Luxury and the Montblanc brand Essay Example for Free

Luxury and the Montblanc brand Essay It is generally acknowledged that western consumption of luxury in the 1980s and 1990s was motivated primarily by status-seeking and appearance. This means that social status associated with a brand is an important factor in conspicuous consumption. The baby boom generation luxury consumer has a passion for self-indulgence while maintaining an iconoclastic world view, which is transforming the luxury market from its ‘ old ’ conspicuous consumption model to a totally new, individualistic type of luxury consumer one driven by new needs and desires for experiences ’ . The expression of ‘today’s luxury’ is about a celebration of personal creativity, expressiveness, intelligence, fluidity, and above all, meaning. LUXURY AND POSTMODERNISM Recent arguments have been sounded that aspects of contemporary luxury consumption have reflected the phenomenon of postmodernism. Postmodernity means very different things to many different people’. Postmodernism is essentially a western philosophy that ‘refers to a break in thinking away from the modern, functional and rational’. In terms of experiential marketing, two aspects of the postmodern discourse are most relevant: hyper-reality and image. Hyper-reality refers to ‘the blurring of distinction between the real and the unreal, in which the prefix ‘hyper’ signifies more real than real. When the real that is the environment, is no longer a given, but is reproduced by a simulated environment, it does not become unreal, but realer than real’. The example of Bollywood to illustrate the so-called ‘Disneyfication’ of reality within the context of contemporary Indian society: ‘Bollywood captures not only the imagination in the form of song, music and dance but fairy tale settings, romantic melodrama and heroic storylines immerse the viewer in ‘simulated reality’. Traditional marketing was developed in response to the industrial age, not the information, branding and communications revolution we are facing today. In a new age, with new consumers, we need to shift away from a features- and-benefits approach, as advocated by traditional approaches to consumer experiences. One such approach is experiential marketing, an approach that in contrast to the rational features-and-benefits view of consumers takes a more postmodern orientation, and views them as emotional beings concerned with achieving pleasurable experiences. EXPERIENTIAL LUXURY MARKETING When a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on his behalf. But when he buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage him in a personal way. Experiential marketing is thus about taking the essence of a product and amplifying it into a set of tangible, physical and interactive experiences that reinforce the offer. Experiential marketing essentially describes marketing initiatives that give consumers in-depth, tangible experiences in order to provide them with sufficient information to make a purchase decision. It is clear that the fact that many luxury goods are almost always experiential puts luxury marketers in a unique position to apply the principles of experiential marketing to their activities. Dimensions of the luxury experience The term ‘involvement’ refers to the level of inter-activity between the supplier and the customer. Increased levels of involvement fundamentally change the way in which services are experienced, that is, suppliers no longer create an experience and pass it to the customer; instead, the supplier and customer are interactively co-creating the experience. The term ‘intensity’ refers to the perception of the strength of feeling towards the interaction. The four experiential zones are not intended to be mutually exclusive; the richness of an experience is, however, a function of the degree to which all four zones are incorporated. Those experiences we think of as Entertainment, such as fashion shows at designer boutiques and upmarket department stores, usually involve a low degree of customer involvement and intensiveness. Activities in the Educational zone involve those where participants are more actively involved, but the level of intensiveness is still low. In this zone, participants acquire new skills or increase those they already have. Many luxury goods offerings include educational dimensions. For example, cruise ships often employ well-known authorities to provide semi-formal lectures about their itineraries – a concept commonly referred to as ‘edutainment’. Escapist activities are those that involve a high degree of both involvement and intensiveness, and are clearly a central feature of much of luxury consumption. This is clearly evident within the luxury tourism and hospitality sector, characterised by the growth of specialised holiday offerings. The launch of the Royal Tented Taj Spa (Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces) at the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur (India) recreates the mobile palaces used by the Mughal emperors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with chandeliers, royal pennants and Indian love swings. When the element of activity is reduced to a more passive involvement in nature, the event becomes Aesthetic. A high degree of intensiveness is clearly evident within this activity, but has little effect on its environment such as admiring the architectural or interior design of designer boutiques. The six-storey glass crystal design of the Prada store in Tokyo conceptualised by the architects Herzog and de Meuron has become a showcase for unconventional contemporary architecture.

Analysis of Weinbergers Concepts of Cyberwarfare

Analysis of Weinbergers Concepts of Cyberwarfare In June 2010, analysts from the antivirus software company VirusBlokAda examined a computer in Iran due to suspicion of malware activity. Lurking inside the machine was a computer worm known as Stuxnet. Stuxnet possessed an array of abilities, among them was the ability to target the software that controls pumps, valves, generators and other industrial machines (Weinberger, 2011). Unlike other viruses that use forged security clearances to gain access into systems, Stuxnet took advantage of two digital certificates of authenticity stolen from respected companies (Weinberger, 2011). Furthermore, it exploited four different zero day vulnerabilities' which are security gaps that system creators were unaware of (Weinberger, 2011). According to Liam O Murchu, chief of security response of Symantec, once Stuxnet infected a system, the crucial parts of its executable code would become active only if that machine was also running Siemens Step 7, one of the many supervisory control and data (SCADA) systems used to manage industrial processes (Weinberger, 2011). Symantec also discovered that the majority of infections were in Iran and that the infections seemed to have been appearing there in waves since 2009 (Weinberger, 2011). Further investigation performed by Ralph Langner, a control-system security consultant, resulted in evidence that Stuxnet had been deliberately directed against Iran, the most likely target being Irans Nuclear Enrichment Facility in Natanz. (Weinberger, 2011). According to Langner, Stuxnet was designed to alter the speed of the delicate centrifuges which separated Irans rare but fissionable isotope uranium -235 from the heavier uranium -238 (Weinberger, 2011). Improper alteration of the cent rifuges could result in them spinning out of control and breaking. Although the Iranian Government refuses to admit that Stuxnet was responsible for the destruction of many centrifuges at Natanz, the results from Langner and others is credited by reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA documented a precipitous drop in the number of operating centrifuges in 2009, the year that many observers think Stuxnet infected computers in Iran (Weinberger, 2011). There is no evidence beyond rumor that Israel or the US Government may have been behind the attack. Symantec notes that a name embedded in Stuxnets code, Myrtus, could be a reference to a biblical story about a planned massacre of Jews in Persia (Weinberger, 2011). Moreover, Langner believes that the U.S. Government could have been behind the attack considering they possess both the required expertise in cyber warfare and a long-standing goal of thwarting Irans nuclear ambitions (Weinberger, 2011). Irrespective of Stuxnets creator, the main growing fear is who will redesign it. Stuxnet was the first weapon created entirely out of code and proved that groups or nations could launch a cyber-attack against a societys vital infrastructures (Weinberger, 2011). Many of the investigators that studied Stuxnet concluded that it essentially laid out a blueprint for future attackers to learn from and perhaps improve (Weinberger, 2011). Stuxnet opened a new era of warfare and with its code available online for anyone to study and improve, it has computer scientists like Yuval Elovici concerned that the next wave of cyber-attacks would be much stronger than the impact of setting several atomic bombs on major cities (Weinberger, 2011). In IS THIS THE START OF CYBERWARFARE? Sharon Weinberger questions whether or not Stuxnet started a new era of warfare. One might find that Weinbergers use of supporting evidence from many credible sources imposes a compelling answer to an interesting topic of study. Weinberger emphasizes the inferred answer is indeed yes, Stuxnet introduced a new era of warfare. Statements such as Stuxnet is the harbinger of a new generation of cyber threats and that it provided chilling proof that groups or nations could launch a cyber-attack against a societys vital infrastructures are well validated by the many investigators that studied it (Weinberger, 2011). Overall, one would appreciate Weinbergers supportive writing style and the information she presented in this article. Weinberger was heavily resourceful and made certain that every point she made was reinforced by credible supporting evidence. Furthermore, one would relish how she tailored her article to a broader audience. Easy and straightforward for a non tech-savvy individual to understand, and yet interesting to captivate the minds of those that are tech-savvy, she capitalized on the statements made from some of the most respected cyber security experts in the world. As a student who often finds himself being the rescue to many of his friends or familys infected PCs, choosing Stuxnet as my topic of study seemed like the obvious choice. I have always been very interested in computer malware since the day my laptop first got infected. I was bombarded with annoying ads telling me that I had a virus on board and that I needed to type in my credit card number to purchase antivirus protection. Although very annoying, it had me asking myself many questions like how did this happen, isnt Windows secure and best of all how do I delete my browsing history. Since then, I have always had a keen interest in malware and have developed a hobby of testing the capabilities of different antivirus programs in VMware Player. I find many things interesting about Stuxnet but the thing I find most interesting is how it spread. Although Stuxnet possessed the ability to spread through networks, it couldnt infect industrial control systems via the internet since a majority of them lack internet connectivity to protect them from malware and hostile takeover. (Weinberger, 2011). To get past this obstacle, Stuxnet had the ability to covertly install itself on a USB drive (Weinberger, 2011). Like a biological virus, Stuxnet used humans (plant operators specifically) as its host of transmission. If one careless plant operator were to plug in an infected USB flash drive into a control-system computer, Stuxnet would begin its destruction.   Weinberger, S. (2011, June 9). IS THIS THE START OF CYBERWARFARE? Nature, 142-145. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/docview/872363390?accountid=14694 Last years Stuxnet virus attack represented a new kind of threat to critical infrastructure. Just over a year ago, a computer in Iran started repeatedly rebooting itself, seemingly without reason. Suspecting some kind of malicious software (malware), analysts at VirusBlokAda, an antivirus-software company in Minsk, examined the misbehaving machine over the Internet, and soon found that they were right. Disturbingly so: the code they extracted from the Iranian machine proved to be a previously unknown computer virus of unprecedented size and complexity. On 17 June 2010, VirusBlokAda issued a worldwide alert that set off an international race to track down what came to be known as Stuxnet: the most sophisticated computer malware yet found and the harbinger of a new generation of cyberthreats. Unlike conventional malware, which does its damage only in the virtual world of computers and networks, Stuxnet would turn out to target the software that controls pumps, valves, generators and other industrial machines. It was the first time wed analysed a threat that could cause real-world damage, that could actually cause some machine to break, that might be able to cause an explosion, says Liam O Murchu, chief of security response for the worlds largest computer-security firm, Symantec in Mountain View, California. Stuxnet provided chilling proof that groups or nations could launch a cyberattack against a societys vital infrastructures for water and energy. We are probably just now entering the era of the cyber arms race, says Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure, an antivirus company based in Helsinki. Worse yet, the Stuxnet episode has highlighted just how inadequate are societys current defences and how glaring is the gap in cybersecurity science. Computer-security firms are competitive in the marketplace, but they generally respond to a threat such as Stuxnet with close collaboration behind the scenes. Soon after Virus- BlokAdas alert, for example, Kaspersky Lab in Moscow was working with Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, to hunt down the vulnerabilities that the virus was exploiting in the Windows operating system. (It was Microsoft that coined the name Stuxnet, after one of the files hidden in its code. Technically, Stuxnet was a worm, a type of malware that can operate on its own without needing another program to infect. But even experts often call it a virus, which has become the generic term for self-replicating malware.) One of the most ambitious and comprehensive responses was led by Symantec, which kept O Murchu and his worldwide team of experts working on Stuxnet around the clock for three months. One major centre of operations was Symantecs malware lab in Culver City, California, which operates like the digital equivalent of a top-level biological containment facility. A sign on the door warns visitors to leave computers, USB flash drives and smart phones outside: any electronic device that passes through that door, even by mistake, will stay there. Inside the lab, the team began by dropping Stuxnet into a simulated networking environment so that they could safely watch what it did. The sheer size of the virus was staggering: some 15,000 lines of code, representing an estimated 10,000 person hours in software development. Compared with any other virus ever seen, says O Murchu, its a huge amount of code. Equally striking was the sophistication of that code. Stuxnet took advantage of two digital certificates of authenticity stolen from respected companies, and exploited four different zero day vulnerabilities previously unidentified security holes in Windows that were wide open for hackers to use. Then there was the viruss behaviour. Very quickly we realized that it was doing something very unusual, recalls O Murchu. Most notably, Stuxnet was trying to talk to the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are used to direct industrial machinery. Stuxnet was very selective, however: although the virus could spread to almost any machine running Windows, the crucial parts of its executable code would become active only if that machine was also running Siemens Step7, one of the many supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems used to manage industrial processes. Many industrial control systems are never connected to the Internet, precisely to protect them from malware and hostile takeover. That led to another aspect of Stuxnets sophistication. Like most other malware, it could spread over a network. But it could also covertly install itself on a USB drive. So all it would take was one operator unknowingly plugging an infected memory stick into a control-system computer, and the virus could explode into action. 6.1 Murky Motives It still wasnt clear what Stuxnet was supposed to do to the Siemens software. The Symantec team got a clue when it realized that the virus was gathering information about the host computers it had infected, and sending the data back to servers in Malaysia and Denmark presumably to give the unknown perpetrators a way to update the Stuxnet virus covertly. Identifying the command and control servers didnt allow Symantec to identify the perpetrators, but they were able to convince the Internet service providers to cut off the perpetrators access, rerouting the traffic from the infected computers back to Symantec so that they could eavesdrop. By watching where the traffic to the servers was coming from, O Murchu says, we were able to see that the majority of infections were in Iran at least 60% of them. In fact, the infections seemed to have been appearing there in waves since 2009. The obvious inference was that the virus had deliberately been directed against Iran, for reasons as yet unknown. But the Symantec investigators couldnt go much further by themselves. They were extremely knowledgeable about computers and networking, but like most malware-protection teams, they had little or no expertise in PLCs or SCADA systems. At some point in their analysis they just couldnt make any more sense out of what the purpose of this thing was, because they were not able to experiment with the virus in such a lab environment, says Ralph Langner, a control-system security consultant in Hamburg, Germany. Langner independently took it upon himself to fill that gap. Over the summer, he and his team began running Stuxnet in a lab environment equipped with Siemens software and industrial control systems, and watching how the virus interacted with PLCs. We began to see very strange and funny results immediately, and I mean by that within the first day of our lab experiment, he says. Those PLC results allowed Langner to infer that Stuxnet was a directed attack, seeking out specific software and hardware. In mid-September 2010, he announced on his blog that the evidence supported the suspicion that Stuxnet had been deliberately directed against Iran. The most likely target, he then believed, was the Bushehr nuclear power plant. 6.2 Industrial Sabotoge Speculative though Langners statements were, the news media quickly picked up on them and spread the word of a targeted cyberweapon. Over the next few months, however, as Langner and others continued to work with the code, the evidence began to point away from Bushehr and towards a uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges were separating the rare but fissionable isotope uranium-235 from the heavier uranium-238. Many Western nations believe that this enrichment effort, which ostensibly provides fuel for nuclear power stations, is actually aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. The malware code, according to Langner and others, was designed to alter the speed of the delicate centrifuges, essentially causing the machines to spin out of control and break. That interpretation is given credence by reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, which document a precipitous drop in the number of operating centrifuges in 2009, the year that many observers think Stuxnet first infected computers in Iran. True, the evidence is circumstantial at best. We dont know what those machines were doing when they werent in operation, cautions Ivanka Barszashka, a Bulgarian physicist who studied Iranian centrifuge performance while she was working with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC. We dont know if they were actually broken or if they were just sitting there. Moreover, the Iranian government has officially denied that Stuxnet destroyed large numbers of centrifuges at Natanz, although it does acknowledge that the infection is widespread in the country. And IAEA inspection reports from late 2010 make it clear that any damage was at most a temporary setback: Irans enrichment capacity is higher than ever. However, if Natanz was the target, that does suggest an answer to the mystery of who created Stuxnet, and why. Given the knowledge required including expertise in malware, industrial security and the specific types and configurations of the industrial equipment being targeted most Stuxnet investigators concluded early on that the perpetrators were backed by a government. Governments have tried to sabotage foreign nuclear programmes before, says Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and former deputy director-general of the IAEA. In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, Western governments orchestrated a campaign to inject faulty parts into the network that Pakistan used to supply nuclear technology to countries such as Iran and North Korea. Intelligence agencies, including the US Central Intelligence Agency, have also made other attempts to sell flawed nuclear designs to would-be proliferators. Stuxnet, says Heinonen, is another way to do the same thing. Langner argues that the government behind Stuxnet is that of the United States, which has both the required expertise in cyberwarfare and a long-standing goal of thwarting Irans nuclear ambitions. Throughout the summer of 2010, while Langner, Symantec and all the other investigators were vigorously trading ideas and information about Stuxnet, the US Department of Homeland Security maintained a puzzling silence, even though it operates Computer Emergency Readiness Teams (CERTs) created specifically to address cyberthreats. True, the CERT at the Idaho National Laboratory outside Idaho Falls, which operates one of the worlds most sophisticated testbeds for industrial control systems, did issue a series of alerts. But the first, on 20 July 2010, came more than a month after the initial warning from Belarus and contained nothing new. Later alerts followed the same pattern: too little, too late. A delayed clipping service, said Dale Peterson, founder of Digital Bond, a SCADA security firm in Sunrise, Florida, on his blog. There is no way that they could have missed this problem, or that this is all a misunderstanding. Thats just not possible, says Langner, who believes that the Idaho labs anaemic response was deliberate, intended to cover up the fact that Stuxnet had been created there. But even Langner has to admit that the evidence against the United States is purely circumstantial. (The US government itself will neither confirm nor deny the allegation, as is its practice for any discussion of covert activity.) And the evidence against the other frequently mentioned suspect, Israel, is even more so. Symantec, for example, points out that a name embedded in Stuxnets code, Myrtus, could be a reference to a biblical story about a planned massacre of Jews in Persia. But other investigators say that such claims are beyond tenuous. There are no facts about Israel, declares Jeffrey Carr, founder and chief executive of Taia Global, a cybersecurity consulting company in Tysons Corner, Virginia. 6.3 The Aftermath The who? may never be discovered. Active investigation of Stuxnet effectively came to an end in February 2011, when Symantec posted a final update to its definitive report on the virus, including key details about its execution, lines of attack and spread over time. Microsoft had long since patched the security holes that Stuxnet exploited, and all the antivirus companies had updated their customers digital immune systems with the ability to recognize and shut down Stuxnet on sight. New infections are now rare although they do still occur, and it will take years before all the computers with access to Siemens controllers are patched. If Stuxnet itself has ceased to be a serious threat, however, cybersecurity experts continue to worry about the larger vulnerabilities that it exposed. Stuxnet essentially laid out a blueprint for future attackers to learn from and perhaps improve, say many of the investigators who have studied it. In a way, you did open the Pandoras box by launching this attack, says Langner of his suspicions about the United States. And it might turn back to you guys eventually. Cybersecurity experts are ill-prepared for the threat, in part because they lack ties to the people who understand industrial control systems. Weve got actually two very different worlds that traditionally have not communicated all that much, says Eric Byres, co-founder and chief technology officer of Tofino Industrial Security in Lantzville, Canada. He applauds Symantec, Langner and others for reaching across that divide. But the effort required to make those connections substantially delayed the investigation. The divide extends into university computer-science departments, say Byres, himself an ex-academic. Researchers tend to look at industrial-control security as a technical problem, rather than an issue requiring serious scientific attention, he says. So when graduate students express interest in looking at, say, cryptography and industrial controls, they are told that the subject is not mathematically challenging enough for a dissertation project. Im not aware of any academic researchers who have invested significantly in the study of Stuxnet, agrees Andrew Ginter, director of industrial security for the North American group of Waterfall Security Solutions, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Almost the only researchers doing that kind of work are in industrial or government settings among them a team at the Idaho National Laboratory working on a next-generation system called Sophia, which tries to protect industrial control systems against Stuxnet-like threats by detecting anomalies in the network. One barrier for academics working on cybersecurity is access to the malware that they must protect against. That was not such a problem for Stuxnet itself, because its code was posted on the web shortly after it was first identified. But in general, the careful safeguards that Symantec and other companies put in place in secure labs to protect the escape of malware may also inadvertently be a barrier for researchers who need to study them. If youre doing research into biological agents, its limited groups that have them and they are largely unwilling to share; the same holds true for malware, says Anup Ghosh, chief scientist at the Center for Secure Information Systems at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. To advance the field, researchers need access to good data sets, says Ghosh, who was once a programme manager at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is now working on a malware detector designed to identify viruses on the basis of how they behave, rathe r than on specific patterns in their code, known as signatures. Academic researchers are also inhibited by a certain squeamishness about digital weaponry, according to Herb Lin, chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the US National Research Council in Washington DC. He points out that to understand how to guard against cyberattacks, it may help to know how to commit them. Yet teaching graduate students to write malware is very controversial, he says. People say, What do you mean: youre training hackers?' 6.4 Preparing for the Next Attack A study last year by the JASON group, which advises the US government on science and technology matters, including defence, found broad challenges for cybersecurity (JASON Science of Cyber-Security; MITRE Corporation, 2010). Perhaps most important was its conclusion that the field was underdeveloped in reporting experimental results, and consequently in the ability to use them. Roy Maxion, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who briefed JASON, goes further, saying that cybersecurity suffers from a lack of scientific rigour. Medical professionals over the past 200 years transformed themselves from purveyors of leeches to modern scientists with the advent of evidence-based medicine, he notes. In computer science and in computer security in particular, that train is nowhere in sight. Computer science has developed largely as a collection of what Maxion calls clever parlour tricks. For example, at one conference, the leading paper showed how researchers could read computer screens by looking at the reflections off windows and other objects. From a practical point of view, anyone in a classified meeting would go, pooh, he says. In places where they dont want you to know [whats on the computer screen], there are no windows. Yet, that was the buzz that year. Maxion sees an urgent need for computer-science and security curricula to include courses in traditional research methods, such as experimental design and statistics none of which is currently required. Why does it matter? he asks. Because we dont have a scientific basis for investigating phenomena like Stuxnet, or the kind of defences that would be effective against it. Also troubling for many of the Stuxnet investigators was the US governments lacklustre response to the virus (assuming that it was not the perpetrator). Stuxnet represents a new generation of cyberweapon that could be turned against US targets, but there is no evidence that the government is making the obvious preparations for such an attack for example, plans for a coordinated response that pools resources from academia, research institutes and private business. Other countries seem to be taking the threat more seriously. Some of Chinas universities and vocational colleges have reportedly forged strong connections with the military to work on cybersecurity, for example. And Israel also seems to be exploiting its computing expertise for national security. A few months before the discovery of Stuxnet, Yuval Elovici, a computer scientist and director of Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel, told Nature that he was working closely with the countrys Ministry of Defense on cybersecurity. He presciently warned that the next wave of cyberattacks would be aimed at physical infrastructures. What would happen if there were a code injection into SCADA? What if someone would activate it suddenly? Elovici asked. He and other experts have been warning for several years now that such an attack on SCADA systems controlling the electricity grid could spark nationwide blackouts, or that the safety systems of power plants could be overridden, causing a shutdown or a serious accident. Similar disruptions could hit water and sewage systems, or even food processing plants. Such attacks, Elovici warned, are both realistic and underestimated. Asked how bad one would be, Elovici was unequivocal. I think, he said, it would be much stronger than the impact of setting several atomic bombs on major cities.

Own Labels In The Uk Smoothies Market Marketing Essay

Own Labels In The Uk Smoothies Market Marketing Essay For the purposes of this report a smoothie will be defined as a drink that is made with pure crushed fruit, but which may also include a small amount of fruit juice or purà ©e, yogurt, milk or soymilk, and is smooth in texture (Mintel, 2010). 1.2 The UK Smoothie Market Although the smoothies market in the UK enjoyed a period of exceptionally strong growth of more than 150% between 2005 and 2007, this has now been stalled by the impact of the recent economic recession and consumers switching their loyalty to alternative, cheaper pure fruit drinks. As well as suffering from unfavourable economic conditions, smoothie manufactures have failed to convince UK consumers that the drinks are not full of calories and are not bad for their teeth., despite strong contradictory evidence from the British Nutrition Foundation. The result of all of this is that the smooothies market declined by some 36% between 2007 and 2009 (Mintel Report Sales Brochure, 2010). The brand leader in the smoothie market, Innocent, has largely been responsible for fuelling the growth in the market and despite the general market downturn, it still commands an 80% market share. However, Innocents market share has been boosted, not just by its own performance, but also by the decision taken by PepsiCo to remove its PJs brand in early 2009. PepsiCos rationale for removing the brand was that it enabled it to focus on its best selling Tropicana brand, which added a smoothie to its range in February 2008 (Lewis, 2008). The smoothie market is now showing signs of a fragile recovery and Mintel forecasts that improved economic conditions, together with the increased penetration of the childrens market, will see the smoothies sector returning to growth soon see Figure 1 below (Mintel Report Sales Brochure, 2010). FIGURE 1 Trends and Forecast for Volume Sales of Smoothies, 2005-2015 Total Index % annual change m litres 2005 27 66 +69 2006 52 127 +93 2007 70 171 +35 2008 60 146 -14 2009 45 110 -25 2010 (est) 41 100 -9 2011 (fore) 44 107 +7 2012 (proj) 48 116 +9 2013 (proj) 53 130 +12 2014 (proj) 58 141 +8 2015 (proj) 64 155 +10 2.0 The Importance of Branding in the Smoothies Market With consumers becoming increasingly sophisticated and confident in being able to differentiate between the offerings of various suppliers in a marketplace, the value of a strong brand has never been more critical (Mitchell et al., p.201. 2003). According to Aaker (p.95, 1996), to be successful, brands should offer consumers a value proposition, which constitutes functional, emotional and self- expressive benefits. Branding is critical in the soft drinks market as a whole. For example, Coca-Cola (a stakeholder in Innocent) believes that 96% of its total worth as a business can be attributed to its brand (Knox, 2004). In the smoothies market the brand leader, Innocent, has demonstrated the value of a strong brand. The name Innocent positions the brand as simple, pure and safe thus delivering both functional and emotional benefits within its brand value proposition. There are a number of reasons why branding is critical to success in the smoothies market, namely: Consumers are cynical about manufacturers claims of the health benefits of smoothies. Consumers believe smoothies are too expensive compared to other fruit drinks. Because smoothies are a relatively new product in the market they do not resonate with the 45+ age group which is a potentially significant market segment for smoothies. The distribution of smoothies relies too heavily on the big supermarket chains leaving them open to competition from supermarket own brands. Smoothies brands have largely recognised the value of branding in the marketplace and this is evidenced by a three fold increase in total advertising spend in the sector in 2009/10. The leading brands have built up a lot of brand equity as a result (see Figure 2). However, despite this the leading brands have not been able to rely on their brand reputation and equity to boost sales, rather they have had to discount the price of their products extensively in 2008/9, which may impact negatively on the equity of the brands in the longer term. Figure 2: Personalities of Various Smoothie Brands, May 2010 Benecol Innocent Ellas Kitchen Tropicana Average Base: internet users aged 16+ who have heard of the brand 1,517 1,795 674 1,718 % % % % % Authentic 10 19 10 16 14 Boring 9 2 4 3 4 Cool 6 21 10 16 14 Delicious 9 35 10 28 21 Engaging 5 12 6 8 8 Exciting 4 19 9 11 11 Fun 5 26 12 15 14 Genuine 14 23 12 20 17 Healthy 42 49 19 36 36 Natural 23 43 18 31 29 Refreshing 9 30 11 34 21 Special 9 22 8 11 12 Tired 4 1 3 3 3 Traditional 8 7 8 19 10 Unappealing 11 4 5 4 6 Unhealthy 1 1 2 2 2 Vibrant 4 18 8 13 11 Source: GMI/Mintel 3.0 The Threat from Own Labels in the Smoothies Market The growth of supermarket own label brands is having a big impact on the sale of manufacturer branded, fast-moving, consumer goods (Veloutsou, 2004). Supermarket own label brands are no longer just the lower quality and lower priced alternatives to manufacturer brands that they once were as since the late 1990s they have been offering a genuine quality option for consumers (Burt, 2000). Porters (p.49, 1989), includes the threat from substitute products as one of the five forces in his model of industry competitors see Figure 3 below. FIGURE 3 : Porters Five Forces Model of Industry Competitors : Substitute products, in the form of own labels, pose a significant threat to established brands in the smoothie marketplace. The leading brands, such as Innocent, are suffering from consumers switching to own label smoothie and fruit juice products, in the shorter term, due mainly to price considerations. The extent of this switch is evidenced by the fact that the large supermarkets now dominate the fruit juice drinks market with their own brands (Keynote, 2010). 4.0 The Brand Position of Tropicana in the UK Smoothes Market Best known for its fruit juice products Tropicana launched its smoothie in 2008 supported by a  £4.5 million promotional campaign. Owners PepsiCo intended that the Tropicana smoothie would fill the gap left by its withdrawal of the PJs brand. However, despite the huge investment in promotional support and PepsiCos knowledge of the soft drinks market, Tropicana has failed to deliver. Although it is now the second largest of the manufacturer brands, in terms of market share, it is a long way behind the brand leader, Innocent. Its sales and market share have also taken a nosedive from its peak of 2008 see Figure 4 below. Figure 4 : Trends for Take-home Market Share of Smoothie Brands, 2007-2009 2007 2008 2009 2007-09  £m % share  £m % share  £m % share % point difference Innocent 150 71 120 71 100 80 -33 PJs* 25 12 10 6 na na na Tropicana Smoothies 8 4 15 9 3 2 -63 Ellas Kitchen 1.5 1 2.2 1 2.5 2 67 Sub-total 185 88 147 87 106 84 -43 Others 4 2 5 3 4 3 Own-label 22 10 18 10 16 12 -28 Total 210 100 170 100 125 100 -40 * brand discontinued in late 2008 Despite its poor sales performance in 2009, Tropicana is not a bad performer, in terms of its appeal to consumers, with just over two-thirds of those surveyed by Mintel saying that they liked it and would buy it again. However, most consumers still regard Tropicana as a juice and not a smoothies brand. 5.0 Summary and Conclusions Following a significant period of growth, the smoothies market has declined in the last two years and is only just showing signs of recovery. The market is dominated by Innocent and other brands, such as Tropicana, have failed to establish a meaningful foothold despite massive marketing spends. Brand reputation and equity is key to the success of smooothies and Innocent has successfully established its brand in the consumer psyche. In terms of leveraging its brand then Tropicana has an inherent problem inasmuch as it is still best known as a fruit juice, not a smoothie, brand. It needs, therefore, to build its reputation as a smoothies brand by delivering a value proposition targeted specifically at smoothie drinkers and supported by its brand strength in the juices market. The fact that consumers generally like its smoothie product and would buy it again are a good foundation for future growth. Also, considering the brand personality scores shown in Figure 2, where Tropicana is generally in second place, there are opportunities to build on the brand attributes of authentic, cool delicious fun and genuine, in future promotional activity. The short shelf life of all smoothies makes it difficult for them to penetrate the on-trade. However, smoothies have not really targeted themselves at the impulse purchase consumer and, consequently, this is a potential area of growth as is the largely undeveloped childrens market. -

The Coming Of Age Essay -- essays research papers

The Coming of Age   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Childhood is a time where children learn about the world around themselves. They see and experience many factors that influence their everyday lives, which help them grow stronger when they become adults. In 'Girl'; by Jamaica Kincaid and 'The Lesson'; by Toni Cade Bambara the characters within the stories learn valuable lesson with help them grow to become better individuals. In 'The Lesson'; the character of Sugar undergoes a realization that society does not treat everyone equally, that not every individual has the same opportunity and equality that they should have. In 'Girl'; the main character learns that she must be perceived as a woman and not as a slut, her mother brings to her attention of how the world is and what she must to do in order to survive in it. Lessons that children learn all help them grow to become better individuals, in 'Girl'; and 'The Lesson'; the lessons that the characters learn both help them grow to become better and stronger individ uals.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 'The Lesson'; the character, Sugar undergoes a realization of the world around her, through her teacher Miss Moore, Sugar notices that there is a better way of living in the world besides, her own little world with her friends. Sugar says, 'You know, Miss Moore, I don't think that all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs,'; (Bambara 452). Miss Moore is an African American woman who has broken through the expectation that society has placed on her class and on her color. Bambara presents Miss Moore as a very educated and intelligent woman, who has a college degree. With her knowledge Miss Moore sets out to educate the deprived and lower classed children and teach them of the world around them. She sets out to open their eyes, as well as their knowledge of the world around them. Miss Moore says, 'Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. Wh at do you think?,'; (Bambara 452).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Sugar's realization of the world outside of her own, opens her mind to many questions that she never imagined before. She realizes that there is a better standard of living in the world and that society is not equal, as it should be, 'I think, . . . that this is not much of a democracy if y... ...woman and not be viewed as a slut. The daughter in 'Girl'; wants to rebel against her mother and not be viewed as a slut to society, therefore hoping that society will not look down upon her, if she does not do everything that the mother has taught her that she must do. In the stories of the 'Girl'; and 'The Lesson'; different lessons are learned, but the common realization of the world around them is learned by the characters and how each of the characters must learn to rebel against societies views. This realization helps them grow smarter and stronger as they grow older and come of age, from childhood to adulthood. Society has set standards for individuals to live by, but it is up to those individuals to break away, or live by the standards and views of society. 'It is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough,'; (Bambara 452). In reality, society has set standards for everyone to live by. Those who break away from it are look down upon if they fail, but if they succeed they are praised by, this may be the only way to change societies views of gender, class, and race; it is by succeeding in everything that you do.

Comparing Hurston’s Books, Seraph on the Suwannee and Their Eyes Were Watching God :: Compararison

Comparing Hurston’s Books, Seraph on the Suwannee and Their Eyes Were Watching God I found both books, Seraph on the Suwannee and Their Eyes Were Watching God to be very well written, yet I found it very ironic and almost funny to compare the two. Although it may not have been intentional, Hurston uses, what can be called, race reversals to describe Janie and Arvay. Janie is a not-so-typical black woman who is confident and while she is somewhat submissive to her husbands, she has more integrity than her white counterpart, Arvay. The text says when describing her unique beauty, that "the men notice her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits/ in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her/ waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume." Arvay, on the other hand, is "teasing to the fancy of many men," but she is described as, "pretty if you liked delicate-made girls/†¦ (and) could easily be overlooked." The irony of this comparison lies in the fact that unlike life during the time period that the story is written, Janie is seen as an icon of inner-beauty and strength; Arvay is cute, but she isn't as strong. In some of the other literature in this course and others, black women are written as strong characters, but many of them don't live the life that Janie lived. She appeared to have more choices than most and she acted upon her feelings rather than suffering in many cases. She falls in love with her last two husbands without feeling as if she were being raped or forced to do unnecessary things. Unlike her mother, grandmother and other black women, particularly slaves, she is given the chance to be feminine and complete her duties as a wife without subtle forms of torture. I feel that Hurston is using her imagination to "get back" at white women in a sense because she shapes Arvay's character as the one who is slightly oppressed. When the story begins, Arvay is upset with her sister because she "takes" the man that Arvay wants to marry. Because she feels that a piece of the life that she wanted to have (the life of a preacher's wife) is taken away from her, she tries to go into seclusion and ends up marrying a man that she persuaded to love. Her first time having sex with Jim is written as a near rape: "A tearing sound of starched fabric, and the garment was being dragged ruthlessly down her legs.

Population of China and Gender Imbalance Essay

China’s one child policy was established by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to limit China’s population growth. It was designated as a â€Å"temporary measure,† to limit couples to just one child. Those who fail to follow the law are subjected to fines, pressures to do abortion, and forced sterilization. In 1979, the Chinese government embarked on an ambitious program of market reform following the stagnation of the economy after the Cultural Revolution. At the time, China was home to a quarter of the world’s people, who were occupying just 7 percent of world’s arable land. Two thirds of the population was under the age of 30 years, and the baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s were entering their reproductive years. The government saw strict population containment as essential to economic reform and to an improvement in living standards. So the one-child family policy was introduced. The policy consists of a set of regulations governing the approved size of Chinese families. These regulations include restrictions on family size, late marriage and childbearing, and the spacing of children (in cases in which second children are permitted). The State Family Planning Bureau sets the overall targets and policy direction. Family-planning committees at provincial and county levels devise local strategies for implementation. Despite its name, the one-child rule applies to a minority of the population; for urban residents and government employees, the policy is strictly enforced, with few exceptions. The exceptions include families in which the first child has a disability or both parents work in high-risk occupations (such as mining) or are themselves from one-child families (in some areas). The policy has been estimated to have reduced population growth in the country of 1. 3 billion by as much as 300 million people over its first twenty years of existence. However, this rule has caused a bias against female infants; abortion, neglect, abandonment, and even infanticide have been known to occur to female infants. The use of IUDs, sterilization, and abortion are China’s most popular forms of birth control. However, over the past few years, China has provided more education and support for alternative birth control methods. This shift in focus on implementing this family planning policy was partly in reaction to what happened in 2007 when there were reports that in the southwestern Guangxi Autonomous Region of China, officials were forcing pregnant women without permission to give birth to have abortions and levying steep fines on families violating the law. As a result, riots broke out and some population control officials may have been killed. The result of such family planning policy has resulted in the disparate ratio of 114 males for every 100 females among babies from birth through children four years of age. Normally, 105 males are naturally born for every 100 females. When the Chinese government introduced the policy in 1979 to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China, authorities claim that the policy has prevented 250 million births from its implementation to 2000. However, the policy is controversial both within and outside China because of the manner in which the policy has been implemented, and because of concerns about negative economic and social consequences. The policy has been implicated in an increase in of forced abortions and female infanticide, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China’s significant gender imbalance. Despite these negative reports, favorable feedback from this policy is heard from the families themselves. Since the introduction of the one-child policy, the total fertility rate in China has fallen from over two births per woman to approximately 1. 7 births today. In total, China estimates that it has three to four hundred million fewer people today, with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise. The reduction in the fertility rate and thus population growth has reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (such as health, education, law enforcement), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste. Another favorable feedback as a result of this policy is that it is reported that the focus of China on population control helps provide a better health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. Increased involvement of women in the labor force is also another positive feedback. Women have traditionally been the primary caregivers for children; however, with fewer children, they have more time to invest in their careers, increasing both their personal earnings and the national GDP. Another feedback that appeals to environmentalists is that, with the policy, there is decreased environmental impact. China’s one child policy has the indirect consequence of reducing China’s total ecological footprint and thus reducing strain on ecological resources. Despite these successes, however, the one-child only policy draws criticisms from many quarters. First, the one-child policy has been criticized by human rights advocacy groups and Western religious groups, including some evangelical Christians, as well as by pro-life advocates. Within China, criticism tends to be focused on potential social problems caused by the policy. A second type of criticism has come from those who acknowledge the challenges stemming from China’s high population growth but believe that less intrusive options could have achieved the same results over an extended period of time. One very important concern was the human rights factor. The one-child policy is challenged in principle and in practice over violating basic human rights. Reported abuses in its enforcement include bribery, coercion, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and possibly infanticide. Even though in 2002, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization, it is not entirely enforced. In the execution of the policy many local governments still demand abortions if the pregnancy violates local regulations. Some critics also point to the possible economic and emotional costs the policy may bring to the people. As the one-child policy begins to near its next generation, one adult child is left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents. This leaves the older generation with more of a dependency on retirement funds or charity, rather than their children in order to have support. If a child cannot care for their parents and grandparents, or if that child cannot survive, the oldest generation could find itself destitute. Another social problem seen is when some parents may over-indulge their only-child. The media referred to the indulged children in one-child families as â€Å"little emperors†. Since the 1990s, some people worry this will result in a higher tendency toward poor social communication and cooperation skills among the new generation, as they have no siblings at home. One important focus among sociologists is the issue of gender imbalance. China, like many other Asian countries, has a long tradition of son preference. Many argue that the one-child policy induces many families to use selective abortion, abandon female infants, and even kill female infants under the influence of the son preference. Some families even kill or starve the female infant and then try again for a male child. The commonly accepted explanation for son preference is that sons in rural families may be thought to be more helpful in farm work. Sons are preferred as they provide the primary financial support for the parents in their retirement, and a son’s parents typically are better cared for than his wife’s. In addition, Chinese traditionally view that daughters, on their marriage, become primarily part of the groom’s family. Becaue of this gender bias the sex ratio at birth (between male and female births) in mainland China reached 117:100 in the year 2000, substantially higher than the natural baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981 — at the boundary of the natural baseline — to 111:100 in 1990. According to a report by the State Population and Family Planning Commission, there will be 30 million more men than women in 2020, potentially leading to social instability. The correlation between the increase of sex ratio disparity on birth and the deployment of one child policy would appear to have been caused by the one-child policy.

History Of The Judicial Depart Of The Philippines

The Paradigm (from Transmissional to Transactional) Shift of education in the Philippines is the transfer of teaching concepts from the Traditional â€Å"bookish and direct learning approach† Teaching into a 21st Century Teaching focused on developing the learners HOTS (higher order thinking skills). These HOTS is the demonstration of the learners critical thinking ability, and to go beyond the four walls of the classroom by applying their learning into the 7 domains Identified by the Department of Education (DepEd).In the traditional way of teaching, the learners are only developing the lower part of the Domain of Learning, which are identified as LOTS (lower order thinking skills). This is the memorization intensive class, where the learners are forced to memorize a long list of items, in order to be able to answer in the Objective Type quizzes and Exams. Example: Using the LOTS, students would simply answer the question, â€Å"Who is the first astronaut?†,and then a selection of a,b,c,d from which the students will choose from.These is the Mechanical type of learning, where students would simply do the same thing (memorize) and be able to answer the same type of exam or questioning method in a heartbeat without even knowing the deeper part of it or can’t even explain the answer. LOTS (lower order thinking skills) are:Knowledge, Application, ComprehensionHowever, in the HOTS intensive teaching, the students would answer the types of questions like, â€Å"What are the contribution of the Space Program to our present generation?† or â€Å"Compare and Contrast the knowledge and understanding of humans before the space age and during the space age?† These types of questions, enables the learners to think critically and explain his/her answer and to demonstrate actively in a manner that their understanding will show the deep knowledge they have learned in the classroom. HOTS (higher order thinking skills) are:Analysis, Synthesis, EvaluationWith all these in mind, the Department of Education realized (at last!) that a Paradigm shift is needed in order to change the system from the  traditional ways into the so called 21st century globally standard teacher. Education experts around the country, including my Mentor and Dean of the College of Education, Dr. June P. Salana, worked tirelessly together with numerous experts nationwide in order to identify the salient points or domains needed in line with the vision of transforming the Filipino Teacher into a globally competitive one.Along with the Commission on Higher education (CHED), Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs), Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC), Department of Education (DepEd) and the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in partnership with the different academic institution, the National Competency-Based Teacher Standards (NCBTS) was born. Hence, the Curriculum change is the product of many years of development, this is not the idea of the DepEd Secre tary or the thousands of teachers around the country.As mentioned by Dr. Isagani Cruz in 2001, this is the People Power Model of Curricular Change, this is the result of the Social Change that happened to the country and the need for education to be the Main Effort in bringing Competitiveness and innovativeness among the people in the 21st century. As Mentioned in the Curriculum Development book by Dr. June P. Salana and Dr. Rolando A. Bernales, the curriculum development of today has shifted fromLearner-Artisan relationship into Employment-Oriented (knowledge based) Curriculum.The latest trend is to Empower the teachers, the front-liners in education, the deliverers of knowledge,and facilitators of learning in the process of developing a curriculum, that would reflect the Competencies, teachers and students alike should possess and reflective of the Social Dimension of education. That learning should not be limited to Fraction or Poem writing but rather adopting it to the real life applications and experiences that the learner may or has experienced.It is very important to note that this is not a Jesli Lapus, Pet project that may or may not go with him after he lives the office, but a result of the societal change, a reflection of what is happening in the society and adopting our curriculum into the 21st century globally competent education. The NCBTS Framework is devided in 7 Domains:1. Social Regard for Learning (SRFL) 2. Learning Environment (LE) 3. Diversity of Learners (DOL) 4. Curriculum (Curr.) 5. Planning, Assessing Reporting (PAR) 6. Community Linkages (CL) 7. Personal Growth & Professional Development (PGPD)According to the Framework â€Å"This will allow teachers to self-assess their own performance against the Competency Standards in order to identify areas of strength as well as areas that need to be developed further in order for them to function more effectively as facilitators of learning.† Domain 1. Social Regard for Learning (SRFL)The SRFL domain focuses on the ideal that teachers serve as positive and powerful role models of the value in the pursuit of different efforts to learn. The teacher’s action, statements, and different types of social interactions with students exemplify this ideal. Domain 2. Learning Environment (LE)This domain focuses on importance of providing a social, psychological and physical environment within which all students, regardless of their individual differences in learning, can engage in the different learning activities and work towards attaining high standards of learning Domain 3. Diversity of Learners (DOL)The DOL domain emphasizes the ideal that teachers can facilitate the learning process even with diverse learners, by recognizing and respecting individual differences and by using knowledge about their differences to design diverse sets of learning activities to ensure that all learners can attain the desired learning goals. Domain 4. Curriculum (Curr.)The curriculum doma in refers to all elements of the teaching-learning process that work in convergence to help students understand the curricular goals and objectives, and to attain high standards of learning defined in the curriculum. These elements include the teacher’s knowledge of subject matter and the learning process, teaching-learning approaches and activities, instructional materials and learning resources. Domain 5. Planning, Assessing & Reporting (PAR)This domain refers to the alignment of assessment and planning activities. In particular, the PAR focuses on the (1) use of assessment data to plan and revise teaching-learning plans; (2) integration of assessment procedures in the plan and implementation of teaching-learning activities, and (3) reporting of the learners’ actual achievement and behavior. Domain 6. Community Linkages (CL)The LC domain refers to the ideal that classroom activities are meaningfully linked to the experiences and aspirations of the learners in their h omes and communities. Thus, this domain focuses on teachers’ efforts directed at strengthening the links between schools and communities to help in the attainment of the curricular goals. Domain 7. Personal Growth & Professional Development (PGPD)The PGPD domain emphasizes the ideal that teachers value having a high personal regard for the teaching profession, concern for professional development, and continuous improvement as teachers.