The Hunters: Phantom Chapter 28

No one answered the door at the Smalwoods' house. The driveway was empty and the house looked deserted, the shades pul ed down. â€Å"Maybe Caleb's not here,† Matt said nervously. â€Å"Could he have gone somewhere else when he got out of the hospital?† â€Å"I can smell him. I can hear him breathing,† Stefan growled. â€Å"He's in there, al right. He's hiding out.† Matt had never seen Stefan look so angry. His usual y calm green eyes were bright with rage, and his fangs seemed to be involuntarily extended, little sharp points showing every time he opened his mouth. Stefan caught Matt looking at them and frowned, running his tongue selfconsciously across his canines. Matt glanced at Alaric, who he'd been thinking of as the only other normal person left in their group, but Alaric was watching Stefan with what was clearly fascination rather than alarm. Not entirely normal, then, either, Matt thought. â€Å"We can get in,† Meredith said calmly. She looked to Alaric. â€Å"Let me know if someone's coming.† He nodded and positioned himself to block the view of anyone walking past on the sidewalk. With cool efficiency, Meredith wedged one end of her fighting stave in the crack of the front door and started to pry it open. The door was made of heavy oak, and clearly had two locks and a chain engaged inside, and it withstood Meredith's leverage against it. Meredith swore, then muttered, â€Å"Come on, come on,† redoubling her efforts. The locks and chains gave suddenly against her strength, and the door flew open, banging into the wal behind it. â€Å"So much for a quiet entrance,† Stefan said. He shifted restlessly on the doorstep as they filed past him. â€Å"You're invited in,† Meredith said, but Stefan shook his head. â€Å"I can't,† he said. â€Å"It only works if you live here.† Meredith's lips tightened, and she turned and ran up the stairs. There was a brief shout of surprise and some muffled thumping. Alaric glanced at Matt nervously, and then up the stairs. â€Å"Should we help her?† he said. Before Matt could answer – and he was pretty sure Meredith wasn't the one who needed help – she returned, shoving Caleb down the stairs before her, twisting one of his arms tightly behind his back. â€Å"Invite him in,† she ordered as Caleb stumbled to the bottom of the stairs. Caleb shook his head, and she yanked his arm up higher so that he yelped in pain. â€Å"I won't,† he said stubbornly. â€Å"You can't come in.† Meredith pushed him toward Stefan, stopping him just at the threshold of the front door. â€Å"Look at me,† Stefan said softly, and Caleb's eyes flew to his. Stefan's pupils widened, swal owing his green irises in black, and Caleb shook his head frantical y, but seemed unable to break his gaze. â€Å"Let. Me. In,† Stefan ordered. â€Å"Come in, then,† said Caleb sul enly. Meredith released him and his eyes cleared. He turned and dashed up the stairs. Stefan burst through the door like he'd been shot through a gun and then stalked up the stairs. His smooth, stealthy movements reminded Matt of a predator's – of a lion or a shark. Matt shivered. Sometimes he forgot how truly dangerous Stefan was. â€Å"I'd better go with him,† Meredith said. â€Å"We don't want Stefan doing anything he'd regret.† She paused. â€Å"Not before we find out what we need to know, anyway. Alaric, you're the one who knows the most about magic, so you come with me. Matt, keep an eye out and warn us if the Smal woods pul into the drive.† She and Alaric fol owed Stefan up the stairs. Matt waited for the screaming to start, but it remained ominously quiet upstairs. Keeping one eye on the driveway through the front windows, Matt prowled through the living room. He and Tyler had been friends once upon a time, or at least had hung out, because they were both first-string on the footbal team. They'd known each other since middle school. Tyler drank too much, partied too hard, was gross and sexist toward girls, but there had been something about him that Matt had sometimes enjoyed. It was the way he'd thrown himself into things, whether it was the no-holdsbarred tackle of an opposing team's quarterback or throwing the absolutely craziest party anyone had ever seen. Or the time when they'd been in seventh grade and he'd gotten obsessed with winning at Street Fighter on PlayStation 2. Every day he'd had Matt and the rest of the guys over, al of them spending hours sitting on the floor of Tyler's bedroom, eating chips and talking trash and pounding the buttons of the control er until Tyler had figured out how to win every fight. Matt heaved a sigh and peered out the front window again. There was a brief muffled thump from upstairs, and Matt froze. Silence. As he turned back to pace across the living room again, Matt noticed a particular photo among the neat row of frames on top of the piano. He crossed over and picked it up. It must have been the footbal banquet, junior year. In the picture, Matt's arm was around Elena, who he'd been dating then, and she was smiling up at him. Next to them stood Tyler, hand in hand with a girl whose name Matt couldn't remember. Alison, maybe, or Alicia. She'd been older than them, a senior, and had graduated that year and left town. They were al dressed up, he and Tyler in jackets and ties, the girls in party dresses. Elena had worn a white, deceptively simple short dress, and looked so lovely that she'd taken Matt's breath away. Things had been so easy then. The quarterback and the prettiest girl in school. They'd been the perfect couple. Then Stefan came to town, a cold, mechanical voice whispered to him, and destroyed everything. Stefan, who had pretended to be Matt's friend. Stefan, who had pretended to be a human being. Stefan, who had pursued Matt's girlfriend, the only girl Matt had ever real y been in love with. Probably the only girl he would ever feel that way about. Sure, they'd broken up just before Elena met Stefan, but Matt might have gotten her back, if not for him. Matt's mouth twisted, and he threw the photo to the floor. The glass didn't break, and the photo just lay there, Matt and Elena and Tyler and the girl whose name he didn't remember smiling innocently up at the ceiling, unaware of what was heading toward them, of the chaos that would erupt less than a year later. Because of Stefan. Stefan. Matt's face was hot with anger. There was a buzzing in his head. Stefan the traitor. Stefan the monster. Stefan who had stolen Matt's girl. Matt stepped deliberately onto the picture and ground it beneath his heel. The wooden frame snapped. The feel of the glass shattering under his foot was oddly satisfying. Without looking back, Matt stomped across the living room toward the stairs. It was time for him to deal with the monster who had ruined his life. â€Å"Confess!† Stefan growled, doing his best to compel Caleb. But he was so weak and Caleb kept throwing up mental blocks. No doubt about it – this boy had access to Power. â€Å"I don't know what you're talking about,† Caleb said, pressing his back against the wal as if he could tunnel into it. His eyes flicked nervously from Stefan's angry face to Meredith, who was holding her staff balanced between her hands, ready to strike, and back to Stefan. â€Å"If you just leave me alone, I won't go to the police. I don't want any trouble.† Caleb looked pale and shorter than Stefan remembered. There were bruises on his face, and one of his arms was in a cast and supported by a sling. Despite everything, Stefan felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at him. He's not human, he reminded himself. Although†¦ Caleb didn't seem al that wolfish either, for a werewolf. Shouldn't there be a little more of the animal in him? Stefan hadn't known many werewolves, but Tyler had been al big white teeth and barely repressed aggression. Next to him, Alaric blinked at the injured boy. Cocking his head to one side and examining him, he echoed Stefan's thoughts, asking skeptical y, â€Å"Are you sure he's a werewolf?† â€Å"A werewolf?† said Caleb. â€Å"Are you al crazy?† But Stefan was watching Caleb careful y, and he saw a tiny flicker in Caleb's eyes. â€Å"You're lying,† Stefan said coldly, reaching out with his mind once more, final y finding a crack in Caleb's defenses. â€Å"You don't think we're crazy. You're just surprised that we know about you.† Caleb sighed. His face was stil white and strained, but a certain falseness went out of it as Stefan spoke. His shoulders slumped and he stepped away from the wal a little, head hanging wearily. Meredith tensed, ready to spring, as he moved forward. He stopped and held up his hands. â€Å"I'm not going to try anything. And I'm not a werewolf. But, yeah, I know Tyler is, and I'm guessing that you know that, too.† â€Å"You've got the werewolf gene,† Stefan told him. â€Å"You could easily be a werewolf, too.† Caleb shrugged and looked Stefan straight in the eye. â€Å"I guess. But it didn't happen to me; it happened to Tyler.† â€Å"Happened to?† Meredith asked, her voice rising with outrage. â€Å"Do you know what Tyler did to become a werewolf?† Caleb glanced at her warily. â€Å"What he did? Tyler didn't do anything. The family curse caught up with him, that's al .† His face was shadowed and anxious. Stefan found his tone gentling despite himself. â€Å"Caleb, you have to kil someone to become a werewolf, even if you carry the gene. Unless you're bitten by a werewolf yourself, there are certain rituals that have to be performed. Blood rituals. Tyler murdered an innocent girl.† Caleb's knees seemed to give out, and he slid to the floor with a muffled thump. He looked sick. â€Å"Tyler wouldn't do that,† he said, but his voice was unsteady. â€Å"Tyler was like a brother to me after my parents died. He wouldn't kil anyone. I don't believe you.† â€Å"He did,† Meredith confirmed. â€Å"Tyler murdered Sue Carson. We negotiated for her to come back to life, but it doesn't change the fact that he did kil her.† Her voice held the unmistakable ring of truth, and al the fight seemed to go out of Caleb. He sank lower and rested his forehead against his knees. â€Å"What do you want from me?† He looked so thin and rumpled that, despite the urgency of their mission, Stefan was distracted. â€Å"Weren't you tal er than this?† he asked. â€Å"Bigger? More†¦ put together? The last time I saw you, I mean.† Caleb mumbled something into his knees, too muffled and distorted for even a vampire to hear properly. â€Å"What?† Stefan asked. Caleb looked up, his face smudged with tears. â€Å"It was a glamour, okay?† he said bitterly. â€Å"I made myself look better because I wanted Elena to want me.† Stefan thought of Caleb's glowing, healthy face, his height, his crowning halo of golden curls. No wonder he had seemed suspicious; subconsciously Stefan must have known how unlikely it was that an ordinary human would look that much like an archangel. No wonder he felt so much lighter than I expected when I threw him across the graveyard, Stefan thought. â€Å"So you are a magic user, even if you aren't a werewolf,† Meredith said swiftly. Caleb shrugged. â€Å"You knew that already,† he said. â€Å"I saw what you did to my workroom in the shed. What more do you want from me?† Meredith stepped forward warningly, stave at the ready, her gaze clear and pitiless, and Caleb flinched away from her. â€Å"What we want,† she said, enunciating every word distinctly, â€Å"is for you to tel us how you summoned the phantom, and how we can get rid of it. We want our friends back.† Caleb stared at her. â€Å"I swear I don't know what you're talking about.† Stefan prowled toward Caleb on his other side, keeping him off balance so that the boy's eyes flicked nervously back and forth between Stefan and Meredith. Then Stefan stopped. He could see that Caleb looked genuinely confused. Was it possible that he was tel ing the truth? Stefan knelt so that he was at eye level with Caleb and tried a softer tone. â€Å"Caleb?† he asked, depleting his last remnants of Power to compel the boy to speak. â€Å"Can you tel us what kind of magic you did? Something with the roses, right? What was the spel supposed to do?† Caleb swal owed, his Adam's apple bobbing. â€Å"I had to find out what happened to Tyler,† he said. â€Å"So I came here for the summer. No one seemed worried, but I knew Tyler wouldn't just drop out of sight. Tyler had talked about you, al of you, and Elena Gilbert. Tyler hated you, Stefan, and at first he liked Elena, and then he real y hated her, too. When I came here, though, everyone knew Elena Gilbert was dead. Her family was stil mourning her. And you were gone, Stefan; you'd left town. I tried to put the pieces together about what had happened – there were some pretty strange stories – and then lots of other weird things happened in town. Violence, and girls going crazy, and children attacking their parents. And then, suddenly, it was over; it just stopped, and it was like I was the only one who remembered it happening. But I also remembered just a normal summer. Elena Gilbert had been here the whole time, and no one thought anything of it, because they didn't remember her dying. Only I seemed to have two sets of memories. People who I'd seen get hurt† – he shuddered at the memory – â€Å"or even kil ed were fine again. I felt like I was going crazy.† Caleb pushed his shaggy dark blond hair back out of his face, rubbed his nose, and took a breath. â€Å"Whatever was going on, I knew you and Elena were at the center of it. The differences between the memories told me that. And I figured that you must be connected to Tyler's disappearance, too. Either you'd done something to him, or you knew something about what had happened to him. I figured if I could pul you and your friends apart, something would come out. Once you were set against one another, I'd be able to work my way in and find out what was going on. Maybe I could get Elena to fal for me with a glamour, or one of the other girls. I just had to know.† He looked from one to another of them. â€Å"The rose spel was supposed to make you irrational, turn you against one another.† Alaric frowned. â€Å"You mean you didn't summon anything?† Caleb shook his head. â€Å"Look,† he said, pul ing a thick leather-bound volume from under his bed. â€Å"The spel I used is in here. That's al I did, honest.† Alaric took the book and flipped through the pages until he found the right spel . He studied it, his forehead crinkling, and said, â€Å"He's tel ing the truth. There isn't anything about summoning a phantom in this book. And the spel here fits what we saw in Caleb's workshop and what I've been reading in his notebooks. This rose spel is a fairly low-level discord spel ; it would make whatever negative emotions we were feeling – hate, anger, jealousy, fear, sorrow – just a little bit stronger, make us a little more likely to blame one another for anything that went wrong.† â€Å"But when combined with the powers of whatever phantom might be hanging around here, the spel would become a feedback loop, just as Mrs. Flowers said could happen, strengthening our emotions and making the phantom more powerful,† Stefan said slowly. â€Å"Jealousy,† said Meredith thoughtful y. â€Å"You know, I hate to admit it, but I was horribly jealous of Celia when she was here.† She glanced apologetical y at Alaric, who reached out and gently touched her hand. â€Å"She was jealous of you, too,† Stefan said matter-offactly. â€Å"I could sense it.† He sighed. â€Å"And I've been feeling jealous as wel .† â€Å"So perhaps a jealousy phantom?† Alaric said. â€Å"Good, that'l give us more of a basis for researching banishing spel s. Although I haven't been feeling jealous at al .† â€Å"Of course not,† Meredith said pointedly. â€Å"You're the one who's had two girls fighting over you.† Suddenly Stefan felt so exhausted that his legs shook. He needed to feed, immediately. He nodded awkwardly to Caleb. â€Å"I'm sorry†¦ for what happened.† Caleb looked up at him. â€Å"Please tel me what happened to Tyler,† he implored. â€Å"I have to know. I'l leave you alone if you just tel me the truth, I promise.† Meredith and Stefan glanced at each other, and Stefan raised his eyebrows slightly. â€Å"Tyler was alive when he left town this past winter,† Meredith said slowly. â€Å"That's al we know about him, I swear.† Caleb stared up at her for a long moment, then nodded. â€Å"Thank you,† he said simply. She nodded back at him crisply, like a general acknowledging the troops, and led the way out of his room. Just then a muffled, cutoff shout came from downstairs, fol owed by a thud. Stefan and Alaric raced after Meredith down the stairs, almost bumping into her as she pul ed to a sudden halt. â€Å"What is it?† Stefan asked. Meredith drew aside. Matt was lying facedown at the foot of the stairs, his arms flung out as though to catch himself. Meredith stepped quickly the rest of the way down the stairs to him and turned him over gently. His eyes were closed, his face pale. He was breathing, slowly but steadily. Meredith felt his pulse, then shook him gently by the shoulder. â€Å"Matt,† she cal ed. â€Å"Matt!† She looked up at Stefan and Alaric. â€Å"Just like the others,† she said grimly. â€Å"The phantom's got him.†

Comparison of Filing Systems

Everyday, 21 million general office documents, 76 million letters, 234 million photocopies, and 6oo million computer printouts, all in paper, are produced by organizations in America alone. These figures came out from a study by the International Data Corp. All of these amount to paper-based files that are invaluable to the maintenance and progress of institutions.However, as much as resources only become assets if properly handled, these files are only of as much use as an institution knows where they are, and how to access the data they contain (Langemo and Robles).In order to realize this, it is necessary for an agency or office to establish a filing system that satisfies both the criteria of effectiveness and efficiency (Texas State Library and Archives Commission). For this, there are a number of selections. Therefore, it is essential to compare and contrast the features that each filing system can offer so that a reasonable choice can be made.Let us first consider the Alphabeti c filing system. Also referred to as a â€Å"direct-access system,† it is the most extensively employed classification system. As the term† direct-access† implies, its advantage is that it is user-friendly because anyone wanting to access information from the files need not check with an index.A user only needs to identify the first letter of the label of the data in question and search for it among the files in the order that it appears in the alphabet. Though there is a standard prescribed in using an alphabetical filing system, most offices alphabetize their files loosely according to their prerogative scheme (Langemo and Robles).A seeming upgraded version of the alphabetic system is the Geographical classification system. In this system, files are arranged by geographic location, e.g. by city, county, province, state, region, or country, and are further positioned in alphabetical order. Today, government offices and petroleum industries still employ the Geogra phic classification system in filing land-oriented records (Langemo and Robles).Meanwhile, when certain type of records requires numeric ordering, Numeric classification systems are employed. This type of filing system makes it easier to manage paper documents either by numbering the border of end-tabbed folders, or by utilizing shelf filing equipment, computer index databases, and color coding schemes (Langemo and Robles).Finally, when it is inappropriate to categorize records according to names either by individuals, organizations, institutions, locations, or agencies, Subject filing systems are used. This system is divided into two arrangements: dictionary and encyclopedic. When the topics of the files are arranged alphabetically, they are in dictionary arrangement. Meanwhile, in an encyclopedic arrangement, associated items in a subject file are classified alphabetically under a superior caption (Langemo and Robles).All of these four filing systems are advantageous for specific types of files. It is up to the agencies to evaluate which among these filing systems is appropriate for them. Failure to identify this can lead to a waste of time, money, resources, or worse, legal complications. The decision making practices of an institution will significantly be more effective if fitting filing system is employed (Texas State Library and Archives Commission).Reference CitedLangemo M., and Marcel Robles. â€Å"Upgrade Your Office Filing System.† Office Dealer and Office Solutions Magazine. Feature. December 2001. 22 Sept. 2006. .Texas State Library and Archives Commission. â€Å"Filing Systems.† Records Management Publications. Texas State Library and Archives Commission. 26 Sept. 2002. 22 Sept. 2006. < http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/slrm/recordspubs/fs.html>.

Early childhood education Essay

Early childhood education has for a very long time been neglected by educational planners in Australia. Early childhood education is one of the most important stages in pursuit of education given the fact that the foundation children receive in their pre-school years and in early school years goes along way in shaping their prospect careers. Early childhood education in Australia is faced with several challenges key of which include lack of a systematized curriculum covering both private and public sectors. The other challenge is lack of enough trained teachers in early childhood education which has seen the standards of early childhood education deteriorate in the recent past. Although the Ministry of Education in Australia has on several occasions initiated commissions to offer long lasting solutions to the challenges highlighted above, none of this has to date yielded into success. Failure for recommendations contained in various commissions set up by the Howard government can be attributed to lack of clear policy governing early childhood education provision in Australia. Early childhood education provision in Australia has traditionally been teacher-centered as opposed to being child-centered. It has lacked impetus in that instead of focusing on the needs of the children the kind of education provided in early stages of schooling has lacked in objectivity. There is therefore a need for a lot more emphasis on children interest from an early age so as to overcome some of the challenges witnessed in latter stages of education such as upper primary and secondary levels. If children are given enough orientation at the pre-school and early school levels such children are likely to grow up with a clear focus on areas of interest something which can help resolve the low literacy and accounting skills evident amongst high school and primary schools students. Teacher training will play a very significant role in accomplishing the goals of early childhood education. Teachers play a critical role in curriculum interpretation and unless the teachers are able to interpret curriculum effectively efforts to streamline early childhood education in Australia are likely to fail. To counter such challenges there is a need for the government to offer incentives to early childhood education teachers for instance offering free training programs or alternatively offering government sponsored training programs (MacNaughton, & Williams, 1998). There lacks proper curriculum to guide early childhood education and the one in place has been in use for many decades something which clearly indicates that it could have outlived its use (Margetts, 2003). Until stakeholders in early childhood education come up with solutions as well as recommendations geared towards streamlining early childhood education to meet modern educational needs then all efforts geared towards achievement of effective early childhood education provision in Australia are likely to be unsuccessful. In conclusion, early childhood education in Australia is in deplorable state. There is a need for the government to include in its educational agenda, policies which will see more funding directed to early childhood education. The government must take initiative and implement the necessary amendments to the education act which has not served early childhood education properly. There is a need for integration of early childhood education to primary education and secondary education for purposes of achieving transition so that early childhood education is not viewed as a stand alone sector in education. References MacNaughton, G. & Williams, G. (1998. 69-79) Techniques for Teaching Young Children: Choices in theory and practice, Addison Wesley Longman Australia Pty Ltd, Frenchs Forest, NSW. Margetts, K. (2003. pp. 45-65) â€Å"Child care arrangements, personal, family and school influences on children’s adjustment to the first year of schooling†, Proceedings of the Australian Early Childhood Association Biennial Conference, Hobart 10–13 July 2003, Australian Early Childhood Association.

Arab and Israel Conflict Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Arab and Israel Conflict - Essay Example Chapter threeIntroduction 23 Over View 24 Conflicting Issues 26 Conflict Resolution 28 Relation with Iran 32 Conclusion 33 References 38 Bibliography 41 It is rightly observed by the research scholars all across the globe that the word ‘change’ is the only constant thing in the world of today. The massive changes in the arena of international politics, information technology and communication process have immense influence upon the terms and the trades of the present day business and life. The impacts of globalization and privatization have made the world a small place to live in. The developments in the segment of information technology have proved to be very beneficial for other inventions and discoveries. Huge successes in the domain of communication processes have facilitated the general public to have access of the instant information. But the most important factor has been that of international politics that has considerable influence upon the life of all the people. The international politics of the last century

The Effects of Alcoholism on the Family Research Paper

The Effects of Alcoholism on the Family - Research Paper Example Attempts to maintain the family mythology causes the spouse to protect the alcoholic’s habits and to enable and excuse his alcoholism. It also affects the children with some of the children taking on the roles of the hero, the scapegoat, the mascot, and the quiet one as a means of coping with the parent’s alcoholism. It affects adult children, making them less able to function normally in society as they go through failed relationships and careers. The management of alcoholism includes cognitive-behavioral therapy for the alcoholic and for the patient. Family therapy and a drug regimen can also manage the alcoholism and teach the family proper coping techniques. The Effects of Alcoholism on the Family I. INTRODUCTION Alcoholism is one of the most pervasive substance addictions which many people suffer from. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2010), about 52% of adults 18 years of age and above were regular drinkers in the year 2010; and only 13% of these adults were infrequent drinkers. Alcoholism is considered a dangerous addiction because it has been known to lead to alcoholic-related deaths and alcoholic-induced deaths, including homicide and accidents. Although the individual actively engaging in the addiction process suffers a variety of effects (physiological, emotional, etc.), the family of the alcoholic is not without effect or consequence. In fact, three out of ten adults reveal that drinking is a cause of trouble in their family, leading to various physical, emotional, financial, and social issues in the family (Alcohol Drug Abuse Resource Center, 2011). The examination of current research outcomes will culminate in the identification of those effects on the role of the alcoholic, the spouse and the children, and the delicate balance between them. II. BODY – The effects of alcoholism on the family and the roles they play within the family unit: the Alcoholic, the Spouse, and the Children A. Effect s of addiction on the Alcoholic 1. Physiological Alcoholism has various physiological effects on the alcoholic’s body. According to the National Institute for Health (2005), alcoholism can have negative effects on the liver, the endocrine system, the bones, and the brain. According to the Distance Learning for Addiction Studies (n.d), it can cause dyspepsia, nausea and vomiting, recurrent diarrhea, recurrent abdominal pain, acute and chronic pancreatitis, gastrointestinal bleeding, and it can significantly impact on the liver. It can cause alcohol fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis, or ascites (DLCAS, n.d). Due to scarring linked with nodules, advanced necrosis can manifest and eventually cause cirrhosis of the liver. It is also known to cause cardiovascular issues, including cardiomyopathy, anemia, and dilated blood vessels where peripheral blood vessels dilate and cause the loss of body heat (DLCAS, n.d). It can also have a negative impact on the blood vessels. Wit h each drink of alcohol, about 10,000 neurons are destroyed or are disconnected from the other brain cells. Neurons do not reproduce and therefore lost neurons are permanently lost. Alcohol is also known to increase the conductive material between brain cells, decreasing their electrical impulses and impacting the frontal lobes and affecting a person’s behavior patterns (DLCAS, n.d). In effect, he is sometimes unable to make long-term plans. It can also affect the person’

Peyotism and the Native American Church Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Peyotism and the Native American Church - Essay Example Peyotism is, essentially, the ingestion of the Peyote, a psychoactive, small, spineless cactus, for religious purposes. Peyote is native to certain parts of Texas and Mexico, and the tribes that settled there have been reported to use it for a long time. There are Inquisition cases that dealt with peyote usage as early as 1614 (Stewart 1980:300). Though there are many prevailing theories about the exact route through which peyote use came to the Native American tribes that were not settled in the regions were this cactus grows, however, this much is clear that the tribes that practiced peyotism taught the practice to either those they had captured, or took the religious practice with them even when they were displaced from their original settlements. According to Stewart, it was the Lipan who were primary contributors to the course that led to the founding of the Peyote Religion in Oklahoma (1974:218), and La Barre agrees (49). Slowly, but surely, peyotism spread; it took on many asp ects of both traditional religious rituals of the Native Americans, along with amalgamating Christian themes within. La Barre states that as early as 1876, the Oto and the Sac were learning a Christianized version of Peyotism from the Tonkawa directly (as cited in Stewart 1974:216). Peyotism evolved and became what is now the Native American Church: a Christian church, with many Native American rituals. Just where the syncretism originated is not quite clear, but the fact remains that the members of this Church consider themselves to be practicing something that â€Å"incorporates distinctly Christian teaching and practices† (Feraca 2001:60). But the fact that most of their practices are frowned upon by the Catholics and the Protestants alike (La Barre 1960) for being incompatible with their practices clearly shows that there are some distinct native rituals that are practiced by this Church. Feraca maintains that at first glance, the paraphernalia used during Church meetings , both of the Half Moon and the Cross Fire sects, looks non-Christian (2001:61). The traditional beaded staff, the single-headed metal drum with three legs of the Cross Fire, and the peyote all are seemingly alien to Christianity, however, to Church goers they represent the walking staff of Christ, the three legs the Trinity, and the peyote itself is the host (ibid.). Similarly, the eagle, the turtle and the water bird symbols used by the Half Moon are considered to be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively (Ruby 2010:59). All these symbols, paraphernalia and rituals were part of the traditional religions of the tribes, but have now been amalgamated into a new form of Christianity that is practiced by the Natives almost exclusively. Emerson Spider, Sr., who was a Reverend of the Native American Church, when talking about this fusion put it so, â€Å"We are Indian people, and we still have some of our traditional ways†¦There are traditional things that we still have†¦because we grew up with them and we’re Indians† (1987:207). In his article about revitalization movements, Anthony Wallace states that revitalization movements take place when there is dissatisfaction amongst most of the population with the cultural

SAM 344 UNIT 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

SAM 344 UNIT 1 - Essay Example the past, top administrators of sports organizations used to dictate or make decisions in consideration to other factors, overlooking the characteristics of the target market segments. But they have realized that failure to take into consideration their needs, tastes and preferences, along with their attitudes and beliefs towards the products and services is counterproductive to the marketing gains made. Thus the sports organizations are today investing in efforts to acquire information regarding their target market segments (Chelladurai, 2006). Knowing the behaviors, attitudes, tastes and preferences of the target audiences is alone enough for firms to determine the sports marketing match. To do this, marketing research is needed. Marketing research helps an organization to have an idea of the hearts and thoughts of the sports fanatics. In the process, they acquire knowledge of who the fans are, whether they are excited or satisfied, what should be sponsored, and the various ways in which the sports sponsorship will influence customers (Chelladurai, 2006). The twenty-first century witnessed major changes in the demographic characteristics of the target audience. A case in point was women’s growing interests in sports. As fanatics in the sports industry transform, marketers ought to be continuously informed of their changing demographic characteristics as well as their interests. They must also assess the impacts that their sports sponsorship programs have on consumer behavior (Chelladurai, 2006). Finally, as marketers look into other factors dictating sports marketing, they need to understand that fan satisfaction, growth rate and loyalty are all significant considerations in marketing

Answer to questions about Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Research Paper - 1

Answer to questions about Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) - Research Paper Example ic limited organizations (primarily Enron and WorldCom and the collapse of Arthur Anderson), the Congress felt that there was a need for strict auditory regulations and monitoring. Therefore, to restore the investor confidence in public firms’ auditing and financial reporting, the PCAOB was established (Goelzer). I believe one of the key factors of the AICPA was that of self-regulation by those in the accounting profession. This is one of the reasons behind the substantial loss in standardization and therefore to create a level playing field for all public companies it was important to create a separate entity that solely looked into auditing control measures and ensured that the precedent set by Enron and WorldCom and many others was not repeated (Goelzer). Public organizations ought to maximize the interest of the public and therefore it became that a separate legal entity was established for their auditory regulation, as opposed to the AICPA which oversaw the accounting and auditing practices of non-profit organizations (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). The PCAOB was created because the roles and responsibilities of auditors in public companies were broadening. Audit firms were increasingly providing consultancy services and the work of the auditors was directly tied to the cost incurred by them. Therefore, the pressure to carry out auditing cost effectively increased on auditors which resulted in them not investigating matters on which they had slight doubts for fear of â€Å"wasting† the money if it turned out that there was no fraud. Consequently, the PCAOB restricted the advisory services provided by auditing firms. Moreover, the PCAOB could set auditing standards for public companies. It separated the auditors from the management of the company, the self-regulated function of accounting was now taken over by the PCAOB and the management and the auditors were both legally obliged to report the company’s internal control and financial

Strategic Marketing and Marketing planning process Essay

Strategic Marketing and Marketing planning process - Essay Example Therefore, it can be said that the goal of strategic marketing is in defining the course the business should take in order to achieve its strategic goals. At the same time, unlike tactical marketing, which is focused on strategy implementation, strategic marketing involves actual development of the strategy to be implemented. Based on company’s business objectives, strategic marketing deals with determining who the potential customers are, why they would buy the product or service, what it would take them to purchase and so on (Ignite Marketing Group, LLC, 2009). Consequently, strategic marketing performs such functions as market research and segmentation, targeting, and positioning the product. Completed, these tasks then become the basis for conducting an effective marketing campaign, which, in order to be effective, have be well planned. The marketing planning process, therefore, is the process of planning a marketing campaign for the product or service on the basis of information gathered from market research. However, the very first data to consider in the process of marketing planning is the overall business’ goals and objectives, because the actual goal of marketing is to achieve the set goals (Rooney, 2004). On this matter White and Uva (2000) distinguish three levels of planning activities that help businesses in defining their marketing strategies. According to the authors (White and Uva, 2000), they are: However, the strategic marketing plan, being the link between organization’s objectives and practical implementation of chosen strategies, is an essential element of the planning process, because it determines particular and precise goals and strategies to be implemented to achieve those goals. The very first thing to define in the process of marketing planning is company’s mission, meaning its orientation in the market – what

The Life and History of Jesse Stuart Essay Example for Free

The Life and History of Jesse Stuart Essay Jesse Stuart (1907— ) was the son of an illiterate tenant farmer from eastern Kentucky. Jesse Stuart had little formal education as a child. When he finally managed to attend high school, and then college, he discovered that he had a talent for writing. He has pursued a successful career as a writer, at the same time serving as a teacher and administrator in southern schools. In addition to short stories, Stuart has written poetry, novels, an autobiography (The Thread that Runs So True, 1958) and a biography of his father (Gods Oddling, 1960). It was from his father, that the author gained his great love of nature and appreciation individuality. LOVE Yesterday when the bright sun blazed down on the wilted corn my father and I walked around the edge of the new ground to plan a fence. The cows kept coming through the chestnut oaks on the cliff and running over the young corn. They bit off the tips of the corn and trampled down the stubble. My father walked in the cornbalk. Bob, our Collie, walked in front of my father. We heard a ground squirrel whistle down over the bluff among the dead treetops at the clearings edge. Whoop, take him, Bob, said my father. He lifted up a young stalk of corn, with wilted dried roots, where the ground squirrel had dug it up for the sweet grain of corn left on its tender roots. This has been a dry spring and the corn has kept well in the earth where the grain has sprouted. The ground squirrels love this corn. They dig up rows of it and eat the sweet grains. The young corn stalks are killed and we have to replant the corn. I can see my father keep sicking Bob after the ground squirrel. He jumped over the corn rows. He started to run toward the ground squirrel. I, too, started running toward the clearings edge where Bob was jumping and barking. The dust flew in tiny swirls behind our feet. There was a cloud of dust behind us. Its a big bull blacksnake, said my father. Kill him, Bob! Kill him, Bob! Bob was jumping and snapping at the snake so as to make it strike and throw itself off guard. Bob had killed twenty-eight copperheads this spring. He knows how to kill a snake. He doesnt rush to do it. He takes his time and does the job well. Lets dont kill the snake, I said. A blacksnake is a harmless snake. It kills poison snakes. It kills the copperhead. It catches more mice from the fields than a cat. I could see the snake didnt want to fight the dog. The snake wanted to get away. Bob wouldnt let it. I wondered why it was crawling toward a heap of black loamy earth at the bench of the hill. I wondered why it had come from the chestnut oak sprouts and the matted greenbriars on the cliff. I looked as the snake lifted its pretty head in response to one of Bobs jumps. Its not a bull blacksnake, I said. Its a she-snake. Look at the white on her throat. A snake is an enemy to me, my father snapped. I hate a snake. Kill it, Bob. Go in there and get that snake and quit playing with it! Bob obeyed my father. I hated to see him take this snake by the throat. She was so beautifully poised in the sunlight. Bob grabbed the white patch on her throat. He cracked her long body like an ox whip in the wind. He cracked it against the wind only. The blood spurted from her fine-curved throat. Something hit against my legs like pellets. Bob threw the snake down. I looked to see what had struck my legs. It was snake eggs. Bob had slung them from her body. She was going to the sand heap to lay her eggs, where the sun is the setting-hen that warms them and hatches them. Bob grabbed her body there on the earth where the red blood was running down on the gray-piled loam. Her body was still writhing in pain. She acted like a greenweed held over a new-ground fire. Bob slung her viciously many times. He cracked her limp body against the wind. She was now limber as a shoestring in the wind. Bob threw her riddled body back on the sand. She quivered like a leaf in the lazy wind, then her riddled body lay perfectly still. The blood colored the loamy earth around the snake. Look at the eggs, wont you? said my father. We counted thirty-seven eggs. I picked an egg up and held it in my hand. Only a minute ago there was life in it. It was an immature seed. It would not hatch. Mother sun could not incubate it on the warm earth. The egg I held in my hand was almost the size of a quails egg. The shell on it was thin and tough and the egg appeared under the surface to be a watery egg. Well, Bob, I guess you see now why this snake couldnt fight, I said, It is life. Stronger devour the weaker even among human beings. Dog kills snake. Snake kills birds. Birds kill the butterflies. Man conquers all. Man, too, kills for sport. Bob was panting. He walked ahead of us back to the house. His tongue was out of his mouth. He was tired. He was hot under his shaggy coat of hair. His tongue nearly touched the dry dirt and white flecks of foam dripped from it. We walked toward the house. Neither my father nor I spoke. I still thought about the dead snake. The sun was going down over the chestnut ridge. A lark was singing. It was late for a lark to sing. The red evening clouds floated above the pine trees on our pasture hill. My father stood beside the path. His black hair was moved by the wind. His face was red in the blue wind of day. His eyes looked toward the sinking sun. And my father hates a snake, I thought. I thought about the agony women know of giving birth. I thought about how they will fight to save their children. Then, I thought of the snake. I thought it was silly for me to think such thoughts. This morning my father and I got up with the chickens. He says one has to get up with the chickens to do a days work. We got the posthole digger, ax, spud, measuring pole and the mattock. We started for the clearings edge. Bob didnt go along. The dew was on the corn. My father walked behind with the posthole digger across his shoulder. I walked in front. The wind was blowing. It was a good morning wind to breathe and a wind that makes one feel like he can get under the edge of a hill and heave the whole hill upside down. I walked out the corn row where we had come yesterday afternoon. I looked in front of me. I saw something. I saw it move. It was moving like a huge black rope winds around a windlass. Steady, I says to my father. Here is the bull blacksnake. He took one step up beside me and stood. His eyes grew wide apart. What do you know about this, he said. You have seen the bull blacksnake now, I said. Take a good look at him! He is lying beside his dead mate. He has come to her. He, perhaps, was on her trail yesterday. The male snake had trailed her to her doom. He had come in the night, under the roof of stars, as the moon shed rays of light on the quivering clouds of green. He had found his lover dead. He was coiled beside her, and she was dead. The bull blacksnake lifted his head and followed us as we walked around the dead snake. He would have fought us to his death. He would have fought Bob to his death. Take a stick, said my father, and throw him over the hill so Bob wont find him. Did you ever see anything to beat that? Ive heard theyd do that. But this is my first time to see it. I took a stick and threw him over the bank into the dewy sprouts on the cliff.

Types And Characteristics Of WANs Information Technology Essay

Types And Characteristics Of WANs Information Technology Essay A Wan is a large area network that expands in a geographical area, such as a country or a continent. It is known also as a communication system that connects computer networks such as LANs (local area network) and MANs (metro area network). The connections go through local, national or international areas public or privately, using generally phones lines, referred to as POST, or employing PSTN (public switched telephone network) or fibre optics, creating the link between networks located in different facilities. A WAN differs from a LAN in several important ways. Most WANs (like the Internet) are not owned by any one organization but rather exist under collective or distributed ownership and management. WANs tend to use technology like ATM, Frame Relay and X.25 for connectivity over the longer distances. These networks contain a collection of machines to execute some programs which are called hosts. These are connected to networks that have communication through routers with each LAN and a WAN interface. Remote access is something vital for the companies and users because it allows you to have mobility and work through different areas. Also it gives the benefit to get better business out of your area. Basically a WAN generates new applications viable, and some of them can cause important effects in whole society. In order to give some idea of important uses, some of them they are already commented before, we can see emphasize: The access to remote programs. The access to remote data bases. Facilities of added value communication. The principal components are routers, switches and modems. Devices on the subscriber premises are called customer premises equipment (CPE). The subscriber owns the CPE or leases the CPE from the service provider. A copper or fibre cable connects the CPE to the service providers nearest exchange or central office. This cabling is often called the local loop, or last-mile. Then Devices that put data on the local loop are called data circuit-terminating equipment, or data communications equipment (DCE). The customer devices that pass the data to the DCE are called data terminal equipment (DTE). The DCE primarily provides an interface for the DTE into the communication link on the WAN cloud. Types and characteristics of WANs: The local area networks (LAN) are significantly different from the wide area network (WAN). The LANà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢ sector is one of the fastest growths in the industry of the communications. The local area networks own the following characteristics. Generally, the channels are property of the user or company. The connections are lines (from 1 Mbps to 200 Mbps). The DTEs is connected to the network via channels of low speed (from 600 bits to 56 Kbits). The DTEs are near to each other, generally in a same building. A DCE can be used to exchange between different configurations, but they are not as frequently as in the WAN. The lines in LANs are better quality than the channels in the WAN, because to the differences between the local area networks and the wide network area, their topologies can take very different forms. The structure of the WAN tends to be more irregular, due to the necessity to connect many terminals, computers and switching centres. Circuit Switching: The circuit switching is a WAN switching method which establishes, maintains and ends dedicated physical circuit through a carrying network for each session of communication. The switching circuit, which is used widely in the networks of the telephone companies, operates of form similar to one circuit, which is widely used in telephone company networks, operates similar to a normal telephone call. ISDN is an example of a circuit-switched WAN technology. Connections circuit switched one site to another are triggered when necessary and generally require low bandwidth band. The circuit switched connections are used primarily to connect remote users and mobile users to the corporate LAN. Also it is used as backup lines to circuit higher speeds, such as Frame Relay and other dedicated lines. One advantage is it is highly reliable for its function. A disadvantage is all the time spends to set up the channel and also there is the single point failure which can cause a dis ruption in communications. Message Switching: a computer is in charge to accept connected traffic of networks to him. The computer examines the direction that appears in the head of the message towards the DTE that must receive it. This technology allows recording the information to take care of it later. The user can erase, store, route or answer the message of automatic form. Picture taken from technet.microsoft.com Packet Switching: In this type of network the data of the users are disturbed in smaller pieces. These fragments or packages, you are inserted within information of the protocol and cross the network like independent organizations. Connectionless and Connection-Oriented Services: they happen directly of the free situation to the way to transfer data. These networks do not offer confirmations, flow control and neither recovery of errors applicable to the entire network, although these functions if they exist for each particular connection. An example of this type of network is Internet. In connection-Oriented packets switched, the multiplexing concept exists in channels and ports are known as virtual circuit or channel. The user pretends to have a dedicated resource, when he shares with another one then what it happens is that they take care of bursts of traffic of different users. General routing issues Congestion is about too much presence of packages in a part of one subnet. In cases of extreme congestion, routers start to reject packages, decreasing the system performance. The reasons of congestion are many, some of them are: If in 4 lines, the information arrives to him at router and all needs the same line of exit, it exists competition. Insufficient amount of memory in routers. But if you add more memory, this just helps until certain point because the time to arrive at first from the queue can be so long. Slow processors in routers. The analyse process of the packages are expensive, so slow processors can cause congestion. In that way the congestion propagates to the others routersà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦ The flow control and the control of congestion are not the same: Flow control: is in charge of a fast emitter does not saturate to a slow receiver. Control of Congestion: its function is to try to avoid that the network is overloaded. The solutions for the problem of congestion can be divided in two classes: Open Loop: They try to solve the problem with a good design. They use algorithms to decide when to accept more packages, when to discard them, etc. But they do not use the actual situation of the network. Closed Loop: The solution in this case is based on the feedback of the line. Generally they have three parts: 1. The system is monitored to detect when and where it happens the congestion. 2. This information goes towards where actions can be taken. 3. The operation parameters of the system adjust to correct the problems. Several measures of the performance can be used to measure the congestion. The main measures used are: % of discarded packages, Queue length, Number of packages that makes timed out and/or relayed, the average delay of the packages. 3. Addressing and routing It is necessary that any machine or host have one address, in order to get the information to the network. In the case of Internet, this are called IP address, and to each machine of the Network is assigned one. An IP address is a 32 bit number represented as four octets. Each of these four octets is in the range between 0 to 255. Class A: 10.0.0.0 a 10.255.255.255 (8 bits red, 24 bits hosts) Class B: 172.16.0.0 a 172.31.255.255 (16 bits red, 16 bits hosts) Class C: 192.168.0.0 a 192.168.255.255 (24 bits red, 8 bits hosts) Class D addresses are used for multicasting Class E is for experimental purposes. PTO Switched Services

Cutting Room Management System Economics Essay

Cutting Room Management System Economics Essay In todays highly competitive global market, manufacturers face constant pressure to reduce costs, offer greater product selection, and deliver products faster. Like many domestic manufacturers competing in todays international marketplace, the apparel industry has been forced to upgrade its responsiveness to customer needs. As a result, smaller orders are placed in a more dynamic fashion, requiring the efficient production of smaller lot sizes. Effective and economical production thus depends upon the interaction of many system components, one of the most critical being an efficient workflow control system. The cutting room maintains documents and books for the various cutting operations they perform. Generally the books and registers they maintain are require a lot of manual entries and the timely retrieval of previous records is a problem as these records are very vast. The focus of this project is on the means employed by the cutting room manager to instruct, monitor and control the processing of fabric cutting room and personnel. Documentation during and after cutting is designed to authorize the issuing of materials from store ,control the spreading, cutting and bundling activities, facilitate the analysis of losses and quantify losses against costed values. Cutting room is constantly challenged to cut costs on material usage. A small percentage of fabric saved during cutting can reflect a decent savings in the financial records of the company. The Marker making solutions are used constantly to minimize fabric usage while making markers. Another area where cost cutting can be done is by making an effective cut plan. An effective cut plan will make sure that garments are cut within the limits of the accepted quantity (as 5% extra delivery is allowed by the buyer against ordered goods), the required quantities are cut with minimum number of cuts (saving labor time). In most apparel industries, size mix i.e. how many and which sizes should be combined, in a marker is actually a very complex set of permutation combination. The number of variables possible combinations in most cutting problems exceeds human abilities. This projects aims to defining a system for effective management of cutting room and at the same time connecting it to fabric inventory so that track of the fabric in inventory can be made as most of the times the roll wise information of the fabric in inventory is not known and fabric issue is not made against a cutting instruction. Most of the time the fabric sent from fabric store is more than actual requirement of cutting instruction for a particular day so effective track of the consumption of fabric is not made in case there is no provision of returns of excess from cutting room. So designing of the system for effective flow is a need. OBJECTIVE To design a system which manages the activities that happen in a cutting room. The system should represent a model of cutting room and activities are recorded into the system. SUB OBJECTIVES The system is to be connected to the fabric inventory or database thereby maintaining record of each roll which is fed for cutting. To generate roll allocation plan for the cutting schedule to minimize remnants. To issue fabric against a cutting instruction. Proper Roll allocation comparing the actual material requirement for a production order against the roll in the inventory. Effective management of end bits form of end bits, minimizing it also tracking end bits. Storing and keep record of the remnants generated in the cutting room after the spreading and making them available for further use. Generating of effective reports from the cutting room. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Cut your losses: practical  tips to improve fabric yield  in the  cutting room. Fabric accounts for 25-40 per cent of the cost of making a garment, so controlling or negotiating fabric consumption has a significant impact on the bottom line. In this article Robert Broadhead addresses the process of estimating fabric yields, the complications involved in offshore contracting, and how to be as accurate as possible in predicting/negotiating fabric costs. Fabric accounts for 25-40 per cent of the cost of manufacturing a garment, so accuracy in this area is critical. Its been said a lot over the years, but is worth repeating here: no other single refinement in production can provide substantial cost savings as easily as fabric control. Controlling or negotiating fabric costs has become more complicated as overseas manufacturing and cut-make-trim (CMT)/package programs have grown. Before work went offshore, in-house fabric yield estimates and final production consumption reflected the efforts of the cutting department (either the manufacturers or a local contractors) and was readily known and monitored. However, it is surprising that many businesses do not track the variance between the actual cost of fabric at the end of production and the estimated cost of fabric on the bill of materials. This can significantly impact the bottom line. To have a truly effective material utilization, one need to look at all the factors that can contribute to fabric losses in cutting room. It would be impossible to eliminate all losses in the cutting room, but incremental improvements in material utilization could significantly improve the bottom line. Width Utilization careful measurement of the actual fabric received at a factory typically will show that more than 50% is at least  ½ inch to 1 inch wider than the minimum purchased width. This excess fabric width almost always goes into the trash yet it is usable and, if utilized properly, can save money. It requires the following actions: Measure the width of sort fabric when it is received. . Plan markers by fabric width. Issue cutting orders by fabric width. Marker Marker copies while copying the marker, regardless of the process used, length and/or width growth or shrinkage can occur. Marker growth can be more than 2% in extreme cases, but can be reduced to less than  ½ % with proper machine adjustment. Following points should be taken care of for accurate marker marker copies: In case of computer plotted original makers, keep the marker paper the plotting of the marker in the same environment where the cloth will be cut. Maintain a check marker, plot it at least once a week, measure it accurately to do the required adjustments. While using the ammonia or alcohol method, allow the marker copy to air dry, laid flat for 2-3 hrs, before using I to mark the table. Spread planning It is an analysis of the rolls of fabric available to be spread on existing sectional markers. The result is a plan of how many pairs/plies from each roll should be placed on each marker to minimize remnants. The requirements of this type of system to work properly are: Three or more marker plus remnant marker must be used on each cutting order. The markers must be different in lengths. Fabric flaw cutouts will require recalculation of the remaining fabric roll a resulting change in the spreading chart. The remnant marker is newly included in the chart calculations. It only is used for remnants remaining from the main sections. Table Marking More fabric is wasted in marking the table than in any other aspect of the spreading process. Tables constantly are being marked for spreading where unnecessary gaps are allowed between markers, start/finish line are purposely moved outward and splice marks are elongated. It is strongly urged that markers be prepared off-line by taping the individual marker sections together line-on-line with wide adhesive tape. End Bit Monitoring An end bit is a piece of cloth that is longer than the length required to lay up one complete size. End bits of course will come in all different lengths, and unless you splice there will be pieces of fabric which are shorter than the length of the lay being layed, these pieces should be treated with great respect. They should be measured, have a sticky label attached with the length on it, and then folded and put into piles of similar length to be used on smaller markers later. There is no point in keeping fabric for panel replacement unless there are important reasons to do so, so one must produce garments from all of the available fabric. The off cuts (pieces too small to make a garment) will be used to replace smaller parts of the garments that need replacement. The logic behind this is that if a large panel in a garment is replced then all of the profit on that garment is lost. Cut order planning The dot com way stitchworld It is interesting to note that size mix (how many what size in combined) in a marker is a mind boggling permutation computation but actually decided by the CAD operator or cutting master hypothetically and not through any scientific process. Generally the size mix marker combinations (how many different types of markers are needed for a given order quantity) are generated based on factors like size color ratio. There are some infrastructural constraints like lay height, lay length, working out the most optimum cut plan There are many optimal Cut Plan solutions, induced by interplay of many dimensions. The different, but often conflicting, dimensions are: Less Fabric Maximizing the extreme size-mixing. This is emphasized upon when the order quantity is high the fabric is also expensive. Less Labor Time Minimizing the no. of lays, leading to saving in spreading cost. Fewer Markers Minimizing distinct ratio, i.e. minimizing the no. of markers to be prepared. This is especially useful when one need to commit constant no. of sewing machines workmen for order completion. More Balanced Production Minimizing deviation in layer height across lays. This needs to be done when the order quantity is low the time cost involved in marker making process is more compared to spreading cutting. More Balanced Packing Simultaneous production of garments of all sizes. At times of urgency, interim lots can be sent to the purchaser without waiting till the whole order complete. Heuristics Algorithm The term  heuristic  is used for algorithms which find solutions among all possible ones,but they do not guarantee that the best will be found,therefore they may be considered as approximately and not accurate algorithms. These algorithms, usually find a solution close to the best one and they find it fast and easily.Sometimes these algorithms can be accurate,that is they actually find the best solution, but the algorithm is still called heuristic until this best solution is proven to be the best.The method used from a heuristic algorithm is one of the known methods,such as greediness,but in order to be easy and fast the algorithm ignores or even suppresses some of the problems demands.( http://students.ceid.upatras) Alternative formulations for layout problems in garment industry Before cutting, several layers of cloth are put on a cutting table and several templates, indicating how to cut all material for a specific size, are fixed on top of the stack. The problem consists of finding good combinations of templates and the associated height of the stack of cloth to satisfy demand while minimizing total excess production. considering high fashion clothing which is made by specialized designers in small quantities. It is sold only in exclusive shops. Typically, extremely expensive fabrics are used. The high cost together with the limited demand make it worthwhile to produce with minimal excess production, which is defined as the number of pieces which are produced above demand. Before production, demand data is gathered both from placed orders and forecasts. A demand set for a specific piece of clothing is composed of the demands for all the different sizes. The cloth is spread out in several layers on a cutting table. The number of layers of cloth is limited b y the length of the knives and the thickness of the cloth. For each size a stencil or template is made where all the different parts of the article are placed in the most economic way, such that they can be cut with minimal loss of exclusive fabric A good overview of solution approaches forgenerating good stencils can be found in Dowsland and Dowsland (1995). An application of the apparel trim placement problem is described by Grinde and Daniels (1999). After the spreading, the selected stencils are fixed on top The number of stencils which can be cut in the same operation is limited by the length of the cutting table. Since all the stencils have approximately the same length, the maximal number of stencils on the table is independent of the combination of the stencils used. A feasible combination of stencils is called a cutting pattern. It is quite possible that such a pattern contains several times the same stencil. After the cloth is spread on the table and the stencils are fixed on top, the cutting operation can start. For these high fashion and very expensive garments, spreading of the cloth, fixing of the stencils and cutting are time consuming and costly operations. Consequently we want to keep them at a minimum. The problem is now to find cutting patterns and associated stack heights which minimize total excess production for a given demand. The original layout problem is very similar to the fixed charge cutting stock problem (FCCSP). Haessler (1975) and Farley and Richardson (1984) proposed heuristics for solving FCCSP. However, the second part of the objectivefunction is different. In the FCCSP, the cost of trim loss is minimized, whereas we minimize the cost of overproduction. We need to stress that for our low-demand, high fashion clothing the cost of being near optimal, i.e. too much overproduction, can be very high, whereas for the high demand clothing industry this is not so much a problem. This cost issue, together with the fact that we are dealing with real life problems, justifies our search for better optimal solutions. Farley (1988) described a planning model for a cutting stock problem in the clothing industry. He argues that this problem differs from the traditional cutting stock problem because of the unique characteristics of the production process such as the laying, stacking, cutting and sewing operatio ns. Farley also makes an explicit distinction between high-turnover garment, for which overproduction and stock is allowable, and high fashion clothing, for which stock and overproduction should be kept at a minimum. He noticed that the planning model he described is effective for high turnover garment, but not for the made-to-order garments because too much oversupply is generated. The model proposed here is explicitly focused on the high fashion clothing with little demand. Farleys model maximizes the total contribution margin and takes into account demand and capacity constraints. It is used as a planning tool but it cannot be used for solving our scheduling problem. A problem closely related to this is the cut order planning (COP) for apparel manufacturing, described by Jacobs-Blecha et al. (1998). The problem consists of finding how to spread the fabric, determining how many layers to use and assigning various sizes to sections of the spread. The underlying assumptions, however , are not the same as those here and hence a direct comparison is not possible. COP allows for example different stack heights on one cutting table. The authors adopt a minimal cost approach. They consider the actual fabric cost, spreading cost, cutting cost and the marker making cost. The following constraints are taken into account: demand, a limit on the table length and an upper bound on the ply height. As it is very difficult to solve their model optimally, they resort to heuristics. Their test data consist of 20 orders, with 1-6 sizes per order and are based on real life problems. They conclude that one of their heuristics is as good as or better than the commercial packages. Elomri et al. (1994) also consider a cutting problem in the clothing industry. Their problem consists in choosing cutting patterns and associated heights from a small library of available patterns. The objective is to minimize total operating costs while satisfying demand. A linear approximation of the co st function is used. The most important costs in the objective are the costs for cutting and fabric. Documentation and control of fabric usage. The cutting room maintains documents and books for the various cutting operations they perform. Generally the books and registers they maintain are require a lot of manual entries and the timely retrieval of previous records is a problem as these records are very vast. The focus on the means employed by the cutting room manager to instruct, monitor and control the processing of fabric cutting room and personnel. Documentation during and after cutting is designed to authorize the issuing of materials from store ,control the spreading, cutting and bundling activities, facilitate the analysis of losses and quantify losses against costed values. The large contracts are divide into small but economic batch sizes that are suitable for the processing in cutting rooms.The details of these individual batches are entered on a cutting instruction , which authorizes the issue of fabric and provides essential information for the spreading and cutting. While the cutting instruction accompanies the material during its passage through the cutting room, the situation is monitored by entering data on the cutting instruction record. Management must control both the output of the cutting room, to achieve production targets, and also the various processes to ensure that materials are efficiently used. The fabric reconciliation record provides a comparison of the actual usage and costed usage and reports variances.This forms link between the cutting room activities and financial control projections as materials compromise approximately 40% of the manufacturing costs ,should be regarded as vitally important. Cutting Instruction is the main documentary output of cut order planning process.As a minimum requirement of cutting instruction it should have the following information 1.the fabric to be processed. 2.the marker to be used. 3.the number of plies authorized Fabric usage control The essence of fabric reconciliation is that for each lay a comparison is made between costed and actual usage of fabric,and the variance is reported.This document Plays an important role within management as it ties together what management planned to do with what they have achieved.Fabric reconciliation takes place after the fabric has been cut. Documentation management functions. Managers need to use documents but documents are no substitute for management.A manager who enters data on documents is not doing the work of a manager but is better described as a clerk. Documents are useful only when they allow managers make informed decisions which change the way the activities are undertaken. Cutting problems are NP-hard Thus, only small size problems can be solved optimally. These problems are solved using either integer linear programming or dynamic programming, or branch-and-bound, depending on the type of problem. But most of the cutting problems use heuristic algorithms. Although any given solution to such a problem can be verified quickly, there is no known efficient way to locate a solution in the first place; indeed, the most notable characteristic of NP-complete problems is that no fast solution to them is known. That is, the time required to solve the problem using any currently known  algorithm  increases very quickly as the size of the problem grows. As a result, the time required to solve even moderately large versions of many of these problems easily reaches into the billions or trillions of years, using any amount of computing power available today. As a consequence, determining whether or not it is possible to solve these problems quickly is one of the principal unsolved problems in computer science  today. Because (COP) is NP-complete, efficient algorithms for realistically sized problems will necessarily be heuristic in nature. This insight leads to the need for analyzing (COP) for characteristics that can be exploited for development of heuristic methods. Jacobs-Blecha et al. (1998) describes the heuristics developed for (COP), the reasoning behind these types of algorithm, and justification for the evaluation techniques. Heuristic development is based on the examination of typical industry cases that COP cost is dominated by total fabric length. It explains the experimental design that we used to establish this characteristic of the cost function. It should be noted that in some cases the cost factors that are consider in the model developed may have a significant role in the cost of cut order planning. For example, spreading costs may be very high due to negotiated labor rates; cutting costs may be driven up by manual or equipment parameters; or a large data base of historical markers may not exist, greatly increasing the cost of that process. However, they assumed that the statistical results, which confirm practitioners intuitions, are valid for the types of problem addressed by their work, and therefore the model can be modified to reflect this assumption. Note that under this assumption the only change in the model occurs in the objective function, where all terms go to zero except those involving the fabric length parameters. An alternative method for problem solution is to solve the linear relaxation and check the resulting solution for satisfaction of the integer constraints. However, this approach is not practicable: for realistically sized problems the number of variables prohibits explicit computation. Furthermore, most apparel manufacturers who would use these solution methods do not have sufficient computing capability on site to utilize sophisticated integer programming solvers. Therefore the development of heuristic algorithms to solve (COP) focuses on finding computationally efficient procedures for finding good (i.e., relatively low cost) solutions to (COP) for a robust set of problem instances. They selected two types of algorithm for the development of such heuristics, constructive and improvement. A constructive algorithm takes the input data and builds a feasible solution using intuition, clues from the spatial aspects of the problem, and guidelines found in the mathematical model. An improvement algorithm begins with an existing feasible solution and attempts to change the solution in some manner so that the cost of the solution is reduced while feasibility is maintained. The value of the cost function associated with the feasible solution produced by one of these heuristic methods can then be compared with some numerical bound, or other benchmark solutions. CUTPLANNER CutPlanner is a software package for use in the textile manufacturing industry for automatic cut order planning. CutPlanner takes a customers order for a clothing item and creates a cut plan for that item, including different sizes and different fabric types or colors, which minimizes production costs. A cut plan is an assignment of sizes and fabric types to markers. For each of these markers, the required number of plies is computed to fulfill the orders specifics. The objective of CutPlanner is to minimize total production costs. They consist of the costs for the fabric used, and several production costs incurred by making the markers, preparation of the cutting process, and the picking of pieces to be cut CutPlanner provides two different modes of operation to calculate material consumption: 1. Conventional mode: The user dictates the estimated yield values that specify the material consumption, which depends on the number of sizes in a marker. 2. Exact mode: CutPlanner engages an integrated automatic marker making engine to calculate the real material consumption. Here, the user does not have to supply any estimations: the software runs automatically. Genetic optimization of fabric utilization in apparel manufacturing. In apparel manufacturing, cut order planning (COP) plays a significant role in managing the cost of materials as fabric usually occupies more than 50% of the total manufacturing cost. Following the details of retail orders in terms of quantity, size and colour, COP seeks to minimize the total manufacturing costs by developing feasible cutting order plans with respect to material, machine and labour. A genetic optimized decision-making model using adaptive evolutionary strategies is proposed to assist the production management of the apparel industry in the decision-making process of COP in which a new encoding method with a shortened binary string is devised. Four sets of real production data were collected to validate the proposed decision support method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can reduce both the material costs and the production of additional garments while satisfying the time constraints set by the downstream sewing department. Although the total operation time used is longer than that using industrial practice, the great benefits obtained by less fabric cost and extra quantity of garments planned and produced largely outweigh the longer operation time required. Cut order planning Cut order planning (COP) is the first stage in the production workflow of a typical apparel manufacturing company. It is a planning process to determine how many markers are needed, how many of each size of garment should be in each marker and the number of fabric plies that will be cut from each marker. Marker is the output of the process of marker planning, which is the operation following the COP.Planning process using commercial computing to arrange all patterns of the component parts of one or more garments on a piece of marker paper,. Following marker planning, the third operation is fabric spreading, which is a process by which fabric pieces are superimposed to become a fabric lay on a cutting table. The last operation is fabric cutting. Garment pieces are cut out of the fabric lay following the pattern lines of the component parts of one or more garments on the marker, and then transported to the sewing department for assembling to be a finished garment. COP, the most upstream activity, plays a significant role in affecting the fabric material cost and the manufacturing cost in the cutting department. Based on the requirements of customer orders in terms of style, quantity, size and colour, it seeks to minimize the total production cost by developing cutting orders with respect to material, machine and labour. In the cutting room, after the completion of COP and marker planning, spreading and cutting are then executed, and the time and costs required for these two operations will be affected by the quality of the cut order plans being developed. A good plan can improve the rate of fabric utilization. The COP usually begins with a retail order comprising the quantities, sizes and colours of garments to be manufactured. The following example demonstrates how a cut order plan is derived. For simplicity, only the quantities of garments and sizes are considered. The details of the customer order are as follows: Size Small Medium Large Quantity (in pieces) 300 600 400 The constraints on fabric lay dimensions are: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Maximum number of plies for each lay: 75 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Maximum number of garments marked on each marker: 5. The maximum number of garments produced per lay is 5ÃÆ'-75=375 pieces and the number of garments required by the customers is 300+600+400=1300 pieces. Therefore, the theoretical minimum number of lays is equal to 1300/375=3.47. This gives a practical minimum of four lays to cut the order. If the order is to be cut at the lowest cost, the lays need to be as long and deep as possible. One of the possible solutions is: Small Small Small Small Small Lay 1: 60 plies Medium Medium Medium Large Large Lay 2: 75 plies Medium Medium Medium Large Large Lay 3: 75 plies Medium Medium Medium Large Large Lay 4: 50 plies An alternative of lay 1 is to have a four-garment marker and to spread 75 plies. This would reduce the cutting cost but was rejected because of the fabric cost since there would be 15 more plies and high fabric end loss, which occurs on both end of each fabric ply (more plies mean greater end loss). This solution has demonstrated that sizes Medium and Large are in the ratio of 3:2. The marker for lay 2 can also be used for lays 3 and 4, thus reducing the costs of marker making. This example shows that numerous other possible COP solutions can be generated. The COP problem becomes more difficult when the numbers of garments and sizes increase. The problem will be further complicated when the parameter of color is also considered in the plan. In addition, labors are needed to operate the spreading and cutting machines. As the fabric cut pieces will be transported to the sewing room for garment assembly, COP needs to consider the fulfillment of the demand quantity of cut piece from the downstream sewing room. Current industry approaches in generating the COP range from manual ad hoc procedures by cut order planners to commercial software. However, many apparel manufacturers are still using rather primitive methods; they rely mainly on the expertise and subjective assessment of the planners to produce the plans. Therefore, the optimal COP cannot always be guaranteed. Commercial COP software is available for use, but the COP heuristics are usually kept by the proprietors as confidential. Apart from generating a COP with the right quantity of garments with right size and colour, there is little room for minimizing material, machine and labor costs. Near-optimal COP solutions to reduce both materials and labour and machine costs using a genetic optimization model based on adaptive evolutionary strategies. The objective is to assist the production management of the apparel industry in the COP decision-making process and improve the quality of the decisions. It has been pointed out that the COP problem is NP-completeness in nature and it is feasible to use a heuristic approach to solve the problem accordingly by using constructive heuristics with intuition start and fine-tuning the solution with another improvement heuristic (Jacobs-Blecha et al., 1998). Roll Planning of fabric spreading In the process of fabric spreading, the variance of fabric yardage between fabric rolls may lead to a difference in fabric loss during spreading. As there are numerous combinations the arrangement of the fabric roll sequences for each cutting lay, it is difficult to construct a roll planning to minimise the fabric wastage during spreading in apparel manufacturing. Recent advances in computing technology, especially in the area of computational intelligence, can be used to handle this problem. Among the different computational intelligence techniques, genetic algorithms (GA) are particularly suitable. GAs are probabilisti

How Shall We Care for Our Frail Elders? :: essays research papers fc

How Can We Best Care for our Frail Elders?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The issue of what constitutes â€Å"best† care for the elderly is not easily identified nor readily defined. There are widely differing points of view, each with its own strengths and limitations. In addition, arguments are often full of bias and assumptions, making it even more challenging to form an intelligent opinion regarding this difficult problem. Differing points of view provide a variety of evidence, biases, and assumptions to be examined and interpreted before coming to a personal conclusion.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Alan Sager, an associate professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine, is in favor of a national health insurance policy that guarantees â€Å"quality health care for everyone† (Sager, 152). He insists that the government already spends enough to provide health care coverage for every citizen (Sager, 153). He presents a four-part plan with health care for all with no out-of-pocket expenses, financially neutral physicians and health-care professionals, hospitals operating on limited budgets, and freedom for each individual to choose a caregiver (Sager, 157). Sager provides many specific percentages, dollar amounts, and population numbers to supply supporting evidence. However, his attacks on Medicare distract from his proposed plan. (Sager, 155).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Richard Lamm, former governor of Colorado and current professor at the University of Denver, asks some difficult questions as he challenges the priorities in our current health care system where â€Å"we spend too much money on high-technology care for a few and too little on basic health care for the many† (Lamm, 160). He also carefully cites percentages and population figures in his evidence statements. However, Lamm’s biases weaken his argument drastically. He over-uses â€Å"hot† adjectives and draws parallels that do not represent evidence but rather pull at the readers’ emotions (‘pain-racked existence,† â€Å"spend fantastic amounts,† â€Å"small chance of survival,† â€Å"over treating our sick and under educating our kids† (Lamm, 159-160).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The complexities of this situation run deep. There are no simple answers or one-time, one-size-fits-all solutions. There is not one correct answer. Some of the reasons for many of the uncertainties that cause this problem to be so complex are: 1)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Extreme measures are being taken to extend the lifetime of very old people 2)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Sometimes when life is extended the quality of life may be severely reduced 3)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  People with Alzheimer’s and Dementia are no longer fully aware of their surroundings 4)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The elderly have already lived for decades 5)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Opinions about the sanctify of life vary widely. Once an open-ended problem has been identified, the solutions offered must be examined for bias, assumptions, and objections.

Effect of violence seen on Television Essay -- essays research papers

The Effects of Violence Seen on Television   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One Saturday morning when I was five years old, I was watching an episode of the Roadrunner on television. As Wile Coyote was pushed off a cliff by the roadrunner for the fourth or fifth time, I started laughing uncontrollably. I then watched a Bugs Bunny show and started laughing whenever I saw Elmer Fudd shoot Daffy Duck and his bill went twirling around his head. The next day, I pushed my brother off a cliff and shot my dog to see ifs its head would twirl around.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Obviously, the last sentence is not true. The example above is an exaggeration of the effects of violence on television can have on children. To a five-year-old child, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny are the pinnacle of â€Å"cool,† and they see nothing wrong with the violent stunts seen on television. The average child watches about two and half hours of television a day and witnesses twenty violent acts on those television shows each hour. In most actions movies, there is always a bad guy and a good guy. From observation of children, most children would prefer to be the bad guy because â€Å"the bad guy gets to the cool stuff,† as one child told me whom I was babysitting when I asked him why he wanted to be the evil monster in Power Rangers Dinothunder movie. What kinds of problems is this causing for our youth?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Children often behave differently after they have watched violent programs on tel...

Marketing techniques Essay

Introduction The businesses and products I chose happened to be, Nike and their Mercurial football boots, and Sony and their PS3 gaming console. I chose these products because I think they are both reasonably diverse, and in their time, both these products have experienced a range of sections within the product life cycle. For example, due to Nike’s football boots having to be constantly refreshed and renewed due to high competition, they have experienced, each sector, a number of times. In contrast, the Sony and their PS3 have also experienced similar experiences. For example, due to this specific console being one of the most successful and exclusive gaming consoles of all time, the overall competition has been reasonably low, and due to this, this certain product has seen the product life cycle at a very different perspective by experiencing each sector at a much slower rate. Product The diagram presented above dictates the process in which businesses go through, when marketing. Every business will follow this strategy when they advertise and market a product in order to gain the most sales, and to generate a substantial amount of profit. For example, the first stage of this Product Life Cycle is the Development. This stage entitles a business to conjure up a selected idea, in which they will later hope to produce as a product and then sell. The development stage is where the business will discover the blue prints of their product and how they will later market it. In other words, the development stage provides a foundation for the selected product as it will be built as a prototype to be later sold to the public in order to increase sales and profits. This certain stage is very secretive within any organisation. Other businesses do not want to let their competitors have knowledge of what they’re producing, in case they steal and release the idea before, a nd generate a mass of publicity, sales and profits. The next stage is referred to as the introduction stage; this is  where the business launches its completed product for the first time. This certain sector is vital as it will later determine how successful the product is, and whether it should be develop further. Within the Introduction stage, sales begin to grow slowly if the product begins to generate publicity, this is usually due to the lack of knowledge people have about your product, and it is also due to the lack of advertising. However, a business may not want to advertise straight away, as they may waste money on advertising a product that their piers may not essentially want or need. Therefore, business tend to use the certain advertising scheme, known as informative advertising, this includes small processes in which a business can build their products reputation or publicity. If this section of the product life cycle is successful, businesses can later develop on their products, thus enabling them to create further marketing schemes, beneficial to them, in regards to their sales, profits and annual turnover. The next stage within the Product life cycle is, Growth. This is where a business’s product begins to increase in sales, rapidly. This is due to increased demands, and the fact that all the business’s persuasive marketing schemes are working, thus increasing sales and profits. The growth sector within this product life cycle basically classifies how successful a business is, by being within the growth sector; this indicates that the business’s product is successful and popular. The fourth and pen ultimate stage is known as the Maturity stage. This is where a selected product, created by a business begins to sustain profits, and generate sales slowly. This stage takes place after the growth stage, due to many factors such as an increase in product competition due to the publicity of your product, as well as an increase in advertising due to businesses trying to sustain the success of their product. After this stage, comes the final stage, or otherwise known as the Decline. This stage entails a business’s product to begin to drop in sales, reduce in publicity and popularity, it begins to lose its appeal and competition becomes stiffer and bigger, therefore fewer units are sold. At this stage, advertising is either halted or completely stopped, and possibly the production of the item may decrease in activity in order to retain money and boost the production on other marketing schemes/ideas. Brand: Nike, Inc. Nike, Inc or Nike is a very popular and successful business that originated  in the early 70s. This business firstly began, known as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964, however, 7 years later saw them changing their name into what we know them today as; Nike Inc. This organisation specialises in sports apparel and accessories. This sport based business sells items within sports such as Football, Rugby, Golf, Basketball, Cricket, tennis, athletics and pretty much every other sport. However, I feel they are extremely notorious for their very professional and popular football boots. For example, Nike have earned international success and have worked with the likes of Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Neymar, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Mario Balotelli, Wesley Sneijder, Wayne Rooney and Landon Donovan in regards to promoting their Football related range of goods. However, in regards to my product, Nike has formed many advertising schemes with players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovià „‡ (left) and Cristiano Ronaldo (right). Product: Nike Mercurial Vapor This certain product is a very popular and renowned piece of sports apparel. This certain product is linked with football, as they are, a selected type of football boot. This variation of football boot comes in many shapes and sizes, this enables the product to appeal to all different, acquired tastes, and overall this will help the brand Nike Inc, reach out and attract customers. However, my reasoning for choosing this brand would be its placement within the product life cycle, due to increased and increasing competition, businesses such as Nike Inc have to constantly refresh and renew their produce, in order to maintain customers and as a business become more appealing and modern/stylish. Therefore, I believe these products fluctuate between growth and Maturity, for example, due to the competition, new boots are brought out every couple of months or year, this causes older boots, and their predecessors to be regarded as â€Å"old†, â€Å"boring† or â€Å"out of fashion†. Therefore, each boot only has a selected amount of time, until the next big style or football boot gets released. Like I mentioned before, I believe this product is mainly situated within the growth sector, as each boot only obtains a selected amount of time to succeed and become appealing, until the next brand gets released; therefore, it’s time to mature and become a cemented item is limited. Brand: Sony Corporation Sony Corporation, or Sony, is a very successful and popular Japanese multinational corporation that specialises in electronics, game systems and game entertainment. Sony is one of the leading providers of game entertainment in today’s society; they have produced some iconic titles/products like the PS1, the PS2, the PS3 and its most recent addition, the next generation of console, known as the PS4. These gaming, entertainment systems have altered and revolutionised the way we play virtual games, and they have truly made their mark on gadget history. Sony is a Japanese business that began in 1946, its name, at the time stood as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, however, since 1958, this iconic brand has been referred to as Sony. Product: Sony, Play station 3 The product I will be using during this task will be Sony’s, award winning creation/product, known as the PS3. I believe this product has been very, very successful, and I think I it will be an ideal product to evaluate and analyse. For example, seeing as this certain console is one of few gaming entertainment systems to be released in the modern era, the competition is reasonably low, therefore, its time during the product life cycle has sustained and gradually evolved into being a product within the Maturity sector. However, due to recent events, a new range of console appeared, formed by the same brand; Sony. This new range of gaming console is referred to as, the next generation of gaming entertainment, and this specific console is known as the Sony PS4. This PS4 was released into stores and gaming retailers on such dates as the 15th of November 2013 (for North American Citizens), the 29th of November 2013 (for European Citizens) and 22nd February 2014 (for Asian Citizens); and as of March 2nd 2014, this product has already sold as many units as 6 million worldwide. Because of this, the Sony PS3 will eventually fall into the declining sector within the product life cycle, due to decreasing demand, decreasing popularity and a decrease in advertising and production. This certain factor is one prominent reason why I have chosen this product to feature within my coursework. Promotion The promotional process within a business is where an organisation would advertise a selected product to either inform existing customers of new modifications to their products, or to advertise a new product they have just created and finished. The methods and messages business use when displaying their products are very important, as it can overall determine the outcome/success of the product. For example, businesses want to sustain and attract new and existing customers by using persuasive and informative promotional materials, and if their promotional schemes do not achieve this substantial amount of money can be lost, thus negatively affecting the business and potentially damaging the business. There are many forms and ways in which business can promote their products for example: Advertising – Through TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, internet Direct selling – directly approaching and â€Å"targeting† customers, e.g. public speakers, telesales, door salesmen Direct Marketing – Leaflets, mailshots, emails Point-of-sale – selling point stands, free samples, vouchers, offers Incentives – loyalty cards, bonus points or point systems i.e. these exist on many crisp and cereal selling brands Public Relations – Ensuring the organisations name is well known and grown or growing publicity. Catchy slogans, and brand names or e.g. sponsorships like Nike’s Cristiano Ronaldo sponsorship deals Sales Promotion – special offers, deals, sales to attract customers All these ways are commonly used by business in order to boost the publicity and overall speculation on their product, as every business needs to achieve a certain amount of customers, in order to generate profit. As well as these promotional ideas/methods, businesses also use certain features like AIDA. This stands for (A) Attraction, (I) Interest, (D) Desire, (A) Action. This diagram is used to represent a customer’s approach to reviewing a product. For example, when seeing a advert that appeals to them, these (potential) future customers will have a mental review of the product, and over a period of time, this AIDA process should unravel and take its formation. This is a process in which many businesses follow, in regards to promoting and releasing their product/ideas so they can identify what techniques to use, when advertising and promoting their products. For example, firstly comes the Attraction of the product, businesses want to represent their newly formed product as a new revolutionary item that will  benefit someone in every way, where it’s needed. Therefore, business will present their item as â€Å"cool†, â€Å"modern† and highly â€Å"anticipated† despite it’s not even released yet. This is in order to obtain the focus of customers and to gain their attention to their product. The success rate in which businesses do this will determine how many people will feel encouraged to buy your product, an increase of this will overall benefit the business and generate them with increase/grown profits. Secondly comes Interest, this is where business aim to achieve the focus and publicity of their product . Because of this, businesses want people/customers to gain an interest to their product, they want people to feel they need and have to purchase it. If a business successes within this stage, this could impact the business in a number of positive ways. For example, an increased amount of people interested within your product could mean, an increase in profits, and this will most certainly benefit a business. Businesses do this by containing people within their adverts or promotional materials looking happy with the product, or featuring famous figures in order to promote how stylish a product can be. Like I briefly mentioned, businesses want customers to feel the need to have their product, this stage is referred to as the Desire stage, this is where business feature many promotional materials in order to obtain the attention of customers and make them feel the need to want to buy and purchase their product. Again businesses can do this through featuring famous figures like Cristiano Ronaldo in order to promote their new product. By doing this, many fans of these famous figures may feel desired into purchasing the product as they deem it as stylish or maybe they just feel loyal to the role model/celebrity who promoted it. Finally features the stage/section known as Action. This the physical side to this AIDA cycle, for example Action is where the customer/reviewer will eventually purchase the good and use it/consume it for its purpose. Within this cycle, businesses don’t really have to do anything more at this stage, the customer has bought their product, all the business can do now is wait and assume the certain client has grown fond of their product, thus potentially forming them into an existing customer/loyal consumer. What are the promotional techniques used by your businesses? Within the two businesses I have chosen, there are multiple promotional techniques. Within the paragraphs displayed below, I will present this and eventually outline their strengths,  weaknesses, and comparison with compe titors and their differences. Nike Inc, Mercurial Vapor: For this selected product, I found many promotional schemes, however, I commonly found promotional processes within the advertising side of promotion, and these TV advertisements included famous footballers like Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimović in order to boost the attraction of their product as well as the desirability. For example, some screen shots/links of the adverts collected: Advertisements: Cristiano Ronaldo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWVYwppLPdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mdgTR5ZyDs Zlatan Ibrahimović: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqVk1FHYeFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SBnk3lKzzg Strengths: Within this set of Nike commercials, I thought the real strengths and positive aspects had to be the way in which they want people to perceive their products. For example, within each advert/promotional technique, they indicate how their style of football boot could change the way in which you perform, and how it can alter your abilities. For example, within the Cristiano Ronaldo adverts, it depicts Ronaldo, running through a whole team, easily with such pace, the advert then finished with the simple statement of: Be fast. Be Mercurial. This would indicate to customers that their special brand of football boot could enhance their abilities and the way they perform on the football pitch. For many football fans, and aspiring football players, these factors may be very important and this may encourage them to buy the item as they desire the certain traits these products supposedly provide. This is also a good way of advertising, because when people purchase this variation of football bo ot, it’s another way of advertising, however it’s free. For example, potential customers may see other people wearing the advertised boots, and this may cause them to feel jealous due to them knowing what the boots supposedly provide trait wise, as well as the fact, their favourite footballer may be the cover of that  certain brand, therefore they could feel further experiences of jealousy. This factor is very important because, in modern day football, the competitiveness between aspiring players may be extremely high, therefore each player wants/needs a certain factor such as new boots that may pose them with an â€Å"advantage† over everybody else/their opponents. Overall this will encourage more people to purchase Nike’s product as the certain products may feel increasingly desired, thus potentially increasing their profits and reputation. I also feel strength of these advertisements is the involvement/featuring of worldwide known sports figures like Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimović. Many young people interested within sports and football idolize over certain role models like these players, therefore, when these people see the Nike adverts featuring them, they feel obliged to purchase the certain piece of sports apparel in a way of supporting their role model. Therefore, Nike can use this to their advantage by exploiting how these players â€Å"benefit† from their products, and how it will reflect on their customers. For example, many fans and expiring footballers may feel, that wearing the same football boot as Cristiano Ronaldo or Zlatan Ibrahimović will grant them with their abilities and skill. Because of this, Nike’s advertisements can easily attract more customers by featuring these great athletes, thus potentially boosting their profits due to increased attraction and desirability. Weaknesses: Within these adverts, I felt it was very hard to find a significant weakness; however, I came to the conclusion of their adverts potentially degrading people. For example, due to the adverts representing how football players could be boosted/enhanced by the certain football boot, certain people who may desire the item, however can’t afford it may feel, when they play football, they do not have enough skill or power when on the pitch in comparison to people wearing these advertised boots. Because of this, many people may feel degraded, and they may also feel potentially weaker as a footballer, and this could potentially have a negative effect on Nike due to some people possibly feeling depressed about their abilities when being reminded of their products and their brand faces like Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimović. Therefore, Nike may suffer some reductions in customers,  therefore a decrease in overall profits. Comparisons with competitors: When comparing to competitors, I believe Nike is probably at the best stage, I believe Nike is at the top of their game. For example, I think the way in which these commercials are conducted, represent these products with style, professionalism, power, speed, agility, and skill, precision. Because of this, I believe Nike’s target audience has been expanded for example, due to the professionalism and smart appearance of these products and their commercials, elder customers may also be enticed to purchase the products, as well as young, aspiring players. I also feel Nike made the correct choice when choosing players like Cristiano Ronaldo when advertising their products. For example, over the past couple of years, Ronaldo has accomplished many individual and joint awards and has successfully earned his place as the one of the best, if not the Best player in the world. Because of this, more people may have been enticed to buy Nike’s products, thus potentially booting their profits and overall reputation. Sony, Play Station 3: Again, with this certain product, I found Sony Corporation used many promotional techniques in order to advertise their product, especially within television, posters and billboards. For example: Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyTlxHwuPZY – Long Live Play Michael https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkNPcUMffU – PS3 Baby Commercial Strengths: Within these Sony, PS3 commercials/promotional material, I found that theses commercials had many aspects about them that were positive. One of these was the engagement to the audience a special individuals that are avid console gamers. For example, within the Long Live Play commercial, a group of gaming characters formed in order to celebrate the background character known as Michael who controlled their stories, as he PLAYED their games. I believe this is a positive effect as certain people may recognise these gaming characters, therefore they already obtain some variation of emotional  attachment to them, because of this, more people may be attracted to Sony’s products. For example, by seeing characters from certain games they have played may trigger many good memories of these people playing these games when they were younger. Because of this, they may feel encouraged to buy the console in order to recap on old memories, because of this, and increased amount of people buying Sony’s products will mean, and increased amount of profits, thus benefitting Sony in a number of ways. Another strength could be the suspense during the commercial. For example, the Long Live Play commercial depicts a group of characters speaking and celebrating about this person called Michael, however, customers watching the commercial don’t’ actually get told who this Michael is and why he’s important until the very end. I believe this is a very good promotional technique as this may cause customers having to watch the entire commercial as they are curious to whom Michael is, and by that time, they are drawn in and notified of the brand â€Å"Sony – PS3†. This suspense could ideally cause more people to remember the commercial, and overall these factors could increase the amount of people wh o will buy Sony’s products, thus increasing their profits further. Weakness: In comparison to the Nike commercials, I felt there were more negatives within these certain promotional methods, especially within the first commercial I watch, the PS3 baby commercial. I feel there were certain negative, such as how vague the promotional method was, for example, I don’t feel and can’t seem to analyse any form of message or purpose into why Sony depicted a baby doll, glancing at their product and making a series of different noises. If anything I believed this certain commercial was quite weird, and if I were to watch this commercial, my initial reaction would probably deter me from buying this product,, as I found little about the product itself, and the way I think the commercial was conducted was very strange and dysfunctional. I believe this would overall be a negative effect in regards to Sony. For example, if people are deterred from buying you product, due to your commercial, this could result in reduced sales and ultimately a decrease in your a nnual turnover. I also find, within the Long Live Play commercial, if you were new to gaming and unaware of some of the figures within the production, the advert wouldn’t really appeal to you,  therefore the way Sony aimed to increased sales through this promotional method may not work as well as hoped. For example, how do you expect to connect with some of the characters when you’re un aware of their story/history? Ultimately this could affect the turnover and sales created through this product and it could mean less people may purchase Sony’s products, thus potentially affecting their profits. However, in relevance to my last point, it could also be perceived as a positive, for example, if some people are unaware of certain characters, this may leave them questioning their purpose, and why they’re there. Because of this, people unaware of this information may feel the need to purchase a games console and some related game titles in order to find understand why certain characters were within the commercial. Due to this, businesses like Sony who sell gaming systems may receive increased sales due to people new to games, and are searching for a correct platform to play on. Overall this would positively affect Sony as sales may increase, as well as profits, thus benefiting the company economically. In comparison to their competitors I feel Sony don’t feel the need to input as much effort into their advertisements. They seem to focus on sales promotions within shop windows like Game or Game Station. I also feel Sony withdraw from increased advertising as it costs money, and they seem to find leaving their customers without that many details, It might give them an increased chance in regards to buying the console as the negative effects of the product may be unknown until purchased, this is beneficial to Sony as again, more sales mare be generated, thus a potential increase in profits. Pricing Strategies Used Pricing strategies is another word for the structure, and how businesses decide to sell their goods, and depending on these products, the type of pricing may change. Nike, Mercurial Vapor: The first pricing strategy I think Nike use in regards to this specific product happens to be the strategy known as Promotional Pricing. This is where businesses provide offers, and sales on their certain products. And in Nike’s case I believe this is exactly what they do, for example, considering the competition for this variation of product is very high, businesses like Nike have to constantly circulate new products and new Mercurial Football  boots, otherwise, their competitors will receive the upper hand and potentially an increase in customers due to less competition and other competitors not releasing new, updated stock. So, businesses like Nike release new stock/products like Mercurial Football boots in order to maintain their customers interest, therefore a majority of their older stock falls into the category of sales, deals and special offers. For Example: For example, Nike cut down this special type of Mercurial Football boot down from  £55.00 to  £43.00, a  £12.00 price decrease. Nike also follows the pricing strategy of Price Skimming. For example, when Nike first releases a new rendition of the Nike Mercurial Football boot, the price is initially, extremely high. I believe they do this because they know people would pay so much, just to stay up to date and modern in regards to the latest range, I also believe they do this because they know they are going to later decrease the price, therefore they initially sell their products at an extremely high price, just to take advantage of the limited time it’s going to be that price for to ensure they may generate a major profit per unit, thus potentially increasing their sales and overall increasing their profits. For example: The screen shot displayed above represents how much Nike initially release their Mercurial Vapor range at, later this price will decrease as new boot ranges will circulate, and this certain style will eventually go decrease in fashion/popularity. Sony, Play Station 3: The Sony PS3 has been around for around for around 7 – 8 years now, therefore the pricing strategies Sony used may or may not have changed during the products long lasting existence. Over that period of time, the Sony PS3 has been altered, re-mastered and perfected, therefore the pricing has obviously had to be changed, and considering the release of the new PS4, the Sony PS3 price has probably fluctuated at an even greater scale. One of the price  strategies the Sony PS3 withheld was, Price Skimming. Sony needed and has used this strategy due to the products huge market life. In order to generate and receive the most sales/turnover, Sony needed to keep the price as high as they could until something like the PS4 appeared. For example, since its release, the Sony PS3 has maintained a price between  £400 –  £150, therefore within that 8 year product life bracket, Sony has only cut the pricing down from around  £250, and like I mentioned before, Sony did this in o rder to generate the highest amount of sales/turnover in order to sustain a substantial amount of profit. Sony have also used the pricing strategy known as promotional pricing, for example, since Sony and their consoles involve features such as buyable accessories and games, Sony seem to release the occasional deal which involves a mix of a variety of games, certain gaming related accessories and obviously, the console itself. These deals appeal to many people as they receive the highly anticipated console as well as many other beneficial features. However, businesses like Sony use these added features in order to boost people’s encouragements as they believe the deal is better than it actually is. This is beneficial to the business as it overall could result into increased sales/profits due to deal prices and bundles potentially being sold for more than the individual console. This then leads me on to my next and final pricing technique, for example, business use the pricing strategy known as Psychological pricing. This is where businesses sell products at a price to deceive customers and trick them into thinking it’s cheaper than what it really amounts to. For example, many businesses sell items ending in 00.99, this is due to it seeming like it’s much cheaper than the price following it, for example, people feel they’ve received a great deal off an item for  £19.99 instead of it being  £20.00, despite it’s one penny less, your eyes deceive you and it seems to look like a much smaller number/price. For example, in regards to Sony, their PS3 has been usually sold at a price ending within 00.99 in order to trick and deceive people, thus causing Sony, to generate an increased amount of money, thus boosting sales and potentially enlarging the business’s profit. For example: As you can see, this certain retailer has applied this strategy on order to generate a increase within each unit sold. This will overall benefit Sony as  more money will be generated within their company, causing them to receive a positive cash flow. Place Nike: Nike is business that specialises within sports apparel and sports related accessories, therefore you will find most Nike goods within common Sports retailers. For example, popular European stores like Sports Direct, JD sports and the Nike shop will supply these related goods as they are all featured within the same business sector – Sporting and Leisure activities. These products produced by Nike are supplied within these stores as Nike is a multinational brand, and it’s becoming increasingly popular, therefore, over the past couple of years, the demand for Nike produce, such as Mercurial Football boots has increased. Because of this, businesses like Sports Direct and JD sports want to sell their goods as Nike will cause them to generate increased profits due to increase popularity of Nike products and increasing demand for the certain stock, supplied by Nike. This is beneficial to both stores, for example, Nike will receive money through the selected stores Nike stock sales as a percentage of this money will be generated and transacted to them, as long as Nike provide these businesses with suitable and updated stock. The only negative I can picture could be the certain percentage of the money Nike might receive, for example, this percentage may be quite low, and therefore it might actually negatively affect Nike as they may spend more money manufacturing and transporting the goods than what they receive in return. Sony, Play station 3: Since Sony and their PS3 is categorized as a gaming entertainment system, the stores that usually sell this product are gaming retailers like, Game, HMV, Game station, and CEX, however, since PS3 became a worldwide product, they have gradually been sold within basic superstores like Tesco, Wall mart, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, ASDA and Waitrose. Again, due to the products speculation and overall success, these businesses decided to get in touch with Sony and sell their produce (PS3) as they were certain its success will provide them with increased sales, and overall profits. Many businesses like  Tesco also bought the stock in order for more people to enter their stores, fro example, by increased amounts of people entering a Tesco in search for a PS3, they may buy a certain drink or product provided by Tesco, and because of this Tesco and other superstores selling the PS3 may have also generated increased product/stock sales and well as potential increased profits. Much like the positive effect presented above this will also overall benefit Sony, as an increased amount of businesses wanting to sell their produce, will mean an increase in funding and overall boost in the finances within the organisation as more money will be externally inserted within the company. The only negative again could possibly be an insufficient amount of money to compensate for the immense amount of demands from businesses wanting to sell Sony’s products, however their funding/money should cover it, thus evading this problem and providing Sony with no real negative issue in regards to this problem. Evaluate the marketing techniques used by a selected business Nike: After evaluating and analysing Nike and their Mercurial Vapor football boots, I have resulted in a conclusion, and have formatted my final opinion, on their way of marketing. I personally believe Nike used very smart and successful marketing strategies, as the popularity of their business represents how they have globally attracted people to their brands, and sports apparel. For example, in regards to their Product, I believe the way they’ve dealt with the growing/fast competition really functions well within their business. For example, Nike has adapted and became accustom to bringing out and releasing new products, like football boots every couple of months/year in order to sustain the interest of their customers and target audience. For example, they need to sustain each of their products like the Mercurial Football boots within the growing sector in regards to the product life cycle, until the next brand or style of boot gets released. Without these certain functions, and Nike standardized approach, I doubt the business would be as successful as it has been over the past few years, this certain function has certainly helped Nike achieve success, sales and profits; and these are all very beneficial features within an organisation. Due to these factors, I also believe Nike has breached its customers’ expectations; they have released consistent and fashionable products, much  like the rapid production and competition of football boots, and they are definitely one of the best within their selected sector of Sports and Leisure apparel/equipment. This is why I believe Nike could be regarded as one of the best, if not the best football boot producers/retailers within the world, and I believe they are definitely one of the feared businesses, in regards to their competitors like Adidas, Puma, Umbro, Sondico and Warrior. Secondly, I believe Nike’s Promotional sector is also very effective, for example, as I mentioned previously, I believe the way Nike advertise and present their products is very professional, stylish and smart in regards to their appearance. And because if this, I believe Nike’s target audience is expanded, for example, by appealing to an increased amount of people, Nike’s football boot sales may increase, therefore Nike may even result in an increase within profits; thus benefiting the business further. I also believe Nike conducted their sponsors very professionally and successfully as well. For example, Nike and their range of football boots obtain sponsorship deals with players like Zlatan Ibrahimović and the two time Ballon d’Or winner; Cristiano Ronaldo. I believe these deals have secured Nike’s success, for example, due to players like Ronaldo promoting their produce, an increase amount of people have been encouraged to buy their products , like the Mercurial football boots; thus boosting their sales, revenue and overall, profits. Again, in comparison to their competitors, I believe Nike are the best in their business sector. For example, the way they’ve conducted each commercial, poster or other promotional source, they do it with certain features that I feel provides them with an edge in regards to attracting and generated desiring customers.  Within Nike, I feel their pricing strategies were extremely good / beneficial to the organisation, and I believe, there isn’t any other form of strategy that I would follow, in terms of generating sales, and ultimately profits. For example, I believe the strategies they used were very good, in regards to their products, and how it will function with their target audience/customers. For example, one of the pricing strategies they used was, promotional pricing, this is where business sell their goods by offering certain deals and sales and cutting down the price in order to attract and generate an increased amount of customers. I believe it was  convenient for a business like Nike to use this certain strategy, as the football boot market is very competitive, and new boots will have to be released every couple of months/ year. Because of this, it’s only right if they cut down the price on their other goods by introducing sales, offers and other forms of promotional pricing, in order to attract more customers, and potentially increase sales/profits. Another form of Promotional pricing that Nike conduct is the strategy known as Price skimming. This is where businesses initially release their item at a very high price; however, as it progresses through the product life cycle, this price tends to decrease in order to benefit the business and customers by producing potentially more sales, thus more profits, as well as a cheaper price, therefore increasingly affordable. Again in Nike’s case, this is mainly due to the strong, competitive market. For example, new products like Mercurial football boot s will have to be released, therefore the stock referred to as the old stock will slowly come down in price as new products and goods get released. This will benefit Nike as the cheaper prices could attract more customers, because of this, Nike could face an overall sales increase, and this sales increase could eventually lead to the increase in Nike’s profits. Nike could improve the sales of this by promoting these reductions in such things as Television Adverts or posters, combined with popular retail stores such as Sports Direct. By promoting these reduced offers, more people within their target audience may feel interested to purchase their products, due to this Nike’s sales and overall profit may lead to an increase. Within these advertisements further deals with popular sports personalities such as Cristiano Ronaldo could take place; further promoting these reduced products, ultimately leading to more people having a desire or wanting for these items, resulting in an increase in Nike’s sales and profits. I believe the way Nike sells their produce, like their Mercurial Vapors is very convenient and bene ficial to the organisation. Therefore I believe these certain pricing strategies are very effective and this specific range of marketing techniques are very successful in terms of generating the business with increased sales and overall increased profits. Nike has overcome their competitors by formulating certain schemes to override their opponents and receive increased customers, sales and profits. Like I mentioned previously, to strengthen this, Nike could promote their discounted and reduced prices  even more. For example, since a new style or variation of their products such as Football boots are renewed monthly in order to maintain a controlling position within the Market, a vast amount of their old products are slightly forgotten about in regards to customers and their target audience. Therefore I think it would be highly beneficial to Nike if they compensated more for the promotion of their older products with reduced prices as it could overall increase the sales of their business, and ultimately lead to increase publicity. More people would be interested to purchase these promoted items with reduced prices, creating a larger attraction to the Company (Nike) and its products, either new or old. Further promotional materials with sports personalities would also help solidify their position, as certain sporting figures may attract a larger audience to their business, increasing the publicity and knowledge of their products; this would be highly beneficial to Nike as it may result in increased sales, ultimately leading to an increase within profits, further benefiting the organisation. However, if I had to make one improvement I would say the pace at which the company skims the prices off its products. For example, many times I have been looking at popular football boots and noticed how the prices are extraordinarily high. For example, popular football boots promoted by famous athletes sometimes cost over  £200. For children, and sometimes adults, this type of money to compensate is nearly impossible, or considered a â€Å"waste†. This high price may result in push factors for people in search for the adequate balance I regards to sporting goods such as football boots, people will look for price, fitting and appearance; and if the price is high, it may deter people from purchasing it, ultimately reducing Nike’s sales, potentially leading to a decrease in profits. By increasing the rate at which these products are reduced, and shortening the period they are sold at a very high price for, more people may be attracted to buying and using the product, thus promoting the business’s content furthermore, and ultimately leading to an increase in profits due to increased customers and sales. Lastly, within the marketing sector, comes the section known as Place. This basically refers to where the products are actually sold. For example, for Nike this is the common sports retailers like Sports Direct, JD sports and  more. This encourages greater sales as the product is widely available. For example, it would be common to provide businesses who have generated success, prior to you letting them sell your specific items. Therefore, it was only beneficial for businesses like Nike to sell their good to businesses like Sports Direct who are very successful and have generated an array of customers in search for products like Nike’s Mercurial football boots. This will benefit them as the business’s success could potentially mean, more people might purchase Nike’s products, like their Mercurial Vapors, therefore Nike would benefit as they could potentially result in an increase within profits, and sales. Another way Nike may be able to improve the promotion and success of their sporting related goods could be the increase in personal customization, for example, many people buy and purchase products such as football boots to stand out within their selected sport, by allowing your customers to personalize a product, catered to their wants and desires will enable an increased level of individuality. For example, this customisation technique may allow people to feature their own personal initials and colour combinations on their selected Nike products. Also, this certain function should not only be introduced via the internet, but also via located outlets. This would enable people and customers to receive a visual on how their selected product would appear. Certain physical features such as a wider Nike product customisation would potentially lead an increased amount of customers, for example, like I mentioned previously, within their selected sports, people want to stand out, in order t o attract attention or an increased chance of remembrance. Therefore, by allowing people to customize their personal products whether it is tops, shoes, boots, shorts or even tennis rackets, a wider audience may be attracted. Ultimately this may increase Nike’s sales, leading to an increase in their overall profits. The only recommendation for Nike, in my opinion would be if they were to provide more promotional pricing methods in order to prevent certain items falling into a decline, for example, due to the high competition within the market in regards to football boots, they have to release new boots, every couple of months, therefore the â€Å"older† boots decline in price and popularity quickly. In order to prevent this, I think Nike should increase the amounts of offers within their football boot range; this will potentially increase sales and even boost profits as an  increased amount of people would be encouraged to purchase Nike’s products due to the falling/cheaper prices. Again this will benefit the business as more money could be generated, and this could possibly mean Nike may sell more, thus increasing their overall sales.