Evaluate WHS management systems Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Evaluate WHS management systems - Assignment Example The sampling at Wollongong store was successful hence the need to implement the program globally. Due to global proposed systems, Austrian Hardware aims at providing safe conditions for workers at work place and to comply legally across jurisdictions. There is need for corporate culture, operations and integration with management systems of Australian Hardware. Australian Hardware is committed to WHS in various ways like, first aid and treatment of injuries for the workers and customers among others as discussed in the report below. Looking at the data on First Aid Incidents, the workers are ill treated by those in management. First, for the first case on 1 July 2012 of a new worker who got an accident by lifting a lawn mower, the worker could not have been re-trained but be given first aid. The employee was new to the organization hence needed to be treated well. Second, on 10 Sep 2012, another new employee was cut but no first aid was given. Initiating safety action meeting by team leader could not help such a new employee at Wollongong. Third, on 24th Oct 2012, it is clear that the organization values customers’ life than those of workers since first aid was offered to the customer. The customer’s falling was accidental and there was no need for training of staff at Melbourne. Fourth, on 1 April 2013, a new staff fall down and treatment was administered thus indicating change in giving first aid to employees at Freemantle. Through safety and work health Act of 2011 which is supported by WHS, the sick workers do not need to be mistreated. Looking at medical treatment injury, a lot need to be done. First, on 1 July 2012, a new staff was injured and treated for a day at Sydney. The treatment was not enough for the worker as he or she missed work for 10 days. There was no need for the meeting as falling was

Tyranny of Teams Essay Example for Free

Tyranny of Teams Essay Some alternative perspectives on team behaviour elucidate the ways in which the prevailing paradigm ultimately hinders groups and tyrannizes the individual team member mdash; by camouflaging coercion and conflict with the appearance of consultation and cohesion. Examination of the limits and effects of the ideology provide the basis for an alternative understanding of the strengths, constraints and complexities of group work. Introduction Teams in various forms have become ubiquitous ways of working. As task forces, committees, work groups and quality circles, they are used to provide leadership, accomplish research, maximize creativity and operationalize structural flexibility (Peters and Waterman 1982; Payne The 1988) . prescriptions of much contemporary management thinking are based on a dominant ideology of teamwork. While teams have been narrowly construed as a tool of the Organization Development Model, the ideology is much more pervasive. Teams are embraced as tools of diverse models of organizational reform from organization development (Dunphy 1976) to work restructuring (Poza and Markus 1980), from quality management to industrial democracy and from corporate culture and Japanese management approaches to complex contingency prescriptions. 611 Beliefs about the benefits of teams occupy a central and unquestioned place in organizational reform. It is all the more surprising that, despite some differences in context, the team ideology has been espoused with such consistency. The hegemony of this ideology has been supported by researchers who offer the ’team’ as a tantalizingly simple solution to some of the intracDownloaded from http://oss. sagepub. com at Massey University Library on June 28, 2010 612 problems of organizational life. Teams appear to satisfy everything individual needs (for sociability, self-actualization, participative management), organizational needs (for productivity, organizational development, effectiveness) and even society’s needs for alleviating the malaise of alienation and other by-products of modern industrial society (Johnson and Johnson 1987). However, do work groups deserve the status they have acquired as multipurpose panaceas for organizational problems? As has been powerfully argued in organizational analysis (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Astley and Van de Ven 1983; Reed 1985; Alvesson 1987), the dominance of a particular paradigm has substantial costs in the institutionalization of table at once: mechanisms of control. The purpose of this article is to scrutinize the ideological basis of the prevailing team paradigm. Four sets of assumptions which underpin the ideology are identified: 1. Narrowly conceived definitions of work groups and group work are based on the assumption that mature teams are task-oriented, and have successfully minimized corruption by other group impulses. 2. It is an individual motivation formula and a ’unitary view’ of organizations which assumes confluence, not conflict, between individual, group and organizational goals (Burrell and Morgan 1979: 204). 3. Simplistic views of the superiority of participative leaders are held. 4. The views are also held that power, conflict and emotion are subversive forces which divert groups from work. Research from some alternative critical, psychoanalytic and other perspectives is used to suggest some areas in which the paradigm requires overhaul. A premise of this paper is that teams can contribute to getting work of all kinds done, but not when their application is informed by a narrow framework that nurtures inappropriate expectations. Further, and more critically, the team ideology embraced by these assumptions tyrannizes because, under the banner of benefits to all, teams are frequently used to camouflage coercion under the pretence of maintaining cohesion; conceal conflict under the guise of consensus; convert conformity into a semblance of creativity; give unilateral decisions a co-determinist seal of approval; delay action in the supposed interests of consultation; legitimize lack of leadership; and disguise expedient arguments and personal agendas. Definitions of Teams and Group Work theorists have defined a ’team’ as a distinctive class of which is more task-oriented than other groups, and which has a set group, of obvious rules and rewards for its members (Adair 1986). According to this view, high-performing teams substitute collective goals and an inter- Management Downloaded from http://oss. sagepub. com at Massey University Library on June 28, 2010 613 est in the task at hand for individual agendas and inter-personal conflicts. Group theorists have noted the parallels between therapeutic groups and other types of work groups (Foulkes 1964: 110). However, the emphasis of team ideology on the task-orientation of teams has tended to idealize and resist recognizing that groups with a task still experience anti-task behaviour, and indeed have much in common with other types of groups. Seeking to understand both individual and group work, researchers have, on the whole, been dogged by the search for discrete or measurable outputs of work. Work has many forms. Some definitions of individual ’performance’ and ’effectiveness’ in administrative and managerial (Likert 1967; Sorenson 1971) with creativity and innovation in research or scientific contexts (Gordon 1961; Sch6n 1963), yet such experimental measures often seem to bear little resemblance to individual experiences of work (Terkel 1974) . Efforts to define group work by researchers in the team ideology tradition have produced a range of measures referring either to the output or to the quality of group process.

Investigating the Effect of Temperature on the Movement of Pigment thro

Investigating the Effect of Temperature on the Movement of Pigment through Cell Membranes INTRODUCTION: The aim of experiment is to prove that temperature effects on a proteins in cell membranes so that pigment can pass through them HYPOTHESIS: On higher temperatures proteins in membranes denature so there is no barrier to prevent the passage of large molecules THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: Certain chemicals and treatments, such as ethanol or high temperatures, can destroy the partial permeability of cell membrane. The membranes are still present but behave as if holes have been punched through them and they no longer provide barrier to the passage of large molecules such as sucrose. High temperatures and alcohols denature membrane proteins and increase fluidity of membrane lipids; alcohols at high concentrations can also dissolve lipids. In beetroot cells the red anthocyanin pigment occurs in the vacuoles. Each vacuole is surrounded by a tonoplast membrane and outside of it, the cytoplasm is surrounded by the plasma membrane. On higher temperatures proteins loose their ability of control the transport through cell so any large molecule can pass trough. APPARATUS AND MATERIALS:  ¨ Test tube rack with 10 test tubes  ¨ Graduated syringe  ¨ Scalpel  ¨ Cork borer  ¨ Stop watch  ¨ Forceps  ¨ Colorimeter  ¨ Tap root of beetroot  ¨ Distilled water SAFETY:  ¨ Carefully use cork borer and scalpel to prevent injuries by cutting  ¨ Use Bunsen burner with great precaution to prevent burns or lighting materials  ¨ Water in beaker is very hot so watch out that you don't spill it on you to prevent burns  ¨ Watch out that you don't break any glass apparatus to prevent cutting METHOD:  ¨ Using a cork borer and scalpel make 10 cylinders of beetroot of 5 cm length.  ¨ Heat 200 cm3 of water up to 85  ºC in 250 cm3 beaker (make sure that thermometer is in the water).  ¨ While heating, with a syringe, put 10 ml of distilled water in 10 test tubes and label them: 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 63, 60, 55, 50 and 45.  ¨ When 85 ºC temperature is reached remove the Bunsen burner and put one beetroot cylinder in the water and leave it there for exactly one minute.  ¨ After one minute use forceps to take it out and put it in a test tube marked 85.  ¨ Put some cold water in the beaker until 80  ºC is reached and t... ...tly changing. In some moments changing would stop but that isn't reliable sign that that is the right colour density because after couple of moments changing would start again. Solution is to use more sensitive equipment or to get colorimeter checked because it could be broken.  ¨ Fifth problem is in humane nature. During the test we had a good time so occasionally we forgot to take the beetroot out for few seconds longer than it should be. We didn't pay all attention to professor so we forgot to shake test tubes before we took the beetroot out. Also, I didn't take a paper with me during the colour test so when I got result, occasionally I would forget what it was while I was going back to my seat. Also there was some noise in the classroom so I could misunderstand my partners in the experiment when they came with result.  ¨ To be sure in experiment results the best thing is to repeat it at least once to increase the reliability of them. Now when I know the whole procedure of experiment, results in repetitive experiment should be more accurate. Also this is good background to compare how different concentrations of ethanol effect on the membrane permeability.

Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird :: essays research papers

One of the principal aims of To Kill a Mockingbird is to subject the narrator to a series of learning experiences and then observe how much she profits from her experiences. There is rarely a chapter that does not teach Scout something new or does not build toward a new learning experience. So, one rewarding approach to the novel is throughout an examination of these experiences.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the largest view, Scout learns about (1) justice and injustice through the Tom Robinson trial; (2) prejustice and its effects on the processes of the law and society; (3) courage as manifested in ways others act; and (4) respect for individuality of the human being. On a smaller scale, Scout learns numerous things about numerous people; she becomes aware of the difficulty of being a lady, particularly when under dressed; and she learns when to fight and not to fight.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many of scouts learning experiences being in clearly insignificant scenes. Ultimately she must learn to respect the difference in behavior between vastly different people, especially when the behavior differs from the normal as radically as in the cases of Boo Radley, Mrs. Dubose, and the Cunninghams. So early in the novel, Scout in the novel, Scout is faced with some confusing experiences at school, where she confronts a teacher who dosen’t understand why she can read and where she meets Walter Cunningham. Later, Atticus explains to her that to judge a person you must try to see things from that person’s point of view. You must learn to walk aroun in his skin. Then you cab uderstand better why a person acts or belives what he does.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Only at the end of the novel does Scout finally learn to respect this saying. Until then, she remains curious and confused why Boo never came out of his house. In the meantime she goes through a series of maturing experiences. She learns how to see her from the teachers point of view; she tries to judge the Cunninghams and the Ewells from their side; she bears the insults of the town and particularly the apperent viciousness of Mrs. Duboes. From all of these, she learns to look at the individuality of the others!   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For Scout, courage is most often something with physical act and involves personal danger. It is very difficult for Scout to see that greater courage is often required in other places of life. Scout learns that the greatest courage can be found in a situation where a person knows that he is going to lose and still continues to fight.

Maf 635 E Commerce

PART 1 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning CHAPTER 2 E-commerce Business Models and Concepts Introduction to E-commerce C H A P T E R 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you will be able to:  ¦  ¦  ¦  ¦  ¦  ¦  ¦  ¦ Define e-commerce and describe how it differs from e-business. Identify and describe the unique features of e-commerce technology and discuss their business significance. Describe the major types of e-commerce.Discuss the origins and growth of e-commerce. Understand the vision and forces operating during the first five years of e-commerce, and assess its successes, surprises, and failures. Identify several factors that will define the next five years of e-commerce. Describe the major themes underlying the study of e-commerce. Identify the major academic disciplines contributing to e-commerce research. A m a z o n a t 1 0 : Profitable At Last A mazon. com is one of the Web’s most exciting and instr uctive stories.Started in a garage by Jeff Bezos in 1995, it has since grown to become the largest Internet retailer, with the highest levels of customer satisfaction, the fastest revenue growth rates, and finally, after nine years, profitable. One of the Internet â€Å"Big Four† companies, along with Yahoo, eBay and Google, few would have thought it possible when Amazon first opened for business that an online bookstore would become one of the premiere general retailers in the world. But Amazon’s ability to maintain operations at a sufficiently profitable level is a fact that continues to worry investors in 2005.Critics are of two minds: either Amazon will become the online Wal-Mart (and suffer from its huge size just as WalMart does) or it will fail to deliver superior growth and profits because it has spread itself too thin, taken on too many product lines, and given away too much revenue to customers by offering free shipping and superior service. Supporters, and B ezos himself, counter that Amazon has become the Web’s largest retailer on a revenue basis by focusing on the customer, not short-term profits, and that it will ultimately become one of the most profitable by following the same strategy.Amazon certainly has had a roller coaster ride in its ten brief years. In December 1999, Jeff Bezos graced the cover of Time magazine as its Person of the Year. In the same month, Amazon’s stock reached a peak of $113 per share. In January 2001, Amazon reported a whopping $1. 411 billion as its overall loss for the year. Its stock hit a low of $6 a share. Amazon laid off 1,300 employees, constituting about 15% of its workforce. Questions about its long-term viability abounded. Bezos promised he would make the company profitable in two years, but few believed this was possible.But, in 2003, Amazon reported soaring sales; it achieved its first annual profit ever (about $35 @ Amazon. com’s first Web site 3 4 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning million), and its stock price more than doubled to $25 a share. The good news continued into 2004 when Amazon reported profits of $588 million on $6. 92 billion in revenue. How was Amazon able to turn around its business from a $1. 4 billion annual loss to a $588 million profitable operation despite the dot. om stock market crash and the withdrawal of venture capital funding for e-commerce companies? The story of Amazon. com, the most well-known e-commerce company in the United States, in many ways mirrors the story of e-commerce itself. So, let’s take a closer look at Amazon’s path to preview many of the issues we’ll be discussing throughout this book. In 1994, Jeff Bezos, then a 29-year-old senior vice president at D. E. Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank, read that Internet usage was growing at 2,300% per year.To Bezos, that number represented an extraordinary opportunity. He quit his job and investigated what products he might be able to sell successfully online. He quickly hit upon books—with over 3 million in print at any one time, no physical bookstore could stock more than a small percentage. A â€Å"virtual bookstore† could offer a much greater selection. He also felt consumers would feel less need to actually â€Å"touch and feel† a book before buying it. The comparative dynamics of the book publishing, distributing, and retailing industry were also favorable.With over 2,500 publishers in the United States, and the two largest retailers, Barnes and Noble and Borders, accounting for only 12% of total sales, there were no â€Å"800-pound gorillas† in the market. The existence of two large distributors, Ingram Books and Baker and Taylor, meant that Amazon would have to stock only minimal inventory. Bezos easily raised several million dollars from private investors and in July 1995, Amazon. com opened for business on the Web. Amazon offered consumers four compelling reasons to shop ther e: (1) selection (a database of 1. million titles), (2) convenience (shop anytime, anywhere, with ordering simplified by Amazon’s patented â€Å"1-Click† express shopping technology), (3) price (high discounts on bestsellers), and (4) service (e-mail and telephone customer support, automated order confirmation, tracking and shipping information, and more). In January 1996, Amazon moved from a small 400-square-foot office into a 17,000-square-foot warehouse. By the end of 1996, Amazon had almost 200,000 customers. Its revenues had climbed to $15. 6 million, but the company posted an overall loss of $6. 24 million.In May 1997, Amazon went public, raising $50 million. Its initial public offering documents identified several ways in which Amazon expected to have a lower cost structure than traditional bookstores: it would not need to invest in expensive retail real estate, it would have reduced personnel requirements, and it would not have to carry extensive inventory, sin ce it was relying in large part on book distributors. During 1997, Amazon continued to grow. It served its one-millionth unique customer, expanded its Seattle warehouse, and built a second 200,000-square-foot distribution center in Delaware.By the end of 1997, revenues had expanded to $148 million for the year, but at the same time, losses also grew, to $31 million. In 1998, Amazon expanded its product line, first adding music CDs and then videos and DVDs. Amazon was no longer satisfied with merely selling books. Its business strategy was now â€Å"to become the best place to buy, find, and discover any product or Amazon at 10: Profitable At Last 5 services available online. † It also opened Web sites in Great Britain and Germany. Amazon, pundits noted, was planning to be the online Wal-Mart. Revenues for the year increased significantly, to $610 million, but the osses also continued to mount, quadrupling to $125 million. The year 1999 was a watershed year for Amazon. Bezosâ €™s announced goal was for Amazon to become the â€Å"Earth’s Biggest Store. † In February, Amazon borrowed over $1 billion, using the funds to finance expansion and cover operating losses. During the year, it added electronics, toys, home improvement products, software, and video games to its product lines. It also introduced several marketplaces, including Amazon. com Auctions (similar to that offered by eBay), zShops (online storefronts for small retailers), and sothebys. amazon. om, a joint venture with the auction house Sotheby’s. To service these new product lines, Amazon significantly expanded its warehouse and distribution capabilities, adding eight new distribution centers comprising approximately 4 million square feet. By the end of 1999, Amazon had more than doubled its 1998 revenues, recording sales of $1. 6 billion. But at the same time, Amazon’s losses showed no signs of abating, reaching $720 million for the year. Although Bezos and Ama zon were still riding high at the end of December 1999, in hindsight, it’s possible to say that the handwriting was on the wall.Wall Street analysts, previously willing to overlook continuing and mounting losses as long as the company was expanding into new markets and attracting customers, began to wonder if Amazon would ever show a profit. They pointed out that as Amazon built more and more warehouses brimming with goods, and hired more and more employees (it had 9,000 by the end of 2000), it strayed farther and farther from its original vision of being a †virtual† retailer with lean inventories, low headcount, and significant cost savings over traditional bookstores.The year 2000 ended on a much different note than 1999 for Amazon. No longer the darling of Wall Street, its stock price had fallen significantly from its December 1999 high. In January 2001, it struggled to put a positive spin on its financial results for 2000, noting that while it had recorded a s taggering $1. 4 billion loss on revenues of $2. 7 billion, its fourth-quarter loss was slightly less than analysts’ projections. For the first time, it also announced a target for profitability, promising a â€Å"pro forma operating profit† by the fourth quarter of 2001.Few analysts were impressed, pointing out that the method by which Amazon was suggesting its profit be calculated was not in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. They also noted that growth had slowed in Amazon’s core books, music, and video business, and profit margins were slim in the faster-growing categories, such as consumer electronics. In 2001 and 2002, Bezos and fellow executives began to implement their strategy for profitability: cut prices, offer free shipping, and leverage Amazon’s investment in infrastructure and consumer brands, while lowering costs of operation significantly.By evolving and leveraging the existing business model, Amazon hoped to do what analysts thought was impossible. The â€Å"easy† part of the strategy was driving business revenues higher by offering customers the â€Å"lowest possible prices† for a broad range of goods, providing free shipping for orders greater than $25, and then multiplying sources of revenue. Amazon’s 6 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning SOURCES: â€Å"Amazon Announces Free Cash Flow Surpassed $500 Million for the First Time; Customers Joined Amazon Prime at an Accelerated Rate,† Amazon. com, February 2, 2006; Amazon. om Form 10-Q for the nine months ended September 30, 2005, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 27, 2005; †Amazon Faces the Challenges of Its Second Decade,† by Paul Festa, Cnetnews. com, July 15, 2005; â€Å"A Retail Revolution Turns 10,† by Gary Rivlin, New York Times, July 10, 2005; â€Å"Tabs on Tech: The Internet,† by Laurie Kawakami, Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2005; â€Å"Internet Big Four: Worth a Look As Growth Stocks,† by James B. Stewart, Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2005; â€Å"Amazon Net Falls As Rivals Take Toll, by Mylene Mangalindan, Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2005; Amazon. om, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 11, 2005; â€Å"Amazon Gets the Last Laugh,† by Chip Bayers, Business 2. 0, September 2002. [email  protected] and Amazon Marketplace allow other businesses to fully integrate their Web sites into Amazon’s site to sell their branded goods, but use Amazon’s fulfillment and payment infrastructure. Nordstrom, Toys â€Å"R† Us, Gap Inc. , Target, and many other retailers use Amazon to sell their goods and then pay Amazon commissions and fees.Amazon also offers its expertise in Web site hosting through its Merchant. com program to national brands such as Target. In the Amazon Marketplace program, individuals are encouraged to se ll their used or new goods on Amazon’s Web site even when they compete directly with Amazon’s sales of the same goods. Amazon reports that sales by third parties now represent 27% of revenues and that it makes as much profit on commissions from other vendors as it does from its own sales. Lowering costs proved difficult, but not impossible.In early 2001, Amazon closed two of its eight warehouses and laid off 15% of its workforce. It hired 35-year-old engineer Jeffrey Wilke and a half-dozen mathematicians to figure out how to cut costs. The team found a way to redistribute book inventory among the warehouses to reduce shipping costs; used Six Sigma quality measures to reduce errors in fulfillment; consolidated orders from around the country prior to shipping (adding an extra day to fulfillment of â€Å"free shipping† orders); and further lowered shipping costs by using its own trucks to deliver orders to postal system centers.Wilke and his team reduced fulfillmen t costs from 15% of revenue in 2000 down to 10% by 2003. The effort contributed to Amazon’s first ever annual profit in 2003: $35. 3 million on revenues of $5. 26 billion. The results were even better in 2004: a $588. 5 million profit on revenues of $6. 92 billion. Looking back on the last ten years, it’s clear that Wall Street and Main Street have differing views on Amazon. Amazon has been a tremendous Main Street e-commerce success story even if it took nine years to achieve profitable operations.It has changed its business model several times, focused on improving the efficiency of its operations, and maintained a steady commitment to keeping its 49 million customers satisfied. In 2005, Amazon was one of the leaders in a survey of customer satisfaction with retail Web sites, while traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Target and Costco received low marks for their online offerings. Right now, Amazon must be counted as an online retailing success story. Few would have predicted this outcome in 1995, or even in 2000.For the future, however, Amazon faces powerful competitors who keep innovating, such as eBay and Yahoo! Shopping. eBay has been profitable from its first day, while Yahoo achieved profitability in 2002. But despite Wall Street critics, Bezos has not changed his original vision: in 2005, for instance, he announced additional expenditures to increase customer convenience, such as a flat-fee shipping membership program (Amazon Prime). And although Amazon’s revenues continue to grow, profits in 2005 were down compared to 2004.So the Amazon roller coaster ride continues, and what’s around the next curve remains to be seen. E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 7 T 1. 1 he Amazon story is emblematic of the e-commerce environment of the past ten years: an early period of business vision, inspiration, and experimentation, followed by the realization that establishing a successful business model based on those v isions would not be easy, which then ushered in a period of retrenchment and reevaluation, ultimately leading to a more finely tuned business model that actually produces profits.During the last two years, the fortunes of the ecommerce revolution once again have been contrary to what many people thought would happen after the stock market crash of March 2001, when the stock market value of e-commerce, telecommunications, and other technology stocks plummeted by more than 90%. After the bubble burst, many people were quick to write off ecommerce and predicted that e-commerce growth would stagnate, and the Internet audience itself would plateau. But they were wrong. E-COMMERCE: THE REVOLUTION IS JUST BEGINNING The e-commerce revolution is just beginning.For instance: †¢ Online consumer sales expanded by more than 23% in 2005 to an estimated $142–$172 billion (eMarketer, Inc. , 2005a; Shop. org and Forrester Research, 2005). †¢ The number of individuals online in the U nited States increased to 175 million in 2005, up from 170 million in 2004 (The total population of the United States is about 300 million. ) (eMarketer, Inc. , 2005b; U. S. Census Bureau, 2005). †¢ Of the total 112 million households in the United States, the number online increased to 71 million or 63% of all households (U. S.Census Bureau, 2005; eMarketer, Inc. , 2005b; Pew Research Center, 2005). †¢ On an average day, 70 million people go online. Around 140 million send e-mail, 8 million have created a blog, 4 million share music on peer-to-peer networks, and 3 million use the Internet to rate a person, product, or service (Pew Research Center, 2005; Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2004). †¢ The number of people who have purchased something online expanded to about 110 million, with additional millions shopping (gathering information) but not purchasing (Pew Research Center, 2005). The demographic profile of new online shoppers broadened to become more like ordinary American shoppers (Pew Research Center, 2005; Fallows, 2004). †¢ B2B e-commerce—use of the Internet for business-to-business commerce— expanded about 30% in 2005 to more than $1. 5 trillion (U. S. Department of Commerce, 2005). †¢ The Internet technology base gained greater depth and power, as more than 42 million households had broadband cable or DSL access to the Internet in 2005—about 38% of all households (eMarketer, Inc. , 2005c). 8 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning Initial public offerings (IPOs) returned, with 233 IPOs in 2004—more than the number of IPOs in 2002 and 2003 combined. The Internet stock group rebounded in value, along with the entire NASDAQ stock exchange, which is primarily composed of technology stocks. The rebound in Internet stocks was led by Google’s IPO, which raised $1. 67 billion. Google’s stock opened at $85 on the first day and has since rocketed to the $300 range (Hoovers, 2005; Riv lin, 2005; Elgin, 2005). These developments signal many of the themes in the new edition of this book (see Table 1. 1).More and more people and businesses will be using the Internet to conduct commerce; the e-commerce channel will deepen as more products and services come online; more industries will be transformed by e-commerce, including travel reservations, music and entertainment, news, software, education, and finance; Internet technology will continue to drive these changes as broadband telecommunications comes to more households; pure e-commerce business models will be refined further to achieve higher levels of profitability; and traditional retail brands such as Sears, J.C. Penney, and Wal-Mart will further extend their multichannel, bricks-and-clicks strategies and retain their dominant retail positions. At the societal level, other trends are apparent. The major digital copyright owners have increased their pursuit of online file-swapping services; states have successfull y moved toward taxation of Internet sales; and sovereign nations have expanded their surveillance of, and control over, Internet communications and content. In 1994, e-commerce as we now know it did not exist.In 2005, just ten years later, around 110 million American consumers are expected to spend about $142–$172 billion purchasing products and services on the Internet’s World Wide Web (eMarketer, Inc. , 2005b; Shop. org and Forrester Research, 2005; Rainie, 2005). Although the terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably, they are actually two very different things. The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks, and the World Wide Web is one of the Internet’s most popular services, providing access to over 8 billion Web pages.We describe both more fully later in this section and in Chapter 3. In 2005, businesses are expected to spend over $1. 5 trillion purchasing goods and services from other businesses on the Web (U. S. Departm ent of Commerce, 2005). From a standing start in 1995, this type of commerce, called electronic commerce or e-commerce, has experienced growth rates of well over 100% a year; although the rate has slowed and is now growing at about 25% a year. These developments have created the first widespread digital electronic marketplaces. Even more impressive than its spectacular initial growth is its future predicted growth.By 2008, analysts estimate that consumers will be spending around $232 billion and businesses about $3 trillion in online transactions (eMarketer, Inc. , 2005a; 2003; U. S. Department of Commerce, 2005). E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 9 TABLE 1. 1 BUSINESS MAJOR TRENDS IN E-COMMERCE, 2006 †¢ Retail consumer e-commerce continues to grow at double-digit rates. †¢ The online demographics of shoppers continues to broaden. †¢ Online sites continue to strengthen profitability by refining their business models and leveraging the capabilities of the In ternet. The first wave of e-commerce transformed the business world of books, music, and air travel. In the second wave, eight new industries are facing a similar transformation: telephones, movies, television, jewelry, real estate, hotels, bill payments, and software. †¢ The breadth of e-commerce offerings grows, especially in travel, information clearinghouses, entertainment, retail apparel, appliances, and home furnishings. †¢ Small businesses and entrepreneurs continue to flood into the e-commerce marketplace, often riding on the infrastructures created by industry giants such as Amazon, eBay, and Overture. Brand extension through the Internet grows as large firms such as Sears, J. C. Penney, L. L. Bean, and Wal-Mart pursue integrated, multi-channel bricks-and-clicks strategies. †¢ B2B supply chain transactions and collaborative commerce continue to strengthen and grow beyond the $1. 5 trillion mark. TECHNOLOGY †¢ Wireless Internet connections (Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, and 3G telephone) grow rapidly. †¢ Podcasting takes off as a new media format for distribution of radio and user-generated commentary. †¢ The Internet broadband foundation becomes stronger in households and businesses.Bandwidth prices fall as telecommunications companies re-capitalize their debts. †¢ RSS (Really Simple Syndication) grows to become a major new form of user-controlled information distribution that rivals e-mail in some applications. †¢ Computing and networking component prices continue to fall dramatically. †¢ New Internet-based models of computing such as . NET and Web services expand B2B opportunities. SOCIETY †¢ Self-publishing (user-generated content) and syndication in the form of blogs, wikis and social networks grow to form an entirely new self-publishing forum. Newspapers and other traditional media adopt online, interactive models. †¢ Conflicts over copyright management and control grow in significance. †¢ Over half th e Internet user population (about 80 million adults) join a social group on the Internet. †¢ Taxation of Internet sales becomes more widespread and accepted by large online merchants. †¢ Controversy over content regulation and controls increases. †¢ Surveillance of Internet communications grows in significance. †¢ Concerns over commercial and governmental privacy invasion grow. Internet fraud and abuse occurrences increase. †¢ First Amendment rights of free speech and association on the Internet are challenged. †¢ Spam grows despite new laws and promised technology fixes. †¢ Invasion of personal privacy on the Web expands as marketers find new ways to track users. 10 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning THE FIRST THIRTY SECONDS It is important to realize that the rapid growth and change that has occurred in the first ten years of e-commerce represents just the beginning—what could be called the first thirty seconds of the e-commerce re volution.The same technologies that drove the first decade of e-commerce (described in Chapter 3) continue to evolve at exponential rates. Changes in underlying information technologies and continuing entrepreneurial innovation promise as much change in the next decade as seen in the last decade. The twenty-first century will be the age of a digitally enabled social and commercial life, the outlines of which we can barely perceive at this time. It appears likely that e-commerce will eventually impact nearly all commerce, or that most commerce will be e-commerce by the year 2050.Business fortunes are made—and lost—in periods of extraordinary change such as this. The next five years hold out extraordinary opportunities—as well as risks—for new and traditional businesses to exploit digital technology for market advantage. For society as a whole, the next few decades offer the possibility of extraordinary gains in social wealth as the digital revolution works its way through larger and larger segments of the world’s economy, offering the possibility of high rates of productivity and income growth in an inflation-free environment.This book will help you perceive and understand the opportunities and risks that lie ahead. By the time you finish, you will be able to identify the technological, business, and social forces that have shaped the first era of e-commerce and extend that understanding into the years ahead. WHAT IS E-COMMERCE? e-commerce the use of the Internet and the Web to transact business. More formally, digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals Our focus in this book is e-commerce—the use of the Internet and the Web to transact business.More formally, we focus on digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals. Each of these components of our working definition of e-commerce is important. Digitally enabled transactions incl ude all transactions mediated by digital technology. For the most part, this means transactions that occur over the Internet and the Web. Commercial transactions involve the exchange of value (e. g. , money) across organizational or individual boundaries in return for products and services.Exchange of value is important for understanding the limits of e-commerce. Without an exchange of value, no commerce occurs. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN E-COMMERCE AND E-BUSINESS There is a debate among consultants and academics about the meaning and limitations of both e-commerce and e-business. Some argue that e-commerce encompasses the entire world of electronically based organizational activities that support a firm’s market exchanges—including a firm’s entire information system’s infrastructure (Rayport and Jaworksi, 2003).Others argue, on the other hand, that e-business encompasses the entire world of internal and external electronically based activities, including e-c ommerce (Kalakota and Robinson, 2003). E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 11 FIGURE 1. 1 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN E-COMMERCE AND E-BUSINESS E-commerce primarily involves transactions that cross firm boundaries. E-business primarily involves the application of digital technologies to business processes within the firm. We think that it is important to make a working distinction between e-commerce and e-business because we believe they refer to different phenomena.For purposes of this text, we will use the term e-business to refer primarily to the digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm, involving information systems under the control of the firm. For the most part, in our view, e-business does not include commercial transactions involving an exchange of value across organizational boundaries. For example, a company’s online inventory control mechanisms are a component of e-business, but such internal processes do not directly generate revenue for the firm from outside businesses or consumers, as e-commerce, by definition, does.It is true, however, that a firm’s e-business infrastructure provides support for online e-commerce exchanges; the same infrastructure and skill sets are involved in both e-business and e-commerce. Ecommerce and e-business systems blur together at the business firm boundary, at the point where internal business systems link up with suppliers or customers, for instance. E-business applications turn into e-commerce precisely when an exchange of value occurs (see Mesenbourg, U. S. Department of Commerce, August 2001 for a similar view).We will examine this intersection further in Chapter 12. e-business the digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm, involving information systems under the control of the firm WHY STUDY E-COMMERCE? Why are there college courses and textbooks on e-commerce when there are no courses or textbooks on â€Å"TV Commerce,† â€Å"Radio Commerce,à ¢â‚¬  â€Å"Direct Mail Commerce,† â€Å"Railroad Commerce,† or â€Å"Highway Commerce,† even though these 12 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning information asymmetry any disparity in relevant market information among parties in a transaction echnologies had profound impacts on commerce in the twentieth century and account for far more commerce than e-commerce? The reason, as you shall see, is that e-commerce technology (discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4) is different and more powerful than any of the other technologies we have seen in the past century. While these other technologies transformed economic life in the twentieth century, the evolving Internet and other information technologies will shape the twenty-first century. Prior to the development f e-commerce, the process of marketing and selling goods was a mass-marketing and sales force-driven process. Consumers were viewed as passive targets of advertising â€Å"campaigns† and brand ing blitzes intended to influence their long-term product perceptions and immediate purchasing behavior. Selling was conducted in well-insulated â€Å"channels. † Consumers were considered to be trapped by geographical and social boundaries, unable to search widely for the best price and quality. Information about prices, costs, and fees could be hidden from the consumer, creating profitable â€Å"information asymmetries† for the selling firm.Information asymmetry refers to any disparity in relevant market information among parties in a transaction. It was so expensive to change national or regional prices in traditional retailing (what are called menu costs) that â€Å"one national price† was the norm, and dynamic pricing to the marketplace— changing prices in real time—was unheard of. E-commerce has challenged much of this traditional business thinking. Table 1. 2 lists seven unique features of e-commerce technology that both challenge traditiona l business thinking and explain why we have so much interest in e-commerce. SEVEN UNIQUE FEATURES OF E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGYEach of the dimensions of e-commerce technology and their business significance listed in Table 1. 2 deserves a brief exploration, as well as a comparison to both traditional commerce and other forms of technology-enabled commerce. marketplace physical space you visit in order to transact Ubiquity In traditional commerce, a marketplace is a physical place you visit in order to transact. For example, television and radio typically motivate the consumer to go someplace to make a purchase. E-commerce, in contrast, is characterized by its ubiquity: it is available just about everywhere, at all times.It liberates the market from being restricted to a physical space and makes it possible to shop from your desktop, at home, at work, or even from your car, using mobile commerce. The result is called a marketspace—a marketplace extended beyond traditional boundarie s and removed from a temporal and geographic location. From a consumer point of view, ubiquity reduces transaction costs—the costs of participating in a market. To transact, it is no longer necessary that you spend time and money traveling to a market. At a broader level, the ubiquity of e-commerce lowers the cognitive energy required to transact in a marketspace.Cognitive energy refers to the mental effort required to complete a task. Humans generally seek to reduce cognitive energy outlays. When given a choice, humans will ubiquity available just about everywhere, at all times. marketspace marketplace extended beyond traditional boundaries and removed from a temporal and geographic location E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 13 TABLE 1. 2 SEVEN UNIQUE FEATURES OF E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS SIGNIFICANCE The marketplace is extended beyond traditional boundaries and is removed from a temporal and geographic location. â€Å"Marketspace† is created; shopping can take place anywhere.Customer convenience is enhanced, and shopping costs are reduced. Commerce is enabled across cultural and national boundaries seamlessly and without modification. â€Å"Marketspace† includes potentially billions of consumers and millions of businesses worldwide. There is one set of technical media standards across the globe. Video, audio, and text marketing messages are integrated into a single marketing message and consuming experience. Consumers are engaged in a dialog that dynamically adjusts the experience to the individual, and makes the consumer a co-participant in the process of delivering goods to the market.Information processing, storage, and communication costs drop dramatically, while currency, accuracy, and timeliness improve greatly. Information becomes plentiful, cheap, and accurate. Personalization of marketing messages and customization of products and services are based on individual characteristics. E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY DIMENSION U biquity—Internet/Web technology is available everywhere: at work, at home, and elsewhere via mobile devices, anytime. Global reach—The technology reaches across national boundaries, around the earth. Universal standards—There is one set of technology standards, namely Internet standards.Richness—Video, audio, and text messages are possible. Interactivity—The technology works through interaction with the user. Information density—The technology reduces information costs and raises quality. Personalization/Customization—The technology allows personalized messages to be delivered to individuals as well as groups. choose the path requiring the least effort—the most convenient path (Shapiro and Varian, 1999; Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Global Reach E-commerce technology permits commercial transactions to cross cultural and national boundaries far more conveniently and cost-effectively than is true in traditional commerce.As a resul t, the potential market size for e-commerce merchants is roughly equal to the size of the world’s online population (over 1 billion in 2005, and growing rapidly, according to the Computer Industry 14 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning reach the total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain Almanac) (Computer Industry Almanac, Inc. , 2006). The total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain is a measure of its reach (Evans and Wurster, 1997). In contrast, most traditional commerce is local or regional—it involves local merchants or national merchants with local outlets.Television and radio stations, and newspapers, for instance, are primarily local and regional institutions with limited but powerful national networks that can attract a national audience. In contrast to e-commerce technology, these older commerce technologies do not easily cross national boundaries to a global audience. Universal Standards One striking ly unusual feature of e-commerce technologies is that the technical standards of the Internet, and therefore the technical standards for conducting e-commerce, are universal standards—they are shared by all nations around the world.In contrast, most traditional commerce technologies differ from one nation to the next. For instance, television and radio standards differ around the world, as does cell telephone technology. The universal technical standards of the Internet and e-commerce greatly lower market entry costs—the cost merchants must pay just to bring their goods to market. At the same time, for consumers, universal standards reduce search costs—the effort required to find suitable products.And by creating a single, one-world marketspace, where prices and product descriptions can be inexpensively displayed for all to see, price discovery becomes simpler, faster, and more accurate (Bakos, 1997; Kambil, 1997). And users of the Internet, both businesses and individuals, experience network externalities—benefits that arise because everyone uses the same technology. With e-commerce technologies, it is possible for the first time in history to easily find many of the suppliers, prices, and delivery terms of a specific product anywhere in the world, and to view them in a coherent, comparative environment.Although this is not necessarily realistic today for all or many products, it is a potential that will be exploited in the future. universal standards standards that are shared by all nations around the world Richness richness the complexity and content of a message Information richness refers to the complexity and content of a message (Evans and Wurster, 1999). Traditional markets, national sales forces, and small retail stores have great richness: they are able to provide personal, face-to-face service using aural and visual cues when making a sale.The richness of traditional markets makes them a powerful selling or commercial env ironment. Prior to the development of the Web, there was a trade-off between richness and reach: the larger the audience reached, the less rich the message (see Figure 1. 2). interactivity technology that allows for two-way communication between merchant and consumer Interactivity Unlike any of the commercial technologies of the twentieth century, with the possible exception of the telephone, e-commerce technologies allow for interactivity, meaning they enable two-way communication between merchant and consumer.Television, for instance, cannot ask viewers any questions or enter into conversations E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 15 FIGURE 1. 2 THE CHANGING TRADE-OFF BETWEEN RICHNESS AND REACH E-commerce technologies have changed the traditional tradeoff between richness and reach. The Internet and the Web can deliver, to an audience of millions, â€Å"rich† marketing messages with text, video, and audio, in a way not possible with traditional commerce technologies such as radio, television, or magazines. SOURCE: Evans and Wurster, 2000. ith them, and it cannot request that customer information be entered into a form. In contrast, all of these activities are possible on an e-commerce Web site. Interactivity allows an online merchant to engage a consumer in ways similar to a face-to-face experience, but on a much more massive, global scale. Information Density The Internet and the Web vastly increase information density—the total amount and quality of information available to all market participants, consumers, and merchants alike. E-commerce technologies reduce information collection, storage, processing, and communication costs.At the same time, these technologies increase greatly the currency, accuracy, and timeliness of information—making information more useful and important than ever. As a result, information becomes more plentiful, less expensive, and of higher quality. A number of business consequences result from the gro wth in information density. In e-commerce markets, prices and costs become more transparent. Price transparency refers to the ease with which consumers can find out the variety of prices in a market; cost transparency refers to the ability of consumers to discover the actual costs merchants pay for products (Sinha, 2000).But there are advantages for merchants as well. Online merchants can discover much more about consumers; this allows merchants to segment the market into groups willing to pay different prices and permits them to engage in price discrimination—selling the same goods, or nearly information density the total amount and quality of information available to all market participants 16 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning the same goods, to different targeted groups at different prices.For instance, an online merchant can discover a consumer’s avid interest in expensive exotic vacations, and then pitch expensive exotic vacation plans to that consumer at a premium price, knowing this person is willing to pay extra for such a vacation. At the same time, the online merchant can pitch the same vacation plan at a lower price to more price-sensitive consumers (Shapiro and Varian, 1999). Merchants also have enhanced abilities to differentiate their products in terms of cost, brand, and quality. Personalization/Customization ersonalization the targeting of marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a person's name, interests, and past purchases customization changing the delivered product or service based on a user's preferences or prior behavior E-commerce technologies permit personalization: merchants can target their marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a person’s name, interests, and past purchases. The technology also permits customization— changing the delivered product or service based on a user’s preferences or prior behavior.Given the interactive n ature of e-commerce technology, much information about the consumer can be gathered in the marketplace at the moment of purchase. With the increase in information density, a great deal of information about the consumer’s past purchases and behavior can be stored and used by online merchants. The result is a level of personalization and customization unthinkable with existing commerce technologies. For instance, you may be able to shape what you see on television by selecting a channel, but you cannot change the contents of the channel you have chosen.In contrast, the online verson of the Wall Street Journal allows you to select the type of news stories you want to see first, and gives you the opportunity to be alerted when certain events happen. Now, let’s return to the question that motivated this section: Why study e-commerce? The answer is simply that e-commerce technologies—and the digital markets that result—promise to bring about some fundamental, u nprecedented shifts in commerce. One of these shifts, for instance, appears to be a large reduction in information asymmetry among all market participants (consumers and merchants).In the past, merchants and manufacturers were able to prevent consumers from learning about their costs, price discrimination strategies, and profits from sales. This becomes more difficult with e-commerce, and the entire marketplace potentially becomes highly price competitive. In addition, the unique dimensions of e-commerce technologies listed in Table 1. 2 also suggest many new possibilities for marketing and selling—a powerful set of interactive, personalized, and rich messages are available for delivery to segmented, targeted audiences.E-commerce technologies make it possible for merchants to know much more about consumers and to be able to use this information more effectively than was ever true in the past. Potentially, online merchants could use this new information to develop new informat ion asymmetries, enhance their ability to brand products, charge premium prices for high-quality service, and segment the market into an endless number of subgroups, each receiving a different price. To complicate matters further, these same technologies make it possible for merchants to know more about other merchants than was ever true in the past.This presents the possibility that merchants might collude on prices rather than compete and drive overall average prices up. This strategy works especially well when there are just a E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 17 TABLE 1. 3 MAJOR TYPES OF E-COMMERCE EXAMPLE Amazon. com is a general merchandiser that sells consumer products to retail consumers. ChemConnect. com is a chemical industry exchange that creates an electronic market for chemical producers and users. eBay. com creates a marketspace where consumers can auction or sell goods directly to other consumers.Gnutella is a software application that permits consumers to share music with one another directly, without the intervention of a market maker as in C2C e-commerce. Wireless mobile devices such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) or cell phones can be used to conduct commercial transactions. TYPE OF E-COMMERCE B2C—Business-to-Consumer B2B—Business-to-Business C2C—Consumer-to-Consumer P2P—Peer-to-Peer M-commerce—Mobile commerce few suppliers (Varian, 2000b). We examine these different visions of e-commerce— friction-free commerce versus a brand-driven imperfect marketplace—further in Section 1. 2 and throughout the book.TYPES OF E-COMMERCE There are a variety of different types of e-commerce and many different ways to characterize these types. Table 1. 3 lists the five major types of e-commerce discussed in this book. 1 For the most part, we distinguish different types of e-commerce by the nature of the market relationship—who is selling to whom. The exceptions are P2P and m-commerce, w hich are technology-based distinctions. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce The most commonly discussed type of e-commerce is Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce, in which online businesses attempt to reach individual consumers.Even though B2C is comparatively small ($140–$170 billion in 2005), it has grown exponentially since 1995, and is the type of e-commerce that most consumers are likely to encounter. Within the B2C category, there are many different types of business models. Chapter 2 has a detailed discussion of seven different B2C business mod1 Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce online businesses selling to individual consumers Business-to-Government (B2G) e-commerce can be considered yet another type of e-commerce.For the purposes of this text, we subsume B2G e-commerce within B2B e-commerce, viewing the government as simply a form of business when it acts as a procurer of goods and/or services. 18 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning els: portals, onlin e retailers, content providers, transaction brokers, market creators, service providers, and community providers. Business-to-Business (B2B) E-commerce Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce online businesses selling to other businesses Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce, in which businesses focus on selling to other businesses, is the largest form of e-commerce, with over $1. trillion in transactions in the United States in 2005. There was an estimated $13 trillion in business-to-business exchanges of all kinds, online and offline, in 2002, suggesting that B2B e-commerce has significant growth potential (eMarketer, Inc. , 2003). The ultimate size of B2B e-commerce could be huge. There are two primary business models used within the B2B arena: Net marketplaces, which include e-distributors, e-procurement companies, exchanges and industry consortia, and private industrial networks, which include single firm networks and industry-wide networks.Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) E-commerce C onsumer-toConsumer (C2C) e-commerce consumers selling to other consumers Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) e-commerce provides a way for consumers to sell to each other, with the help of an online market maker such as the auction site eBay. Given that in 2005, eBay generated more than $44 billion in gross merchandise volume around the world, it is probably safe to estimate that the size of the global C2C market in 2006 will be over $50 billion (eBay, 2006).In C2C e-commerce, the consumer prepares the product for market, places the product for auction or sale, and relies on the market maker to provide catalog, search engine, and transaction-clearing capabilities so that products can be easily displayed, discovered, and paid for. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) E-commerce Peer-to-peer technology enables Internet users to share files and computer resources directly without having to go through a central Web server. In peer-to-peer’s purest form, no intermediary is required, although in fact, most P 2P networks make use of intermediary â€Å"super servers† to speed operations.Since 1999, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have attempted to adapt various aspects of peer-to-peer technology into Peer-to-Peer (P2P) e-commerce. To date there have been very few successful commercial applications of P2P e-commerce with the notable exception of illegal downloading of copyrighted music. Napster. com, which was established to aid Internet users in finding and sharing online music files, was the most well-known example of peer-to-peer e-commerce until it was put out of business in 2001 by a series of negative court decisions.However, other file-sharing networks, such as Kazaa and Grokster, quickly emerged to take Napster’s place. These networks have also been subjected to legal challenge. For instance, in 2002, the Recording Industry of America, a trade organization of the largest recording companies, filed a federal lawsuit against Kazaa and Grokster for violating copyri ght law by enabling and encouraging members to exchange copyrighted music tracks without compensation to the copyright holders. The Supreme Court issued a decision in the case against the file-sharing networks in June 2005.Read the case study at the end of the chapter for a further look at how file-sharing networks work and the legal issues surrounding them. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) e-commerce use of peer-to-peer technology, which enables Internet users to share files and computer resources directly without having to go through a central Web server, in e-commerce E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 19 Mobile Commerce (M-commerce) Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, refers to the use of wireless digital devices to enable transactions on the Web.Described more fully in Chapter 3, m-commerce involves the use of wireless networks to connect cell phones, handheld devices such Blackberries, and personal computers to the Web. Once connected, mobile consumers can conduct transactions, includ ing stock trades, in-store price comparisons, banking, travel reservations, and more. Thus far, m-commerce is used most widely in Japan and Europe (especially in Scandinavia), where cell phones are more prevalent than in the United States; however, as discussed in the next section, m-commerce is expected to grow rapidly in the United States over the next five years. obile commerce (m-commerce) use of wireless digital devices to enable transactions on the Web GROWTH OF THE INTERNET AND THE WEB The technology juggernauts behind e-commerce are the Internet and the World Wide Web. Without both of these technologies, e-commerce as we know it would be impossible. We describe the Internet and the Web in some detail in Chapter 3. The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks built on common standards.Created in the late 1960s to connect a small number of mainframe computers and their users, the Internet has since grown into the world’s largest network, connecting over 500 million computers worldwide. The Internet links businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and individuals together, and provides users with services such as e-mail, document transfer, newsgroups, shopping, research, instant messaging, music, videos, and news. Figure 1. 3 illustrates one way to measure the growth of the Internet, by looking at the number of Internet hosts with domain names. An Internet host is defined by the Internet Software Consortium, which conducts this survey, as any IP address that returns a domain name in the in-addr. arpa domain, which is a special part of the DNS namespace that resolves IP addresses into domain names. ) In January 2005, there were over 317 million Internet hosts in over 245 countries, up from a mere 70 million in 2000. The number of Internet hosts has been growing at a rate of around 35% a year since 2000 (Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. , 2005). The Internet has shown extraordinary growth patterns when compared to other e lectronic technologies of the past.It took radio 38 years to achieve a 30% share of U. S. households. It took television 17 years to achieve a 30% share. Since the invention of a graphical user interface for the World Wide Web in 1993, it took only 10 years for the Internet/Web to achieve a 53% share of U. S. households. The World Wide Web (the Web) is the most popular service that runs on the Internet infrastructure. The Web is the â€Å"killer application† that made the Internet commercially interesting and extraordinarily popular. The Web was developed in the early 1990s and hence is of much more recent vintage than the Internet.We describe the Web in some detail in Chapter 3. The Web provides easy access to over 8 billion Web pages created in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). These HTML pages contain information—including text, graphics, animations, and other Internet Worldwide network of computer networks built on common standards World Wide Web (Web) the most popular service that runs on the Internet; provides easy access to Web pages 20 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning FIGURE 1. 3 THE GROWTH OF THE INTERNET, MEASURED BY NUMBER OF INTERNET HOSTS WITH DOMAIN NAMESGrowth in the size of the Internet 1993-2005 as measured by the number of Internet hosts with domain names. SOURCE: Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (www. isoc. org), 2005. objects—made available for public use. You can find an exceptionally wide range of information on Web pages, ranging from the entire catalog of Sears Roebuck, to the entire collection of public records from the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the card catalog of your local library, to millions of music tracks (some of them legal), and videos. The Internet prior to the Web was primarily used for text communications, file transfers, and remote computing.The Web introduced far more powerful and commercially interesting, colorful multimedia capabilities of direct relevance t o commerce. In essence, the Web added color, voice, and video to the Internet, creating a communications infrastructure and information storage system that rivals television, radio, magazines, and even libraries. There is no precise measurement of the number of Web pages in existence, in part because today’s search engines index only a portion of the known universe of Web pages, and also because the size of the Web universe is unknown.Google, the Web’s most popular and perhaps most comprehensive Web search engine, currently E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 21 FIGURE 1. 4 THE GROWTH OF WEB CONTENT AS MEASURED BY PAGES INDEXED BY GOOGLE The number of Web pages indexed by Google has grown from about 1 billion in 1998 to over 8 billion in 2005. SOURCE: Based on data from Google Inc. , 2005. indexes over 8 billion pages. There are also an estimated 600 billion Web pages in the so-called â€Å"deep Web† that are not indexed by ordinary search engines such as Google.Nevertheless, it would be accurate to say that Web content has grown exponentially since 1993. Figure 1. 4 describes the growth of Web content measured by the number of pages indexed by Google. Read Insight on Technology: Spider Webs, Bow Ties, Scale-Free Networks, and the Deep Web on pages 22–23 for the latest view of researchers on the structure of the Web. ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF E-COMMERCE It is difficult to pinpoint just when e-commerce began. There were several precursors to e-commerce.In the late 1970s, a pharmaceutical firm named Baxter Healthcare initiated a primitive form of B2B e-commerce by using a telephone-based modem that permitted hospitals to reorder supplies from Baxter. This system was later expanded during the 1980s into a PC-based remote order entry system and was widely copied throughout the United States long before the Internet became a commercial environment. The 1980s saw the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) 22 CHAPTER 1 The R evolution Is Just Beginning INSIGHT ON TECHNOLOGYSPIDER WEBS, BOW TIES, SCALE-FREE NETWORKS, AND THE DEEP WEB The World Wide Web conjures up images of a giant spider web where everything is connected to everything else in a random pattern, and you can go from one edge of the web to another by just following the right links. Theoretically, that’s what makes the Web different from a typical index system—you can follow hyperlinks from one page to another. In the â€Å"small world† theory of the Web, every Web page is thought to be separated from any other Web page by an average of about 19 clicks.In 1968, sociologist Stanley Milgram invented small-world theory for social networks by noting that every human was separated from any other human by only six degrees of separation. On the Web, the small world theory was supported by early research on a small sampling of Web sites. But recent research conducted jointly by scientists at IBM, Compaq, and AltaVista found some thing entirely different. These scientists used AltaVista’s Web crawler â€Å"Scooter† to identify 200 million Web pages and follow 1. 5 billion links on these pages.The researchers discovered that the Web was not like a spider web at all, but rather like a bow tie (see figure below). The bow-tie Web had a â€Å"strongly connected component† (SCC) composed of about 56 million Web pages. On the right side of the bow tie was a set of 44 million OUT pages that you could get to from the center, but could not return to the center from. OUT pages tended to be corporate intranet and other (continued) E-commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning 23 Web site pages that are designed to trap you at the site when you land.On the left side of the bow tie was a set of 44 million IN pages from which you could get to the center, but that you could not travel to from the center. These were recently created â€Å"newbie† pages that had not yet been linked to by many center pages. In addition, 43 million pages were classified as â€Å"tendrils,† pages that did not link to the center and could not be linked to from the center. However, the tendril pages were sometimes linked to IN and/or OUT pages. Occasionally, tendrils linked to one another without passing through the center (these are called â€Å"tubes†).Finally, there were 16 million pages totally disconnected from everything. Further evidence for the non-random and structured nature of the Web is provided in research performed by Albert-Lazlo Barabasi at the University of Notre Dame. Barabasi’s team found that far from being a random, exponentially exploding network of 8 billion Web pages, activity on the Web was actually highly concentrated in â€Å"very connected super nodes† that provided the connectivity to less wellconnected nodes.Barabasi dubbed this type of network a â€Å"scale-free† network and found parallels in the growth of cancers, disease transmiss ion, and computer viruses. As its turns out, scale-free networks are highly vulnerable to destruction. Destroy their super nodes and transmission of messages breaks down rapidly. On the upside, if you are a marketer trying to â€Å"spread the message† about your products, place your products on one of the super nodes and watch the news spread. Or build super nodes like Kazaa did (see the case study at the end of the chapter) and attract a huge audience.Thus, the picture of the Web that emerges from this research is quite different from earlier reports. The notion that most pairs of Web pages are separated by a handful of links, almost always under 20, and that the number of connections would grow exponentially with the size of the Web, is not supported. In fact, there is a 75% chance that there is no path from one randomly chosen page to another. With this knowledge, it now becomes clear why the most advanced Web search engines only index about 6 million Web sites, when the o verall population of Internet hosts is over 300 million.Most Web sites cannot be found by search engines because their pages are not well-connected or linked to the central core of the Web. Another important finding is the identification of a â€Å"deep Web† composed of over 600 billion Web pages that are not indexed at all. The pages are not easily accessible to Web crawlers that most search engine companies use. Instead, these pages are either proprietary (not available to crawlers and non-subscribers, such as the pages of the Wall Street Journal) or are not easily available from home pages. In the last few years, new search engines (such as the medical search engine Mamma. om) and older ones such as Yahoo! have been revised to enable them to search the deep Web. Because e-commerce revenues in part depend on customers being able to find a Web site using search engines, Web site managers need to take steps to ensure their Web pages are part of the connected central core, or super nodes of the Web. One way to do this is to make sure the site has as many links as possible to and from other relevant sites, especially to other sites within the SCC. SOURCES: â€Å"Deep Web Research,† by Marcus P. Zillman, Llrx. com, July 2005; â€Å"Momma. om Conquers Deep Web,† Mammamediasolutions. com, June 20, 2005; â€Å"Yahoo Mines the ‘Deep Web,’† by Tim Gray, Internetnews. com, June 17, 2005; Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-Lazlo Barabasi. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing (2002); â€Å"The Bowtie Theory Explains Link Popularity,† by John Heard, Searchengineposition. com, June 1, 2000; â€Å"Graph Structure in the Web,† by A. Broder, R. Kumar, F. Maghoul, P. Raghaven, S. Rajagopalan, R. Stata, A. Tomkins, and J. Wiener, Proceedings of the 9th International World Wide Web Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pages 309–320.Elsevier Science, May 2000. 24 CHAPTER 1 The Revolution Is Just Beginning FI GURE 1. 5 THE GROWTH OF B2C E-COMMERCE In the early years, B2C e-commerce was doubling or tripling each year. This explosive early growth rate has since slowed. Currently, B2C e-commerce is growing at about 25% per year, with seasonal spikes showing stronger year-to-year gains. [Note: Revenue shown includes retail sales, travel and financial services revenues. ] SOURCES: Based on data from eMarketer, Inc. , 2005a;

Facts About the Solar System

Facts About the Solar System Welcome to the solar system! This is where youll find the Sun, the planets, and humanitys sole home in the Milky Way Galaxy. It contains planets, moons, comets, asteroids, one star, and worlds with ring systems. Although astronomers and skygazers have observed other solar system objects in the sky since the dawn of human history, it has only been in the past half-century that theyve been able to explore them more directly with spacecraft. Historical Views of the Solar System Long before astronomers could use telescopes to look at objects in the sky, people thought that the planets were simply wandering stars. They had no concept of an organized system of worlds orbiting the Sun. All they knew were that some objects followed regular paths against the backdrop of the stars. At first, they thought these things were gods or some other supernatural beings. Then, they decided that those motions had some effect on human lives. With the advent of scientific observations of the sky, those ideas vanished.   The first astronomer to look at another planet with a telescope was Galileo Galilei. His observations changed humanitys view of our place in space. Soon, many other men and women were studying the planets, their moons, asteroids, and comets with scientific interest. Today that continues, and there are currently spacecraft doing many solar system studies. So, what else have astronomers and planetary scientists learned about the solar system?   Solar System Insights A journey through the solar system introduces us to the Sun, which is our nearest star. It contains an amazing 99.8 percent of the mass of the solar system. The planet Jupiter is the next most-massive object and it comprises two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined. The four inner planets- tiny, cratered Mercury, cloud-shrouded Venus (sometimes called Earths Twin), temperate and watery Earth (our home), and reddish Mars- are called the terrestrial or rocky planets. Jupiter, ringed Saturn, mysterious blue Uranus, and distant Neptune  are called gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are so cold and contain a great deal of icy material, and are often called the ice giants.   The solar system has five known dwarf planets. They are called Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. The New Horizons mission explored Pluto on July 14, 2015, and is on its way out to visit a small object called 2014 MU69. At least one and possibly two other dwarf planets exist in the outer reaches of the solar system, although we do not have detailed images of them. There are probably at least 200 more dwarf planets in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt (Pronounced KYE-per Belt.) The Kuiper Belt extends out from the orbit of Neptune and is the realm of the most distant worlds known to exist in the solar system. It is very distant and its objects are likely icy and frozen. The outermost region of the solar system is called the Oort Cloud. It probably has no large worlds but does contain chunks of ice that become comets when they orbit very close to the Sun. The Asteroid Belt is a region of space that lies between Mars and Jupiter. It is populated with chunks of rocks ranging from small boulders up to the size of a big city. These asteroids are left over from the formation of the planets.   There are moons throughout the solar system. The only planets that do NOT have moons are Mercury and Venus. Earth has one, Mars has two, Jupiter has dozens, as do Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Some of the moons of the outer solar system are frozen worlds with watery oceans beneath the ice on their surfaces.   The only planets with rings that we know of are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. However, at least one asteroid called Chariklo also has a ring and planetary scientists recently discovered a tenuous ring around the dwarf planet Haumea.   The Origin and Evolution of the Solar System Everything that astronomers learn about solar system bodies helps them understand the origin and evolution of the Sun and planets. We know they  formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Their birthplace was a cloud of gas and dust that slowly contracted to make the Sun, followed by the planets. The comets and asteroids are often considered the leftovers of the birth of the planets.   What astronomers know about the Sun tells us that it will not last forever. Some five billion years from now, it will expand and engulf some of the planets. Eventually, it will shrink down, leaving behind a very changed solar system from the one we know of today.

Essay on Pinker Essays

Essay on Pinker Essays Essay on Pinker Essay Essay on Pinker Essay Two Sides of a Bad Coin â€Å"Fucking†. How is that for a start of an essay? Does it pack a punch? Does it surprise you? Well, that is how Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, decided to start his article â€Å"What the F***† in The New Republic. It seems inappropriate that a Harvard professor would start any piece of writing in this way; however, as the piece goes on, his stance on cursing loses its initially crude air and becomes a more credible, scientific argument. By introducing cursing in a new scholarly light, Pinker is able to morph the reader’s initial repulsion to cursing into a thoughtful deliberation of its advantages and disadvantages. This purpose is not evident from the start though because he is preoccupied with trying to pull the readers into reading his article. He does this by first unbalancing the readers with his unconventional beginning. He then mentions the contemporary example of Bono cursing as he accepted a prize for his group to interest the readers a bit more. Finally, he drops the expletives â€Å"asshole† , â€Å"cocksucker†, and â€Å"motherfucker† all in the same sentence and finishes brilliantly with â€Å"nigger† and â€Å"cunt†. Usually this flagrant lack of indiscretions would deter the general reader from venturing on, but in Pinker’s case, the controversial nature of his beginning is utilized to hook the readers in. In this way, it is a bit like a Michael Moore movie. All of them do not take the time to be subtle and are shockingly biased. Yet, all types of people still watch his movies: liberal thinkers are attracted to the freedom with which taboos are mentioned while conservatives gravitate towards them, itching for the chance to disarm the argument. Both are interested for completely different reasons but the end result is the same: everyone is interested in learning more about the content. Unlike Michael Moore though, Pinker does not continuously pelt the reader with fact after fact, story after story, in an effort to get the reader completely on his side. He takes a more gradual approach and tries to get the reader to slowly understand his side of the story. In a matter of a few paragraphs, I was surprised to find that I, a long-time dissenter of cursing, had already become habituated to reading f, c, n, m, and etc. -bombs. I appreciated how, instead of approaching cursing as a black and white subject and having a very partisan tone, he approached it in a very technical manner. He did not handle the topic of swearing as the shunned topic it is usually treated as, but he manipulated his diction and made cursing a more sophisticated science which, according to him, â€Å"raises many other puzzles† and incorporates â€Å"linguistic, neurobiological, literary, [and] political† issues. Who has ever described cursing using these types of words? He then goes on to analyze the different parts of the brain-the limbic system and the neocortex-which are activated when people curse. He even categorizes cursing into different types as a biologist would categorize different cell types. There is cathartic swearing, there is vulgar swearing, and there are figures of speech swearing. When I first read the article, it seemed that he was simply using this technical jargon to make his argument more intellectual and credible; however, it soon became clear that although his utilization of language did accomplish this feat, it was also a technique of his to get the reader to a less prejudiced standpoint about cursing. Children grow up under the impression that cursing is wrong. Some children grow up to respect this belief and not curse while others decide to rebel and curse. Both sides though have their one-dimensional viewpoints in common. Cursing is rarely ever a neutral ground of conversation for anyone, but Pinker, by analyzing and discussing cursing, is able to separate the reader from the negative connotations of cursing just long enough so he could insert the idea that there is a beneficial side of cursing. He understands that people feel comfortable with facts so he takes his evaluation and observations of cursing and throws it at the reader so they think about the data instead of dwelling on the negative undertone of the topic being discussed. Then, at the end, he finally introduces arguments which are pro-cursing. According to psychology, everyone has a confirmation bias: a tendency for people to only rely upon information which confirms their beliefs and disregard material which does not. If Pinker had just listed reasons cursing was fine from the beginning, the reader would have probably either taken them in hungrily or downright rejected them according to their opinions. As a professor of psychology at Harvard, Pinker was probably well aware of this occurrence and therefore decided to soften the readers’ predispositions to cursing and then persuade them. As support for his pro-cursing stance, he states how cursing is necessary sometimes because of the extra flavor that it can add to a conversation and that sometimes the employment of a curse word is the most effective way to express a certain sentiment. Pinker refers to the film adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies: A Love Story Curse in which a Polish girl curses after being slapped by a her Jewish husband who she had hid, fed, and kept safe during the Nazi occupation. In this awful situation there are no other words which could have had the same impact in such a concise manner. She had every right to curse at her husband. Pinker also mentions that cursing has lost much of the crude image it used to have and that many people, even people in high positions, curse frequently. To support his point Pinker referred to the colorful usage of the English language by Lyndon Johnson, our former president, to illustrate how common cursing is in everyday society and that even people who would not be expected to curse do. Since everyone is cursing it cannot possibly be that bad. As per Pinker, swear words are nothing to be feared or dreaded; they are just words in the English Language which can be used whenever necessary and just like any other word, there is no need to over-use them, but in the correct situation, they can be the perfect words to evoke a feeling and impart the full impacted desired. It still seems a bit strange that a Harvard professor would decide to write an article that seems as casual as this- a more scholarly article would seem more appropriate. But, I think he made a wise choice of deferring from the usual course of action because the techniques which he applied were very effective. Although I still feel that cursing is wrong and I don’t feel very comfortable with it, Pinker has successfully tempered my attitude towards it and has given me a new understanding of cursing.

An Introduction to Visual Anthropology

An Introduction to Visual Anthropology Visual anthropology is an academic subfield of anthropology that has two distinct but intersecting aims. The first involves the addition of images including video and film to ethnographic studies, to enhance the communication of anthropological observations and insights through the use of photography, film, and video. The second one is more or less the anthropology of art,  understanding visual images, including: How far do humans as a species rely on what is seen, and how do they integrate that into their lives?How significant is the visual aspect of life in any particular society or civilization? andHow does a visual image represent (bring into existence, make visible, exhibit or reproduce an action or person, and/or stand as an example for) something Visual anthropology methods include photo elicitation, the use of images to stimulate culturally relevant reflections from informants. The end results are narratives (film, video, photo essays) which communicate typical events of a cultural scene. History Visual Anthropology only became possible with the availability of cameras in the 1860s- arguably the first visual anthropologists were not anthropologists at all but rather photojournalists like the Civil War photographer Matthew Brady;  Jacob Riis, who photographed 19th-century slums of New York;  and  Dorthea Lange, who documented the Great Depression in stunning photographs. In the mid-nineteenth century, academic anthropologists began collecting and making photographs of the people they studied. So-called collecting clubs included the British anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor, Alfred Cort Haddon, and Henry Balfour, who exchanged and shared photographs as part of an attempt to document and classify ethnographic races. The Victorians concentrated on British colonies such as India, the French focused on Algeria, and the U.S. anthropologists concentrated on Native American communities. Modern scholars now recognize that imperialist scholars classifying the people of subject colonies as others is an important and downright ugly aspect of this early anthropological history. Some scholars have commented that visual representation of cultural activity is, of course, very ancient indeed, including cave art representations of hunting rituals beginning 30,000 years ago or more. Photography and Innovation The development of photography as a part of the scientific ethnographic analysis is usually attributed to Gregory Bateson and Margaret Meads 1942 examination of Balinese culture called Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. Bateson and Mead took more than 25,000 photos while conducting research in Bali, and published 759 photographs to support and develop their ethnographic observations. In particular, the photos- arranged in a sequential pattern like stop-motion movie clips- illustrated how the Balinese research subjects performed social rituals or engaged in routine behavior. Film as ethnography is an innovation generally attributed to Robert Flaherty, whose 1922 film Nanook of the North is a silent recording of activities of an Inuit band in the Canadian Arctic. Purpose In the beginning, scholars felt that using imagery was a way to make an objective, accurate, and complete study of social science that had been typically fueled by an extensively detailed description. But there is no doubt about it,  the photo collections were directed and often served a purpose. For example, the photos used by anti-slavery and aborigine protection societies were selected or made to make the natives more human and needier, through poses, framings, and settings. American photographer Edward Curtis made skillful use of aesthetic conventions, framing Native Americans as sad, unresisting victims of an inevitable and indeed divinely ordained manifest destiny. Anthropologists such as Adolphe Bertillon and Arthur Cervin sought to objectify the images by specifying uniform focal lengths, poses, and backdrops to remove the distracting noise of context, culture, and faces. Some photos went so far as to isolate body parts from the individual (like tattoos). Others such as Thomas Huxley planned to produce an orthographic inventory of the races in the British Empire, and that, coupled with a corresponding urgency to collect the last vestiges of disappearing cultures drove much of the 19th and early 20th century efforts. Ethical Considerations All of this came crashing to the forefront in the 1960s and 1970s when the clash between ethical requirements of anthropology and the technical aspects of using photography became untenable. In particular, the use of imagery in academic publication has impacts on the ethical requirements of anonymity, informed consent, and telling the visual truth. Privacy: Ethical anthropology requires that scholar protect the privacy of the subjects that are interviewed: taking their picture makes that nearly impossibleInformed consent: Anthropologists need to explain to their informants that their images may appear in the research and what the implications of those images might mean- and get that consent in writing- before the research beginsTelling the truth: Visual scholars must understand that it is unethical to alter images to change their meaning or present an image that connotes a reality not consistent with the understood reality. University Programs and Job Outlook Visual anthropology is a subset of the larger field of anthropology. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the numbers of jobs projected to grow between 2014 and 2024 is about 4 percent, slower than the average, and competition for those jobs is likely to be fierce given the small number of positions relative to applicants. A handful of university programs specializing in the use of visual and sensory media in anthropology, including: The University of Southern California MA at the Center for Visual AnthropologyHarvard Universitys Ph.D. program at Sensory Ethnography LabThe University of Londons MA and Ph.D. in Visual AnthropologyThe University of Manchesters MA at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Finally, the Society for Visual Anthropology, part of the American Anthropological Association, has a research conference and film and media festival and publishes the journal Visual Anthropology Review. A second academic journal, titled Visual Anthropology, is published by Taylor Francis. Sources: Cant A. 2015. One Image, Two Stories: Ethnographic and Touristic Photography and the Practice of Craft in Mexico. Visual Anthropology 28(4):277-285.Harper D. 2001. Visual Methods in the Social Sciences. In: Baltes PB, editor. International Encyclopedia of the Social Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Pergamon. p 16266-16269.Loizos P. 2001. Visual Anthropology. In: Baltes PB, editor. International Encyclopedia of the Social Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Pergamon. p 16246-16250.Ortega-Alczar I. 2012. Visual Research Methods, International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home. San Diego: Elsevier. p 249-254.Pink S. 2014. Digital–visual–sensory-design anthropology: Ethnography, imagination Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 13(4):412-427.and intervention.Poole D. 2005. An excess of description: Ethnography, race, and visual technologies. Annual Review of Anthropology 34(1):159-179.

International business finance Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

International business finance - Case Study Example The report comprehensively analyses the strategies at hand for the XP PLC multinational company and consequently recommends the best strategy/option to be adopted on the basis of financial facts. The XP plc Company’s strengths include diversified business operations in a number of countries. The company has a holding company situated in France. However, it has a number of subsidiaries operating in foreign countries such as in Germany, Australia, Monaco, and Poland. Additionally, the firm has stable sales revenue of over 60 million Euros. This is a clear indication that the company made superior products that are tailored for its customers, hence gaining customer loyalty. The customer loyalty comes about due to the satisfaction of the customers’ preferences and choices. For a company to continue operating in a business environment, it must be in a position to yield profits to cater for company expenses, financing activities, investment purposes and maximizing the company’s value. Since the firm is trading at a net profit of 8%, it has a stable future operation in the economy. A business organisation that is incapable of financing its business activities u sing internal funds such as equity is compelled to borrow from external sources available. Among the external sources of funds is the debt that increases the firm’s financial leverage. Since the proportion of the debt is smaller as compared to the equity, the financial risk is reduced hence a strength to the company that could otherwise be a threat had the debt outweighed the equity capital. The multinational company suffers from a stiff competition in the service industry. This has caused the company to at least diversify its operation worldwide to increase its products and services delivery. The company uses bureaucratic kind of management making it difficulty in making decisions faster. XP plc being a multinational company, it has a chance for diversity. The firm has

Customer Engagement in Social Media & Netflix Assignment

Customer Engagement in Social Media & Netflix - Assignment Example Today people prefer other people’s experience and their opinions about a particular product or service rather than advertising and promotions of the brands. For this reason internet is playing a vital role in encouraging people to share their ideas, experiences, opinions to influence others. The potential consumers seek for these types of information which is available and open to everyone (Evans and McKee, 2010). One of the benefits of taking this course is that the information is presented two-fold. Both the marketing and consumer perspectives are represented in an effort to provide you with a holistic view of Social media Marketing. What is your perspective on the Netflix/Qwikster rebranding endeavor? Taking the newly adopted Netflix business model into consideration, how would you have handled the negative customer outpourings on the Social Web if you were in the shoes of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings? FYI, implementing the previous price model is not an option in this scenario, what are other alternatives Netflix could have explored that would prove beneficial to both customers and stakeholders? The Company decided to change the name of its DVD mail service to Qwikster while rebranding, however being wise in technology and innovative, the Company did not go through Social Media, i.e. Twitter where a guy named Jason Castillo already existed with Qwikster (Hill, 2011). To make Netflix beneficial for customers as well as stakeholders and to handle the negative reviews there should have been a better communication process. The Company increasing the prices and doubling it followed by a bad communication process would certainly put a loyal customer to rethink about the relationship with the Company. Priority to customers is the main element and while driving prices up, there could have been a better communication with the customers through their blogs and through other social media. They could have communicated with the