits from using it. Also, companies with tight government regulation supervision shouldnt pick social media as a marketing tool. After e nsuring that you belong with the majority, whose social media engagement suits their activities, you have to decide on your objectives; the desired results from engaging into social media. This in return will help in choosing the best suited tools (Anita Campbell, 2009). This paper will cover in some details a part of these tools and their uses later. Within the social sphere, organizations cant push their messages or products to the consumer; rather they have to lure the consumer toward them. To be able to achieve that, the message should attain certain attributes to be considered attractive enough to lure them. First of all, the message should sound familiar to the target audience. People like to communicate with each other. Try reaching them, listening to their ideas and thoughts, and then formulate your message. Adding a budget to the mix in the form of incentives can encourage much better feedback as well as help spread the word associated with the incentives. The third element that can be thrown to the mix is fame. Providing the audience with a chance of fame, be it as small as it gets, it can really stimulate the audiences interest. The forth element is the fun, entertaining one, which is shared with most of the online activities. Adding the fun entertaining factor can excite the audience to spread the word. Lastly, the mes sage should contain the mobility factor; the ability to move from one person to the next (Richard Clark, 2009). Having at least one the first four elements along with the last one will encourage a beneficial response from the community. An organization should continue to listen to the community as long as it is in business. Since anyone can say anything, a company should always keep an eye on the sphere. Listen to what the communities say about it. This help in controlling bad press and empowering good ones. Of course, monitoring the blogosphere may seem impossible, fortunately, there are some tools that keeps the company notified whenever a new entry with its name appear in the wild. 4. The Way to a Catastrophic Social Media Utilization As beneficial as SMM can be, a misuse or unplanned approach can result in a total waste of resources. Lacking a staff member who can handle a frequent delivery of quality content can degrade the social effort. Also, the absence of a strong message that can create a community around it will result in a partial loss for the impact on people. Social media is global, so, cautious should be practiced at all times to avoid any offending messages. Not only that, a corporation should realize that social media is an open platform and there is no such thing as off-the-record and for that not only should they monitor their own channels but also their employees. There have been many incidents where companies had to fire their employees for inappropriate messages posted in their own personal spaces. One famous incident when Delta Airlines had to fire Ellen Simonetti a flight attendant over inappropriate pictures posted in her blog in the companys uniform (Ellen Simonetti, 2005). To avoid such inc idents, the organization should provide clear guidelines to what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to their social messages. 5. Blogs We have mentioned earlier different social media tools that can be utilized to the benefit of the organization. Now, we will discuss these in further details while providing real examples for the usages of these tools by other organizations or individuals. Starting with blogs, which as mentioned earlier is a website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material usually maintained by one person with few exceptions where they are maintained by a group of people depending on the function or goal of the blog. Blogs also give the readers the ability to leave their comments in an interactive format. This feedback mechanism of the blogs is one of the main reasons why blogs are one of the most important social mediums. From an SMM point of view, the feedback is the opinion of their consumers, their needs, or their dissatisfactions which make them a gold mine of information for the company. A lot of companies had already adopted blogs and integrated them to the ir daily operations starting with CEOs like Jonathan Schwartz (President CEO, Sun Microsystems) and George F. Colony (Chairman CEO, Forrester Research) and a long list others. So what does these CEO talk about? Most would think that talking about their companys milestones, new products or services, or future plan would be the obvious choice. But going back to the reason should most companies based their activities on social media is to raise awareness. Not many people will want to read about the companys achievements or its products, thats the purpose of the main website of the company. These CEOs blogs actually contains interesting and useful materials. If we take a quick look at George Colonys blog, we will find his personal thoughts, expectations, review, etc. but all with a unified theme, the CEO perspective. One of his entries were regarding the imminent dominance of Apples iPhone among CEOs over the Blackberry ones and listing iPhone features that the blackberry lacks. Norma lly, you wouldnt expect to see a mobile review in a research company CEO blog though he still managed to keep it relevant to the overall blog theme, but that what makes it interesting. Thats what makes people coming back to you. Because each blog will compete with millions of other blogs and to stand tall among the crowd, you have to distinguish yours. If you are a small business owner, your blog could be relevant to your industry. But regardless of the blogs theme, without valuable content, the blog will be a definite waste of time. Passing the CEO blogs and going further into the companies hierarchy, we can also find many of the management team, adding their own touch to the blogosphere like Tom Berquist (CFO, Ingres) and Michael Tiemann (CTO, Red Hat). Going further all the way to developers, analysts, etc., you will find plenty of other blog writers. Some companies have also what can be called an official blog. These official blogs are similar to an announcement board, where org anizations announce new products, technologies, or ideas of future plans, though in most of these cases, these companies already have interested loyal audience who are eager to listen to them. A good example is Nokia Conversations. This blog might seem to be a portal to announce new mobile phones, software, or services. But it is more than that, as the name suggests, Nokia tries to engage their readers as much as possible. They hold social activities sometimes, for example, a photo context for one of their camera phones. This blogs provides lot of valuable knowledge to Nokia. Based on the feedback from this website, Nokia fix problems, annoyances, or add missing features to their products from the comments and suggestions of their audience. This creates loyalty to their brand. It is a win-win situation for both; the customers get the product and the company gets the sales. Of course, when it comes to small businesses and entrepreneurs, the case is usually different as their first an d main objective is to raise awareness as oppose, for example, to Nokia Conversations where the main goal is the good publicity, the customers feedback and the loyalty. For those individuals, creating a blog, or creating a page in a social network -as discussed later -is not enough. For people to come to you, you have to get to them first; participation on other blogs -in the same industry -will inform the audience of your existence, your personality, and you interests. You cant tell people to come to you, but you can go to them, raise their interest and let them follow you back. One of the best utilizations for the power of blogs is demonstrated by Adobe Inc. They have create a comprehensive network that allows for personal interaction between people with common interests-those interests, of course, are related to Adobe and their broad range of software products. The result is an officially sponsored message board and blog site dedicated to informing the public about Adobe, answering questions about products and product applications, and whats more is allowing public input on the developmental process of future Adobe software titles. They have compiled all of these features together in a feed aggregator called MXNA (Adobe XML News Aggregator). According to Adobe, this tool is designed to monitor over 2400 Adobe related blogs and news sources all in one place. As a result, users can search through all of these sources for articles, tutorials, code samples, downloads, sample applications, information or help they need and if they have a question that doesnt ha ve an answer, they can post it to get their answers from Adobes staff. Thus creating communities that are completely and wholly devoted to being the definitive destination of any and all who seek answers about all things Adobe (Greg Brian Martin, 2007). From Adobes perspective, they have given customers the satisfaction that the company is committed to helping them get the most out of their purchase and making sure that the customer is satisfied with the product. Second, the originated communities also exist so that those users who have discovered solutions to problems they feel are common or troublesome (or both) may share these ideas with fellow participants of the communities (Greg Brian Martin, 2007). By giving the public the opportunity to not only ask when they need help but also, to answer and help other members of the community, Adobe has exponentially cut down on their customer support costs. Usually the return on investment in social media cannot be quantified, but in Adob es case we can somewhat relate to the result of their investments. Their costs of service and support went down by $6 million in the same period between 2006 and 2002 when the communities where introduced. 6. Social Networks The second tool of interest in this paper and one of the fastest growing is the online social networks. These networks function like an online community for internet users. It is different from site to another, but usually members share a similar interest e.g. Flixster -for Movies enthusiasts -or similar hobbies like Spoccer -for Soccer players. Yet, there is the general type where most of the crowd resides. Ahead of the crowd is Facebook follow by MySpace in terms of the number of active members. It differs from one site to another, but once you sign up to one of the services, all of them will suggest that you create your profile. Though the available fields to fill differs depending on the interest, they all ask for the same basic information whether you are an individual or an organization. Honesty is an important factor when filling the profile, as getting caught lying in a social network is more devastating than off one. After preparing your profile, you should try to look for p eople with the same interest to start connecting. Depending on the type of industry, you might want to look into different sites. The most common website among professional is LinkedIn, though, when you are targeting the general public Facebook is the best choice as it has the largest base of members. But if you are working in music industry, for example, MySpace is usually a better choice. Though, Willa Plank would argue that for small businesses, it is better to start in smaller more related communities as it is easy to disappear among huge crowds (2009). Social Media Marketing has been adopted by many of the large corporations like Dell, Hershey, and Kraft but one of the most outstanding is a community for moms called Vocalpoint by Proctor Gamble. The program recruited thousands of women who were picked because of their large social network. They were recruited to talk about PG products to their friends (Robert Berkman, 2008). But SMM is not exclusive to businesses, but it can also help hobbyists and individuals. For example, if you are in a garage band, as mention earlier, MySpace is known for its music services and it would be the best place for the band to start promoting itself. One of the best examples is OmniSoul (aka. The Crash Motive), a Newark, Delaware band. The five member of the group met at University of Delaware and they first hit when they won Battle of the Band competition there. Then the band began touring around their local area growing their fan base and the local radio started playing their songs. Eventually, the y developed their own website and their MySpace pages. Their individual pages were like any normal page with basic information. The band page, on the other hand, includes a profile picture of the entire band, an audio player with four of the bands original full-length songs in rotation, a list of upcoming tour dates, a list of friends, and a comment area where friends can leave messages to the band (Greg Martin, 2007). Derek Fuhrmann, the lead singer of the group had the following to say about MySpace, MySpace is an amazing tool for bands today to not only promote their music, but more importantly to keep in touch with their fan base. Making fans an intricate part of a bands world through daily interaction is really a brilliant concept. (Greg Martin, 2007). The band is hoping to get the nationwide exposure they need from the MySpace page. They hope that the social networking feature of MySpace will help their exposure, by adding as many friends as possible. The more friends the band has, the more people will come into contact with them. The exposure is not for the band name only, but also for their music. We mentioned earlier they had four full-length tracks in their space, any of their friends, can take these songs and post them on their personal Space, where it will be played whenever someone visited their website. On top of gaining the exposure, they also hope to strengthen its relationship with preexisting fans. They kept feeding them information of the bands day to day activities, news postings, the occasional MySpace promotional contest, and by posting on friends comment spaces, the band seems to be committed to reinforcing the ties it has already created. Their efforts paid off and on December 27th, 2009 they performed their last show on their first nationwide tour at Deer Park in Newark, DE. The success stories resulted from social networks are beyond numbering, however, for the sake of diversification, two more quick examples will be mentioned. Social networks were there to help corporation and small businesses, but they also exist to help individuals, too. Kristen Luke is a principal at Wealth Management Marketing, a small financial marketing advisory firm in San Diego. Her story with social networks started out with LinkedIn. There, she was found by Dow Jones News Wire reporter. The reporter formed some interest in Kristen, so she called her and quoted her in a couple of stories in Wall Street Journal. This turned into increased traffic on her website (Stephen Arnold, 2009). The second story is a bit different than the norm as Bradi Nathan and Terry Starr started by conducting a survey on Facebook before launching their business. The survey was targeted at working moms and moms who wanted to go back to the workforce. The idea behind the survey was to find out what mom s would want from a mom social network. The results of the survey are the bases of their blossomed business (David Spark, 2009). 7. Micro-Blogging Micro-blogging is one of the most recent tools to appear; yet, it is growing at an alarming rate. As mentioned earlier, it is a service that allowed its users to publish short messages of around 140 characters or less. Its limitation of 140 characters is overwhelmed by its tight integration with mobile phones. Most micro-blogging services provide the ability to add a new entries using SMS and also receiving others entries by SMS in addition to the regular browser from any pc or even cell phones. This ease of access is what helped burst its success. Though, the 140 doesnt seems like much to say, yet, the last couple of years have shown, as will be shown later, its devastating power. Throughout this paper, Twitter -the most successful micro-blogging service -will be used interchangeably with micro-blogging. Micro-blogging shares the some common grounds with the other social media; if you want to be followed, you have to be interesting to people. Whole Foods Market realized that fact and since their first day on twitter, they abide by that rule. Within a week of highlighting some fun things that were going on at specific stores, people started noticing them on twitter. From there the market kept getting more publicity and within a year, they had over a million followers (Cody Nolden, 2009). While Whole Foods twitters were related to their stores, the CEO of Zappos.com took a slightly different approach. He personally drives the corporate account and always has something interesting to say most of which are not related to work. But most of them had one thing in common, humor. Now, Zappos has over 1.6 million followers (Cody Nolden, 2009). Dell has a more direct approach toward its twitter. It uses the medium to send exclusive offers to their followers. By June 2009, they made over $3,000, 000 in twitter related sales (Antone Gonsalves, 2009) Interest will get you followers, but to keep them, the personal element should be added to the mix. JetBlue Airlines and Southwest Airlines have two things in common; operating in the same industry and they both twitter. Both companies offer similar messages in their twitters; however, JetBlue has 600,000 followers more than Southwest. By taking a closer look at both channels, you will notice that over half of JetBlues messages are in fact replies to other people where in Southwests the percentage goes way down. People tend to feel wormer toward a personal response (Cody Nolden, 2009). The best methodology to approach the micro-blogging differs by the industry, the goals, and the targeted audiences and limited by creativity. A group of tourist information enthusiasts at Coos Bay, Oregon, led by Katherine Hoppe, looked at twitter differently. Instead of taking a direct approach, they looked at twitter as an opportunity platform. The group kept looking around twitter hunting their towns name; looking for an opportunity to promote it. One day, Lee Hopkins along with his friend were planning a road trip from Seattle to San Francisco. They twittered their friends to suggest a place to stay, and one of them suggested Coos Bay. Katherine caught the message and contacted Lee and she was successful in persuading them to stop by the city. They stayed for a couple of days, enjoyed it, blogged their trip, and added what became a popular series of videos for the trip. Unfortunately, not all companies apprehend the concept of social media and micro-blogging. JCPenney has taken a strange twisted approach to reach people on twitter. They stalk anyone who mentions the word shopping in an entry. They ambush the writer with a message similar to check out JCPenney online at www.jcp.com à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ No wonder they dont have too many followers. Micro-blogging has been useful to many, useless to some, and it has been disaster to others. Twitter has a hidden ugly face too and it showed it to Horizon Realty Group a Chicago real estate company. The story began with one of the company tenants Amanda Bonnen. Amanda twittered to her 20 followers that the company didnt care about the mold in her apartment. Because of the comment, the company filed a law suit against her, asking for $50,000 in damages to their reputations. They argued that there was no mold in her apartment. The next day, the law suit became one of the hottest topics in the whole twitter network which mean, the comment of irritation to 20 twitterers became a hot topic to thousands and thousands of people. Social media users do not read all the facts carefully before flaming. Whether Horizon Realty was right or wrong, no one in the social network would see the $50,000 as reasonable, either. The ugly face of micro-blogging doesnt just scare, it usefulness goes beyond that sometimes for a whole city like the city of Phoenix, AZ. One night at the city, a group of friends found out that their car had been towed as a part of a towing scam thats been going on for over a year and a half. The group behind the scam didnt know that this group was one of the most active twitterers in Phoenix. As a result, within 24 hours, there has been an investigation, and the word has reached the mayor and city council. Within 48 hours, the local media got involved covering the story. Within 72 hours, the scam has been shutdown (Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, et al. 2009). So, what does the mean to businesses? Even though it makes twitter looks scary, it should only makes companies to jump in with both feet and eyes. Jumping in with both feet can help the company building a close relationship with the consumers. But thats not all; they should also keep an eye on what people say about them. Being there in the first place before disasters can help form a better response and ease spreading it around. 8. Social Bookmarking Social bookmarking started as a service to keep your bookmarks with you wherever you go. Then it was morphed into a full fledged social community to share sites of interest, articles, images, or videos. Other people can rate, tag, and comment on these bookmarks which might seem like a social filtration for these bookmarks. The usage for these services is a straight forward one and the easier it is you make it for visitors of your website to bookmark it, the faster it will spread giving the interest factor existence. NBC11 in California realized the benefit of social bookmarking so they started by adding the option to share their news on Digg with a click of a button. Soon after, they realized also that the news with pictures are the most submitted ones. Since the inclusion of Digg into NBC 11 website, the site traffic has spiked (Figure 1) (Adam Singer, 2008). Fig. 1 Traffic History for NBC11 before and after integrating Digg 9. Video Sharing As the name implies, the websites helps their member to upload and share videos with the community. So many people became famous overnight because of these websites. The top most viewed video on YouTube -the most popular video sharing website -for 2009 was for a 48 years old Scottish lady signing in British Got Talent TV show. Now that lady signed a contract with Sony Music and released her first album which is on number 1 spot in the top 200 Billboard list (Stan Schroeder, 2009). The business sector wasnt left behind; some companies were able to utilize the power of these websites too. One company to make a successful use of the video sharing is Blendtec. They introduced a serious of interesting, funny, and low cost advertisements which immediately gone viral over the network. Because of the series, the ads resulted in increasing the sales of the company five times (Samir Balwani, 2009). 10. Conclusion When traditional media giants like CNN or MSNBC jumps into the social media wagon, you realize that it is not something to be taken lightly. Social media is here to stay; it is not a passing event. For businesses, it is only a matter of what is the best way to take advantage of it and there is no special formula to answer that. It is not a one size fits all thing. But it is safe to say that the different tools of the social media can work well together and making use of more than one tool can produce better results. For example, simple things like linking your twitter or blog to your social network account, so that you can share your feed immediately in your social network. Another usage would be to twitter your blog entries. In the Coos Bay incident, mentioned earlier, the group created a Flickr -a social site for sharing images -album to hold images from around their town and encouraged the people in town to post their pictures. Social media marketing should be planned carefully, e ven though the financial costs might be nominal to none, but the time consumption factor isnt to be overlooked.

The History and Composition of Great Musical Pieces :: Music Musicians Composers Essays

The History and Composition of Great Musical Pieces Music is the most intangible art form. You cannot grasp or hold it, as you can other art forms. It is there for a minute, and it vanishes as soon as the last chord fades away. The great works of music are timeless. They remain with us after all the instruments have been packed away and the players have all gone home, in our heads, playing over and over. We hear them everywhere from shopping malls to commercials, even after their composers have been dead for hundreds of years. However, as technology grows and our lives get seemingly busier in this new millennium, the appreciation for this amazing art form has waned considerably. With digital synthesizers and greedy producers, the music that makes people feel their true existence has vanished. And I, being a devote musician, have grown up with the desire to recreate such music, to give people the chance to get swept off the dance floor and evoke great emotion. In order to do so, I am exploring the history of great musical pieces, so th at the facts behind the composers’ melodies, and their process in creating masterpieces will be as timeless as the music they made. I began exploring the musical world in second grade, when I begrudgingly started piano lessons following in my older sister’s footsteps. What began as a struggle turned out to be an ongoing experience I find in both my exploration of piano and viola (started in 5th grade). I am not a prodigal player, and whether I am a talented composer remains to be seen, but I find unexpected yet comforting roots among the musical world. With each day I learn more about various composers and get to know them and their styles. From Mozart’s pure melodies, Beethoven’s harmonies, to Chopin’s ability to seamlessly modulate from key to key I find finesse, detail and ease. I am fascinated by their abilities to pull a melody out of thin air and embellish it. I feel that I am not the only one gripped by the music composers create; the whole human race enjoys listening to music, whether it is classical, jazz, rap or one of the many other forms of music the world has to offer toda y. Music has always been an integral part of human life. Not only has it followed us throughout our history, but it has its own history.

St. Stanislas Kostka :: essays research papers

St. Stanislas Kostka Born at Rostkovo near Prasnysz, Poland, about October 28, 1550; died at Rome during the night of 14-15 August, 1568. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome, October 28, 1567, and is said to have foretold his death a few days before it occurred. His father, John Kostka, was a senator of the Kingdom of Poland and Lord of Zakroczym; his mother was Margaret de Drobniy Kryska, the sister and niece of the Dukes Palatine of Masovia and the aunt of the celebrated Chancellor of Poland, Felix Kryski. The marriage was blessed with seven children, of whom Stanislas was the second. His older brother Paul survived him long enough to be present at the celebration of the beatification of Stanislas in 1605. The thought of joining the Society of Jesus had already entered the mind of the saintly young man. It was six months, however, before he ventured to speak of this to the superiors of the Society. At Vienna they hesitated to receive him, fearing the tempest that would probably be raised by his father against the Society, which had just quieted a storm that had broken out on account of other admissions to the Company. Stanislas quickly grasped the situation and formed the plan of applying to the general of the Society at Rome. The distance was five hundred leagues, which had to be made on foot, without equipment, or guide, or any other resources but the precarious charity that might be received on the road. The prospective dangers and humiliations of such a journey, however, did not alarm his courage. On the morning of the day on which he was to carry out his project he called his servant to him early and told him to notify his brother Paul and his tutor in the course of the morning that he would not be back that day to dinner. Then he started, taking the first opportunity to exchange the dress of gentleman for that of a mendicant, which was the only way to escape the curiosity of those he might meet. By nightfall Paul and the tutor comprehended that Stanislas had turned from them as he had threatened. They were seized with a fierce anger, and as the day was ended the fugitive had gained twenty-four hours over them. They started to follow him, but were not able to overtake him; either their exhausted horses refused to go farther, or a wheel of their carriage would break, or, as the tutor frankly declared, they had mistaken the route, having left the city by a St. Stanislas Kostka :: essays research papers St. Stanislas Kostka Born at Rostkovo near Prasnysz, Poland, about October 28, 1550; died at Rome during the night of 14-15 August, 1568. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome, October 28, 1567, and is said to have foretold his death a few days before it occurred. His father, John Kostka, was a senator of the Kingdom of Poland and Lord of Zakroczym; his mother was Margaret de Drobniy Kryska, the sister and niece of the Dukes Palatine of Masovia and the aunt of the celebrated Chancellor of Poland, Felix Kryski. The marriage was blessed with seven children, of whom Stanislas was the second. His older brother Paul survived him long enough to be present at the celebration of the beatification of Stanislas in 1605. The thought of joining the Society of Jesus had already entered the mind of the saintly young man. It was six months, however, before he ventured to speak of this to the superiors of the Society. At Vienna they hesitated to receive him, fearing the tempest that would probably be raised by his father against the Society, which had just quieted a storm that had broken out on account of other admissions to the Company. Stanislas quickly grasped the situation and formed the plan of applying to the general of the Society at Rome. The distance was five hundred leagues, which had to be made on foot, without equipment, or guide, or any other resources but the precarious charity that might be received on the road. The prospective dangers and humiliations of such a journey, however, did not alarm his courage. On the morning of the day on which he was to carry out his project he called his servant to him early and told him to notify his brother Paul and his tutor in the course of the morning that he would not be back that day to dinner. Then he started, taking the first opportunity to exchange the dress of gentleman for that of a mendicant, which was the only way to escape the curiosity of those he might meet. By nightfall Paul and the tutor comprehended that Stanislas had turned from them as he had threatened. They were seized with a fierce anger, and as the day was ended the fugitive had gained twenty-four hours over them. They started to follow him, but were not able to overtake him; either their exhausted horses refused to go farther, or a wheel of their carriage would break, or, as the tutor frankly declared, they had mistaken the route, having left the city by a

William Blake :: essays research papers

WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827 William Blake was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Born in 1757 he stayed in London nearly his whole life. He began a life of crafts at the age of ten he was sent to one of the best drawing schools in England, Henry Pars'. At the age of 14, he took up the art of engraving as an apprentice. His artwork was mostly based upon spiritual happenings due to visions he had of religious figures such as the Virgin Mary. In 1783 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market gardener. The Ghost of Samuel (1800) During his lifetime, Blake’s work received little attention. When his work was read over, most people who read his it decided that Blake was confused or mad. However he is now regarded as a great artist in the fullest sense. Blake's first book of poems, Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1783 and was followed by Songs of Innocence in 1789, and Songs of ExperienceE 1794. His most famous poem "The Tyger", was part of his Songs of Experience. In these works the world is seen from a child's point of view. Blake was always in a state of economic poverty, due to his inability to compete in the highly competitive field of engraving and his expensive invention that enabled him to design illustrations and print words at the same time. However, he was independent throughout his life and Blake left no debts at his death on August 12, 1827. He was buried in an unmarked grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields in England. The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright In the forests of the night What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art,