Assessment Practice in Classroom

Assessment practice in classroom Students’ assessment is one of the essential principles of any pedagogical program; it plays a crucial part in the educational process. According to McMillan (2011), attaining a perfect classroom assessment requires meaningful learning goals and standards that should be set before commencing classroom assessment procedures. Monitoring students’ progress will help teachers to adjust their instructions effectively to take students to the next level of learning.Diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment are major types of classroom assessment, and together they form the assessment cycle. McMillan (2011) points out that teachers must use achievement information derived from summative assessment to provide instructions, to attain the purpose of the assessment, and to give performance feedback to students and parents.Pre assessment or diagnostic assessment is the first step in classroom assessment that teachers do be fore commencing a new learning activity, to provide them with information about students’ pre knowledge, tendencies, and motivations. It is a crucial procedure needed to proceed to the next step, which is formative assessment. This type of classroom assessment is given during a learning activity to detect the student’s progress and adjust teaching according to possible new requirements.After completing the learning activity, summative assessment takes part in the process. This assessment is intended to determine whether long-term learning goals have been met, in addition to providing feedback and measuring the level of success that has been obtained; students can use outcomes of a summative assessment formatively to guide their learning. In order to make this process effective, teachers should perform consistent assessments that provide reliable results because â€Å"unreliable assessments cannot be valid† (Eggen, 2009, p. 36). Unclear directions can give incons istent information that lead to unintended negative consequences. Recurrent failure in students with learning disabilities can lead to a further failure; teachers can support those students by encouraging them, and trying to rebuild their self-confidence (Robinson, 2008). Those students need special materials and learning strategies to deal with their learning problems. Diagnosing the students first, can help teachers to make right decisions later, considering each student’s individuality.There are several methods to be used in the classroom to ensure success according to Robinson (2008). For instance, the language experience approach and reading â€Å"usually guarantees interest, as it is one in which the student has a personal involvement. It is implemented with them and for them, it belongs to them. It allows the pupil to become involved in the learning process. Confidence and success are usually guaranteed, as developing your own stories based on everyday activities is l ikely to make the task easier to learn.Reading one's own story, for example, should be easier as writers should remember what the story was about† (Robinson, 2008, p. 306). This method represents an example of formative assessment in a classroom. The final stage of assessment represents the process of summative assessment. Robinson (2008) suggests that reading the story onto a tape recorder could be beneficial for revision, by revising the students’ work, teachers will provide feedback to students, and may want to set forth new instructional plans to promote students’ learning.Classroom assessment is a teachers’ powerful educational tool, especially when they use it to diagnose students with learning difficulties, and make modifications to their learning materials and instructions. McMillan (2011) argues that in order to make the assessment procedure successful in case of teaching students with learning difficulties, teachers should observe students precis ely to give accurate indications of their performance. Employing the assessment cycle in classroom reinforces learning and improves its quality.Making modifications that conform to learners’ capabilities can positively influence them educationally. (514) words References: McMillan, James H. (2010) Classroom Assessment: Principles and Practice for Effective Standards-Based Instruction, 5th Edition. Pearson/Australia, Dec-10 Eggen, P. (2009) Educational Psychology: windows on classrooms, 8th Edition. Pearson/Australia, Jan-09 Robinson, G. (2008b). Understanding literacy and numeracy. In P. Foreman (Ed. ), Inclusion in action (2nd ed. , pp. 303-307). South Melbourne, Victoria: Thompson.

Financial Analysis Project Essay

Today’s personal products market has become more competitive than ever. With economic and political uncertainty in many parts of the world, The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. has invoked a number of unique and diverse strategies in order to gain customer loyalty while attracting new customers for staying as a leader in personal products industry. This paper focuses on analyzing The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc., including company overview and main strategies. The main purpose of this paper is using a series financial accounting ratios as tools to analyze the operation of this company from 2008 to 2012, the nearest five years. After researching of the strategies and data, I make a conclusion that this company is in a healthy financial situation and has a large capacity to develop well in the future. Overview After one quarter learning about financial accounting, I have some sort of concept about this course. In order to deeply understand the knowledge we have learned in class and have solid experience about all of those formulas. I write this paper to turn abstract theory into practice. I choose The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. as my analysis target, not only because I am a loyal consumer for this company, but also I’m very interested in its unique business strategy. As we all know, The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. is a family business and remains the leader in the global prestige beauty market for a long history. What’s more, even though it’s a traditional company, it has not fall behind in the extreme competition nowadays. I think its success mainly contributed to four critical areas: creativity and innovation, high-tough, local relevance and digital capabilities. This paper will focus on three parts to analyze The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. First, I plan to say something about this company, including its development overview and strategies. Second, I will put this company in the whole industry to analyze its opportunities and challenges. The last but not the least, I’d like to use financial accounting ratios as tools to deeply analyze the operation situation of this company. Company Outline The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. is one of the leading manufacturers and sellers of skin care, make up, fragrance and hair care products in the world. The company’s products are sold in over 150 countries and regions under almost thirty brands. Among those brands, there are some big brands we are very familiar with, and actually, those brands indeed contributed a lot to the whole company’s sales. They are Està ©e Lauder, Clinique, Aramis, Origins, Prescriptives, M†¢A†¢C, Bobbi Brown, Tommy Hilfiger, Kiton, La Mer, American Beauty, Flirt! , and AERIN Beauty. Taken together, sales of all the Company’s brands comprise about one-fifth of the $40 billion global prestige beauty business. The Està ©e Lauder Companies’ long-term strategy is to achieve higher levels of sustainable, profitable growth to remain a leader in global prestige beauty business. In that case, they use consumers as their muse to create products that really needed. Those educational beauty advisors always keep a good connection with consumers, in order to inspire brand loyalty. What’s more, this company dedicated in creating certain products for specific markets and deeply immersed in the online world as well. At a glance, the company sells its products mainly through some kind of channels to keep their brands are easily accessible. These channels involve department stores, retailers, TV shopping, stores on ships, in-flight, duty-free shops in airports and the Internet. The Americas, definitely occupies their largest region of sales, accounting for about 42% of total global sales. Europe, the middle east and Africa owns the highest percentage of operating income, because those regions enjoyed huge sales growth during the last two years. What’s more, China has become a more and more important market in the Asia/ Pacific region after Japan, fueled by rapidly growing demand of luxury brands. Industry Analysis The personal care industry concludes a variety of products, including fragrances, makeup, hair care, sunscreen, toothpaste, and products for bathing, nail care, and shaving. Major companies in this industry include Està ©e Lauder, Johnson& Johnson, Procter& Gamble, L’Oreal, Shiseido and Unilever. The United States, Europe, UK, Brazil and Russia dominate the global personal care products. India and China are the fastest growing markets for personal care products. The global personal care products industry has revenue of about $250 billion annually. Major products include cosmetics (35% of industry revenue), hair products (25%), and creams and lotions (20%). Other products include perfume (10%), toothpaste and mouthwashes (5%), and shaving preparations. The global personal care products industry is concentrated with the top 50 companies holding a combined market share of around 85%. The profitability of individual companies depends on product innovation, effective sales and marketing, and efficient operations. Large companies like The Està ©e Lauder Companies Inc. have scale advantages in purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing. Small companies can compete effectively by offering specialized products. Over the coming years, the whole industry is likely to continue investing in eco-friendly practices.

Business Plan for Grab-N-Go Snax Essay

II. Executive Summary & General Company Description Grab-N-Go Snax are a selection of prepackaged, single serving snack foods which will be sold out of food carts conveniently located around the core downtown Portland business district. Our new enterprise caters to the need for downtown office and business workers to gain quick and easy access to healthy breakfast, break and lunch snack food options. Grab-N-Go Snax offers a wide selection of high quality fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, grain and gluten-free products. Products are cleaned, cut, portioned, packaged in re-sealable recyclable packaging and refrigerated for immediate consumption. To augment our name brand product selection, we’ll offer a variety of products in this category offered by other name brand companies, such as granola bars, trail mix, bottled water, fruit juices and energy drinks. To start, activities of the business will include stationary food cart vending in the high activity food cart vending groups, called ‘PODS’. Supplemental activities of the business will be to participate in special events vending. Special events include city wide water front events, Saturday Market, sporting events and holiday celebration activities. In a preparation area that will be set up for processing, packaging, and storing food products, work will be done each day to prepare products for delivery. Products for the day’s sales will be transported in refrigerated storage containers to the food carts early each morning. Vendor services will stock their carts and displays in preparation of opening for business. Customers and passer-bys will notice the brightly lit awning, colorful displays, smells of fresh fruit and sounds of nature in a clean environment open early in the morning for their convenience. They will see a wide selection of food items for breakfast, or to eat later for workday snacks. Customers can grab items for purchase for themselves from the on-board displays or refrigerated cases. Vendor services will scan the UPC codes and processes the sale quickly via POS system. For the future of the business, it is our plan to promote the sale of our own Grab-N-Go Snax name brand product selection through refrigerated vending machines, fitness health clubs and in-office delivery. Our catering services will accommodate the need for refreshments during company meetings and parties to businesses in and around the core downtown area. Our goal is to develop a strong business model, brand name and reputation so that as the business continues to grow into other locations and communities, becoming more recognizable, we can develop Grab-N-Go Snax into an operation that can be franchised. We like the flexibility a LLC provides to allow the option to hire professional management that would not necessarily be owners. This would allow us to offer employees (potential new franchisees) the opportunity to learn the ropes of the business and experience what it might be like to operate their own Grab-N-Go Snax food cart before they make the decision to invest in our business as a franchisee. III. Qualifications My background of working downtown Portland for the past 30 years and being a customer of a lot of the food carts in the downtown area has provided me with the drive to make this unique business concept a true success story among the growing trend of food carts here. I have worked as Administrative Assistant to Directors of companies and Project Manager and coordinator for projects that required budgeting, multi-tasking and attention to detail. My strengths are with organization, human relations, patience and dedication. Besides devoting a lot of my own funds that will go into this venture that I believe in, I will be committing a lot of my time and energy to making sure every aspect of the business operational needs are met to meet the customer demands. Outside of the day to day product preparation, on-site vending and management of business affairs, I will be networking and connecting with other Administrative Assistants, Event and Meeting Planners and with businesses in the downtown area to sell our in-office delivery and catering services. IV. Products and Services Products: See Appendix A (not included in this document) for examples of wholesale costs and pricing comparisons of local retail & grocery store competition. * Fruits: apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, grapefruit, melons, cherries, berries, * Vegetables: carrots, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, * Nuts: almonds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, soy, trail mix, granola mix * Dairy: milk, yogurt, cheese sticks, pudding, vegetable dips * Beverages: water, vitamin water, sports drink, fruit drinks, fruit juices, vegetable juices, dairy drinks, fruit smoothies, Products will be displayed in a highly lit environment while activating physical senses. (e.g. sight-lighting of colors & textures; sound-background musical sounds of fresh water falls, breezes, birds , etc; smell-odors from fresh fruit juices) Services: * Parked truck/trailer: Daily on-the-street vending. Â  * Mobile truck/trailer: Special events vending – fairs, markets, entertainment venues, promotional events, sports events, * Catering: Regularly scheduled in-office supply replenishment, meeting room delivery. Customer service is highlighted with a smile, cheerful attitude, immediate attention to the customer’s inquiries, recommendations for specials and new products, appreciation for their business and request for feedback via our web page. These items are offered fresh, dried and refrigerated from early in the morning, to catch people before work and school, to late afternoon. Products are intended to fulfill the desires of those seeking healthy and nutritional breakfast, pre-lunch, lunch and post lunch time snack options. Snacks and drink items represent alternatives to those high in sugar, fat, cholesterol, caffeine or carbonation. Grab-N-Go Snax objective is to promote the image of providing high quality healthy snack food options, quick and easy to obtain with freshness guaranteed. Products being offered will be healthy, pre-packaged, single serving, ready-to-eat snacks and drink items. V. Marketing Plan Currently the food cart business is growing and thriving in the downtown Portland area. Owners of parking lots and open spaces are looking to expand and convert available space for this business use because of the increase in space revenue and the ease of which the city has made it a viable optional use of their property. Because of the local and nationwide publicity for many of the local food cart businesses, more downtown workers and visitors to the downtown area now consider experiencing a food cart meal. The advantage of Grab-N-Go-Snax is that there are a lot of busy downtown workers who do not tend to eat breakfast, they don’t remember to purchase snack items in advance, do not remember to bring them to work when they do, and when they do want a snack for a break, do not have a lot of healthy snack options convenient for them to choose from. Busy professionals know they want and need to move towards healthier food selections, but need convenience and speed of ownership to change their current habits. They need a place close by their work for that quick turn-around time during a break or before they enter their office building in the morning. Promotional objective will be to change downtown workers’ behavior, not only around the kind of snack foods they do select, but actually adding the activity of taking time in the morning and during breaks to include snacks for nutritional and health reasons. Within the promotion is the message of how quick and easy it is to obtain a selection of quality healthy snack foods. I want our customers to see the convenience and ease of taking a new step that contributes to their health and well being. I plan to communicate this message with colorful unique signage outside the food cart to grab attention with matching post card size business cards. I have also planned to promote the cart through the nearby business office building tenant newsletters, providing coupons and a drawing with on-line website registration. The purposes of the registration and drawing would be for obtaining e-mail addresses for on-going communication and promotions. There will be bonuses and discounts offered for frequent customers. I will be listed in the website created to promote Portland’s food cart businesses www.foodcartsportland.com and I will create a press release with a twist on the food cart business. The purposes of the press release will be to create a buzz around the food cart concept not only in the local market, but nationally in order to get free press stories and media attention. Plan for success: I plan to expand the business by offering products and services for catering to the downtown business offices. I also plan to make consignment agreements to sell product through the local fitness health clubs, whose customers workout early in the morning, on breaks and through their lunch hour. I will be expanding the business to include personnel needed for developing orders, product preparation and delivery. I will promote the catering side of the business by selling face to face to the local business office administrative staff, typically responsible for making in-office food arrangements for meetings, parties and for employee benefit. Customers Our customers are middle class, educated at or above a high school education, mostly white, men & women that work, play and go to school in the downtown Portland area, though most do not live in the downtown area. For lunch, most all of our customers walk within a one to 3 block radius of a group of food carts called ‘pods’. The majority of these target customers’ ages range from their mid 20’s to their mid 50’s, most of which are already getting messages of healthy eating and control of obesity from multiple media sources as well as their employer’s health benefit provider. From my experience and relationships with colleagues that work downtown, they lead extremely busy and sometimes stressful lives at work, try to work out to stay fit when they can and don’t always eat right or as often as they should. From my visual survey of workers entering offices in the morning and exiting during breaks and lunch hours, very few bring food from home. VI. Market Research Competition From my visual survey of existing food carts in both the high density target markets, there is no other food cart offering fresh, healthy, pre-packaged, single serving, ready-to-eat snacks and drink items. Since I will be offering more nutritional beverage options consistently at a lower price, I will also be targeting to gain their lunch hour beverage business, even though they may be purchasing their lunch food at a food cart nearby. This strategy will also serve to allow customers to view all the snack options available for their future consideration. Pricing Our pricing objective is to beat everyone’s price on beverages and be competitively priced on like items offered at other food cart vendors and local corner convenience stores nearby. The more desirable items, pre-packaged mixed product sets and items not offered elsewhere is where I will make a higher profit margin. Using a Loss Leader strategy – Beverages will be offered at lower prices consistently every day. This will ensure the customer remembers that the place to always get a great price on healthy beverages is specifically at our food cart. For specific ‘like’ items that can be found at in-office building vending machines and indoor convenience stores nearby, we will set our price lower than the indoor store to encourage customers to venture outside of the building for the savings. Prices on identical food items that can be found at the customers’ local supermarket outside the downtown area will be priced higher for the benefit of convenience and freshness. Based on research of urban grocery store pricing, we expect to be able to set our product prices at least 20% above what customers would pay outside the downtown Portland center. Distribution Our distribution objective is to be situated where there is the highest density of daytime office workers in the downtown Portland market, close to other businesses that customer frequent. Currently the two desirable pods (groupings of food carts) are located on SW 5th Avenue near Stark and around the block of SW 10th Avenue and Alder for their proximity to high density population of workers. (12/13) Being located at either the 5th Avenue or 10th Avenue pods would be most desirable because of the foot traffic from the surrounding businesses and transit mall. From my visual count, there averaged 100 – 165 people on one side of one block throughout the 12:00 to 1:00 hour being served by 13 to 15 trailers per block length. During their lunch hour, most customers are drawn to the area because of the variety in choices of food from the high density of food carts. These two food cart groupings are close to our customer’s offices and on their way to and from transportation options. (parking garages, Max train, Tri-met buses, etc.) Because both pods are located within parking lots, there is a lot of flexibility for delivery of goods and situation of the trailers. When the weather is wet or windy, being located outside office building retail space, is not as convenient, but does reach more customers from a variety of businesses all around the pod. If it is possible, it is our goal to incorporate clean solar energy as part of our uniquely designed cart to be able to operate at special events where electricity may not be conveniently located or expensive to purchase. VII. Operational Plan We have selected to start the business with a fresh new trailer concept, rather than take over an existing business or invest in someone else’s franchise. Our food cart and catering operations have many elements that are not currently offered from any food cart currently in the Portland markets.

Week 3#202 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Week 3#202 - Assignment Example It is important in making the young adults to understand the different stages of development (Gibbs, 45). Moreover, this theory is crucial in ensuring that the individuals develop a sense of both intellectual as well as moral development. This is very necessary for students in a learning environment. The theory of moral development is also very important in imparting the students with the principles of justice, universal liberty as well as imparts a sense of order in the society (Gibbs, 57). The video depicts some of the social rots that face the current society. It is sad that corruption has taken its roots into our society to an extent that it manifests in the policing system. It is the police who should be actively engaged in combating the cases of corruption and impunity yet they seem to take the front line in promoting corruption. This movie paints a very bad picture on the police and the society. It makes ne have very bad feelings towards the police sector. From my feelings about this video, it is very important that all the police should undergo thorough vetting before being employed to curb the cases of corruption. In addition, investigations should be done by independent bodies on these cases and those found guilty should be charged before a court of

Plastic Surgery Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Plastic Surgery - Dissertation Example The concept of the script is to illustrate cruel beauty. The collection entails the clothes suitable for the autumn/winter of 2017. The clothes are menswear. Savage beauty under the context relates to the Japanese tattoo, the corset as well as plastic surgery. The use of the three beautification approaches is ancient in their form. From ancient civilizations, people are particular regarding enhancement of beauty. The use of the corset explains a garment that tends to befit the wearer into a shape that fits the garment and not the human. The Japanese’s tattoo reveals extreme measures. The clothing tends to train the torso into an aesthetic form. A view of the history includes the use of the corset by both genders with the most ancient picture of the attire being 2000BC to appear (Lemire and Riello, 2008: p.912). On the other hand, the Japanese tattoo explains the instance of body decoration. The implication is that the skin is a garment and one that cannot fade away after the a pplication of the ink. The tattoos have particular reasons such as for decorative or spiritual ends. The tattoos first image to come into contact with the modern man tends to date back to about 10,000BC (Westlake, 2012). On the other hand, plastic surgery is the alteration of the body form or the subsequent restoration. The practice dates back to the Old Kingdom that was in rule between 3000-2500BC (Westlake, 2012).The practices were also in practise in the ancient civilization of Egypt as per the Papyrus by Edwin Smith. However, the instance was in the repair of noses.

Psychological Impact of Retail Space on purchasing behavior Essay

Psychological Impact of Retail Space on purchasing behavior - Essay Example Moreover, the fixtures used for displaying the products can be arranged in such fashion to present a neat and powerful look to the outsiders visiting the store. The floor and the ceiling of the store space can be given the same or different color and thematic effects to produce different types of customer emotions. Retailers through the use of definite store imagery can manipulate the decisions of the customers by altering their moods in making buying decisions (Smith & Sherman). The focus on creating differential designs for the retail stores has gathered a great impetus from the previous days. Owing to the rise in cut-throat competition the retail firms operating in the same category have started producing products which act as substitutes to each other in terms of design and quality. Thus the potential of retail differentiation has shifted from product designs to store designs to reflect a differential pattern to the customer’s eyes. ... The retail designers must also endeavor to forecast the effects on consumer purchases and retail sales which would add commercial value to their designing ventures. Thus, the subject concerned with designing the interior of a retail firm encompasses a whole lot of factors pertaining to sociology, psychology, ergonomics, demand and sales forecasting techniques and an eye for supreme aesthetics. Henceforth, the function of retail design is in itself a multidisciplinary subject which needs people from different backgrounds to render true effectiveness to the activity conducted. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to understand the effects of each of the several factors or the disciplines listed above on the mode of altering the behavior of the consumers. (Katelijn, Jan & Cleempoel, 3487-3788). Aims and Objectives Aims The paper in presenting a discussion on the psychological impact of retail space on consumer behavior deals mainly with two topics. Firstly, the paper foc uses on the consumer buying patterns in the region of United Kingdom pertaining to three main segments viz. Fashion, Kids and Home and Leisure Segment. In the second part the paper focuses on the main theme relating to the effect of retail space or interior designs on the buying motives of the consumer. Objectives To understand the current purchasing behavior of the consumers based in the region of United Kingdom on fashion, kids and home and leisure items. To focus on the effect of interior designs of the retail outlets on the buying psychology of the different consumers. Literature Review Consumer Purchasing Behavior in United Kingdom Fashion In the economy of United Kingdom the consumer buying patterns

Management economics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Management economics - Assignment Example They want to exploit public goods (Francis). Without competition, producers can gouge consumers. With competition, consumers will choose the best option. They will choose the company that pollutes the least, or charges the least, or pays their workers the best. Workers will similarly choose the company with the best wages and benefits. When you have competition, you generally have cheaper products, better wages, better quality, and less externality and abuse of public goods. This means that, by definition, an oligopolistic market structure is a market failure Why is competition good? Adam Smith, in his seminal Wealth of Nations, argued that markets reach a so-called â€Å"harmony of interests† only when they are fully competitive (Francis). A â€Å"harmony of interest† is a situation where an individuals self-interest and the pursuit thereof also benefits society. It is also called pareto optimal. But competition has a strict definition and so is never perfectly achieved. The market must be composed of a great many buyers and sellers, almost as many as there are dollars flowing through the market, with only infinitesimal islands interrupting the free market sea. These buyers and sellers must produce and consume, respectively, only a tiny portion of the goods available. This way, no one buyer or seller can control supply and demand. Further, all the goods flowing through the market must be functionally the same. And there has to be no or extremely low barriers to exit and entry on the part of both consumers and producers. An oligopolistic market is one where a collection of large firms own a lot of the market of the market (Lecture Slides 7-9). Different markets and different economic theories mandate different amounts of coordination between the firms and different amounts of market share shared between the firms, but the general idea is the same. A bunch of companies work together, but not quite the same as a cartel. They can agree to lower

Director of health information management Case Study

Director of health information management - Case Study Example This particular activity is greatly influenced by health policies that the original contract agreement is usually affected. For instance, the issue on the cost of photocopying health information has been greatly changed by these policies and legislature created to shape this activity. In the creation of these laws, all government branches have significant roles to play. However, the executive and the judiciary carry the most significant responsibility in the creation of this cap. The executive has the responsibility of creating the original structure of the cap (Johns, 2000). From these provisions, all health units are provided with specific instructions under which to operate. The executive will also have the responsibility of researching and coming up with the best recommendations to create these policies (LaTour, 2006). On the other hand, the judiciary has the responsibility of ensuring that the laws created by the executive are adhered to. It is also under the jurisdiction of the court to handle any amendments to the created policies. With the significant power the courts have, the fully implementation of these laws are greatly under the influence of the performance on the judiciary system on this particular case (LaTour, 2006). All organizations are required by the law to adhere to the provisions of the law. However, if the organization is discontent with the specifications of this policy then it may use the judiciary to change the contentious clauses. Minus the help and consideration of the judiciary system health organization may have less significant role to play in the creation of this particular legislation (Fuller & Callahan,

Leading the Way - A Marketing Plan for Sustainable Competitive Essay

Leading the Way - A Marketing Plan for Sustainable Competitive Advantage - Essay Example Apple may have to invest a great deal of financial and human capital effort into performing market research to gain new market interest, something the firm is not experienced with as, historically, Apple has chosen to focus on developing existing markets through product development strategies. Marketing Strategy and Analysis for Apple, Inc. 1.0 Introduction Apple, Inc. has long been considered a pioneering company; an innovative organisation that develops unique products with features and benefits unavailable by competition that gives the business a positive market position. Marketing has been one of the fundamental success factors for Apple, especially in relation to launch of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, methods of differentiating the business from other competition. Marketing is defined as being all-inclusive of all activities related to commercial exchanges that involve advertising, branding, distribution, establishment of pricing structures, and responding to consumer behaviour pa tterns (McCall 2003). Apple successfully utilises marketing in order to build relationships with consumers that lead to brand loyalty, attachments that have consumers favouring Apple branded products over other competitive products offered by such competitors as Samsung and Blackberry. Apple focuses on building a brand, a holistic representation of the business that is reflective of quality and internal corporate values. Branding is a strategy that creates the ability to build connectivity between internal market-centric assets and important target markets that allow a business to nurture its resources effectively (Abimbola 2001). Apple maintains a brand strategy that reflects emotional appeals, building a brand personality that emphasises such consumer-centric concepts as â€Å"inspiring passion and hope, power-to-the-people through facilitating technology, imagination and liberty regained† (Robinson 2012, p.2). This is how loyal markets view Apple as a leader in the technol ogy industry. 2.0 Responses to competitor activities Apple uses marketing as a tool to create perceptions in desired target markets that Apple products and services as superior to competitor brands. Apple is adept in creating pioneering products that have relatively long product life cycles as competitors are not able to quickly replicate the features and benefits of Apple branded products. Apple, in the early 2000s, was able to gain favourable market attention and brand preference with diverse markets by being the first-to-market. According to marketing theory, the publicity associated with pre-launch activities set up the foundation for brand loyalty. When a first-mover achieves positive gains with an innovative product, they actually define the product category and are seen as a model by which consumers evaluate late movers (Agarwal and Gort 2001; Liberman and Montgomery 1988). Apple is not generally taken to creating marketing strategies as a response to competitive efforts, but to build proactive methodologies of promotion that enhance its public brand reputation through media coverage. The former CEO, Steve Jobs, used to serve as a relevant and trusted celebrity endorser that engaged many diverse consumer

Spectrums in physics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Spectrums in physics - Essay Example Light forms a continuous spectrum but human eyes are only capable of seeing the spectrum of visible light corresponding to â€Å"a wavelength range of 400 to 700 nanometers and a color range of violet through red† (Kusterer, 2007). This means that normal human vision has a limited visual range and can perceive only to such an extent. Among the visible colors, violet has the shortest wavelength at 400 nm. Indigo follows it closely at around 445 nm while the wavelength for the blue light that gives color to the sky measures 475 nm. Green comes next with about 510 nm while yellow follows closely at 570 nm and orange at 590 nm. The last visible color in the spectrum is red, with a wavelength range of 650 nm through 700 nm. The colors with relatively longer wavelengths, red and orange, are usually â€Å"less efficiently scattered† so they are more readily seen at sunrise and sunset. Blue and violet light, on the other hand, are normally scattered. So far, this is the visible and observed spectrum of light of which the normal human eye is capable. (Kusterer, 2007) Since light is a continuous spectra, there are numerous wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum that normal human vision cannot perceive. Some of this light energy includes those with wavelengths that are too short for the human eye to see. These include ultraviolet light and the spectra of light that causes sunburns and the same light used for skin tanning. Another spectra of light which remains invisible to the human eye includes those with wavelengths that are considered too long for normal human vision to perceive. These include infrared light and those that make adjacent things hot such as light energy coming from the campfire or stove burner. Light spectra with very long wavelengths are usually significant in that they â€Å"radiate heat to outer space† for if they do not do so, the solar energy absorbed by the Earth would remain trapped and continue to heat the planet. (Kusterer,

Iraq post-WWII Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Iraq post-WWII - Essay Example Iraq gained its independence in 1932, but remained under the British monarchical rule for some years (Fuccaro, 1997). After the Second World War, the Arab independence in collaboration with the fundamentalist movement went against the British Soviet Union as a way to retreat the British rule. The British used the divide and rule tactic which made Iraq to be politically unstable after the Arab regimes started conflicts among themselves In the 1970s Iraq was able to outdo the British governance and this brought development freedom to Iraq as it was when they built one of the largest and best equipped armed forces in the Arab world. Strong leaders such Nuri al-Said, Salih Jabr among others formed strong governments to protect their people and signed a number of freedom agreements with the western countries (Fuccaro, 1997). The agreements played a big role since Iraq started to act independently but that did not stop the imperials from the quest for oil. Under the rule of Nuri al al-Said, Iraq became a stable country for a while and World Bank started offering support through loans to proceed with a number of development projects such construction of bridges and buildings. Iraq also cooperated with some countries and made it possible for the country to sign a pact with Iran, turkey and the United Kingdom known as â€Å"the Baghdad pact† (Gibson, 2011). The pact’s main aim was to get many Arab countries to join them and strengthen their ties. The United States could not join the pact since most of the Arab countries were against the west imperialism but after some years, It joined in and assured support to these countries against any attack or aggression by the soviet union and any other powers. Arabs later realised the United States had plans to woo them and control Iraq’s oil and this triggered a war between Iraq and

Men are Becoming More Evil Essay Example for Free

Men are Becoming More Evil Essay I believe that in the last couple of decades man is becoming more evil. Many blame the media. Then there are those who blame the increasing number of dysfunctional family and the weakening relationship between parents and children. Whatever the cause, one thing is clear, and that is men are becoming more cruel, violent, inhuman and evil. Global crime rate, for example, has shown that all countries around the world have steady increase in robbery, homicide and other crimes. The total recorded crime trends have therefore shown similar steady increase in the last 50 decades. This was reported by the United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems. Juvenile delinquency is also increasing as reported by World Youth Report, 2003. In fact, in many Western European countries, from the 80s to the 90s, statistics show that there is a significant increase in juvenile delinquency rate from 50% to 100%. Moreover, although delinquency is universal, study has shown that there are different contributing factors to delinquency among different regions. For example, in Africa, the main cause is poverty, unemployment and malnutrition. In Asian countries, it is an urban phenomenon. In some countries, especially those in the Golden Triangle region, children are used by the drug industry, thereby becoming addicts themselves. Also in this region, children are victimized by human trafficking. In Latin America, it is homelessness and poverty. Arab world, it is urbanization for the rich countries and socioeconomic difficulties for the developing ones. While in many industrialized countries, such as the US, the main factor is increase in consumer goods. What this shows is that across the globe and with different factors, delinquency is becoming a way of life for many children. Gone are the days when children are innocent. Today they grow up in a world of violence, injustice and inhumanity that they themselves become violent, cruel and evil. Their crimes can be considered most heinous. In the last fifteen years school shootings is becoming more common. Then there are children who are not even in their teens commit senseless and extremely cruel crimes, such as Jon Venables and  Robert Thompson who stole, tortured and murdered a two year old boy. Whether this is caused by the environment, the media or family upbringing, it is clear that men are therefore becoming more evil. Becoming evil of course is a process as it does not happen overnight. It means that there is hope yet for the future generations. Societies might change and evil men might repent and turn their backs on their evil ways. But until that day comes, we see man becoming more evil with each passing day.

Input Stage Internal Factor Evaluation Matrix Marketing Essay

Input Stage Internal Factor Evaluation Matrix Marketing Essay Key Strategic Factors Weights Ratings Weighted Scores Strengths Brand  Image 0.08 4 0.32 Growing  Sales 0.03 3 0.24 Market  Share 0.05 3 0.15 Distribution Channel 0.08 4 0.32 Product  Quality 0.07 3 0.21 Capacity 0.08 4 0.32 Innovation 0.04 3 0.12 Customer  Oriented 0.02 3 0.06 Qualified Work force 0.01 3 0.03 RD 0.05 4 0.20 Business without Interest 0.02 3 0.06 Exporting 0.06 4 0.09 Weaknesses Local  Company 0.05 1 0.05 Centralized Decisions 0.09 2 0.18 No Sales on Credit 0.06 2 0.12 High  Price 0.05 2 0.10 Uncertain  Economic Political Conditions 0.03 1 0.03 Market  Demand 0.05 2 0.1 Striker  Terms And Conditions 0.03 1 0.03 Promotion 0.05 2 0.1 Total 1 2.83 COMPETITIVE PROFILE MATRIX  (CPM) Critical Success Factors Weight Rating Score Rating Score Rating Score Research   Development 0.08 3 0.24 3 0.24 4 0.32 Advertisement 0.09 3 0.24 4 0.36 3 0.27 Financial  Position 0.09 3 0.27 3 0.27 3 0.27 Market  Share 0.07 2 0.14 4 0.28 3 0.21 Product  Quality 0.08 3 0.24 3 0.24 3 0.24 Price  Competitiveness 0.11 3 0.33 3 0.24 2 0.22 Management 0.10 3 0.30 4 0.40 3 0.30 Global  Expansion 0.08 3 0.24 4 0.32 3 0.24 Customer service 0.06 3 0.18 3 0.18 2 0.12 Network 0.09 3 0.27 4 0.36 3 0.27 Production  Capacity 0.07 2 0.14 3 0.21 4 0.28 Alliances 0.08 3 0.24 4 0.32 3 0.24 Total 1.0 2.76 3.51 2.98 EFE MATRIX AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY OF PAKISTAN KEY EXTERNAL FACTORS WEIGHT RATING WEIGHTED OPPORTUNITIES tax exemption 0.07 2 0.14 energy incentives 0.08 2 0.16 water flow system 0.04 1 0.04 agricultural loans 0.06 3 0.18 surplus production of wheat 0.05 3 0.15 surplus production of rice 0.06 2 0.12 availability of natural resources 0.07 1 0.07 labour incentives 0.09 1 0.09 economies of scale 0.01 1 0.01 high demand of necessities 0.04 1 0.04 THREATS The conversion of arable land into non-agricultural uses 0.10 4 0.40 Water logging and salinity 0.09 2 0.18 Land erosion scenarios are the most disastrous of the present day crisis. 0.08 1 0.08 Land is fixed 0.04 3 0.12 Increasing population 0.01 1 0.01 Political system 0.03 2 0.06 Proposed new tax system 0.03 3 0.09 feudalism 0.02 1 0.02 Instability of economy 0.01 2 0.02 Low literacy rate 0.02 2 0.04 TOTAL: 1.00 2.75 REASONS: The IFE MATRIX for AFL is given above. Note that the strength for the company is Research and Development, Pakistan based and having a highest production capacity so got 4 rating. The major weaknesses are Price competitiveness customer service and planning for the future state of the AFL. The total weighted score of2. 76 indicate this large milk Production Company is above average in its overall internal strength. But its very close to average limit as well. So it really needs to improve its weaknesses and build its strength MATCHNG STAGE OF ENGRO FOODS LIMITED SWOT MATRIX STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES OF EFL STRENGTHS: Olpers is a  brand of  EFL. This means that consumers can relate their former image of EFL to Olpers.Engro is a well established brand name in Fertilizer, IT  and infrastructure business. The  brand is well known so customers will automatically have a  brand association with Olpers and see it as a premium quality product. ENGRO  is world renowned so it can easily attract foreign investors in backing it against other competitors such as Nestle. EFL can easily afford research and development costs for Olpers have in order to introduce new products. It can also distribute the brand through better channels because of its long term relationship with distributors in the agriculture sector. Engro has  been interacting with the farmers for fertilizers and has gained quite a good reputation over the years. It has led to a strong bond and long term relationship with the farmers who are willing to supply milk to the company.This is an added advantage and strength for the company because it will never  be short of milk production. The farmers also wont have to look elsewhere to sell their milk. EFL  only, has the third-generation  UHT  milk plant in the country. EFL  plant is the only plant in Pakistan that uses  Bactofuge technology to virtually eliminate  bacteria and ensure premium quality and hygiene. Other strengths of EFL are: Worldwide fame of  Engro. Efficient milk collection system. keeping high quality standards. Integrated distribution and warehousing facilities. Successful related diversification. Generic  brand name of  Olpers Large market share of  Engro innovative and chemicals. Having  Good reputation in the market  by strong  brand name i.e. Engro Industrial strengths for EFL are: Worldwide fame of  Engro. Efficient milk collection system. Keeping high quality standards. Integrated distribution and ware housing facilities. Generic  brand name of  Olpers large market share of  Engro innovative and chemicals. Having  Good reputation in the market by strong brand name i.e. Engro Strong  RD WEAKNESSES: Olwell ad which is  based on  Western life style,  EFL  brand management showed a man who put off his clothes  remain just in his undergarments, or half nude lady in a cat walk or men admiring the figures of a lady in mix  gender health club. In this ad they are creating associations with the brand through the stripes, which is a highlight of Olwell packaging. Half naked people have been shown with tattoos of the same stripes in order to show that they are loyal consumers of Olwell.  Also, the talent, situations and locations connects well with the ad to give Olwell a premium positioning. The brilliant marketing people at EFL failed to analyze is that the market they are targeted the ad on, is Pakistan, where practicing Muslims reside, who have strong religious beliefs. When making the ad, the brand managers were focused on, making an ad that should give the brand the most premium look and feel amongst the target consumers but on the other hand they were least bothered about the ethics, religious beliefs and cultural values. The company has not owned the color red like Nestle has a green  Milkpak;  Haleeb  has a  blue carton etc. This may create problems because when a consumer enters a grocery shop, then he/she might have problems in recalling the brand because there is no color association attached to Olpers .The company may need to find a suitable color in which to focus its upcoming marketing strategies. EFL  is not having its own dairy farms; it largely collects loose milk from farmers   gwalas through its 40  milk collection centers, which sometimes is of low quality and impure because they add vegetable oil to milk to get higher prices. EFL  is dependent upon  Tetra  Pak for the packaging of its entire dairy products. Tetra  Pak is the only option available to Olpers for packaging because it is having monopoly in the packaging sector in Pakistan. Due to this reason, TetraPak can charge them higher and it could increase the production costs. EFLs  34  out of  40 milk-collection centers are located in  Punjab, where as its only milk processing facility is situated near Sukkur(Sindh). It increases the milk collection  distribution costs; and also increases the chances of milk getting spoiled because of increased traveling time. It has  been more than a year now, when  EFL  launched its first dairy product,  Olpers  Milk on March  20,  2006. But  EFL ¶s  brand portfolio still consists of  just  3  products i.e. Olpers  Milk, Olwell  Milk and  Olpers  Cream. Whereas its competitors like Nestle and  Haleeb Foods have a much diversified line of dairy products. Industrial strengths of EFL are: Unable to compete in price sensitive segment of  UHT  milk market. Under  -utilization of the capacity. Unable to fulfill the demand of local powder milk market. Not yet ISO  certified. THREATS Our agricultural land is facing many threats and some of the major threats are: The conversion of arable land into non-agricultural uses Water logging and salinity Land erosion scenarios are the most disastrous of the present day crisis. The total land area of Pakistan is nearly 197 million acres, while the population growth rate is increasing annually. As our total land area is fixed, which cannot be increased, therefore, with rapidly expanding population pressure on it, it is also increasing quickly. As a result, our current and potential agricultural land is reducing and shrinking tremendously. It has been estimated that throughout the country, everyday approximately 500 acres (1 acre = 4,840 square yards) of farmland is taken out of agriculture by the expansion of settlements, roads, factories and many other non-agricultural activities. It is also predicted that if this trend continues then after every decade approximately a million acre or more of crop land would be taken out of agriculture in our country. Arable land is a basic and major resource for the production of human food. But it seems that the expansion of human population and human activities are reducing the availability of land, suitable for food production at an alarming rate. Expanding population demands more food on one side and devours agricultural land on the other side, which is a matter of great concern for everyone. Out of total land area, 80 million hectares, 21 million hectares is cultivable. Of the total cropped areas 16.2 million hectares (77%) is irrigated and 6.01 million hectares is rain-fed. The annual rainfall in Pakistan varies from less than 100 mm in Sindh to more than 750 mm in the foothills and northern mountains. About 60% of this rainfall occurs during monsoon. In spite of a number of drainage and salinity, menace control schemes being undertaken, the salinity and water logging problems positively persist and each year 40,000 hectares of irrigated land is lost to water logging and salinity. On the one hand, the nation needs more food to fulfill the demands of its increasing population while on the other hand, each year the cultivable commanded area (CCA) is decreasing due to this twin menace. Pakistan is quite outstanding country in the world with regard to its well-knit irrigation system which covers from upper parts of the country, down to the mouth of Indus in the south. Irrigated areas (nearly 16.0 million hectares) are generally limited to the Indus plain and river Indus and its tributaries are the main source of irrigation water of this 12.09 million hectares are canal irrigated 3.35 million hectares by tube wells and another 0.6 million hectares by other sources. Of the total area under irrigated agriculture, about 9.6 million hectares is arid, 3.8 million semi-arid and the remaining area is characterized by sub-humid. No doubt, irrigation system has increased agricultural production but on the other hand has created threats of salinity and water logging. The political system of Pakistan is not stable and the corruption in Pakistan also affects the agriculture sector. Government legal obligations have always been a threat for the running of agriculture industry. Inputs rates are increasing day by day, that means less and expensive seeds, pesticides and fertilizers. The trend of feudalism has been in our country for a long time, creating a lot of mismanagement in the federal and provincial level for the running of economy. Because of this the firms in the agricultural industry of Pakistan has been greatly affected. OPPORTUNITIES There is an opportunity for the economic growth to benefit more people only if the country rises: Enhancing Agricultural productivity Improves its system of general education to help millions of small farmers, those are decided to leave the agricultural industries because of poor productivity. Encourages labour incentives in agricultural industry. Improve economic condition in Pakistan by promoting the farmers and maintaining the system for improving agricultural methods. Clean energy and Climate Legislation Will Help: Pakistani Farmers need energy to grow crops and raise livestock, and to transport products to consumers. Farmers have been hurt by recent spikes in diesel and natural gas prices, and by jumps in the costs of inputs like fertilizer. As a result, there are serious concerns across the agricultural sector about the impacts of clean energy and climate legislation on production costs. There are more rooms for chemical industry (for more pesticides and fertilizer). There are three key factors affecting energy prices that will help farmers handle a small increase in both the short and the long term. First, farmers that take advantage of energy and climate bill incentives can quickly see big cost savings from even small improvements in energy efficiency. Farmers can take advantage of the legislations renewable energy incentives to reduce dependence on fossil fuel sand their volatile prices. The legislation will help stop speculation in energy markets, which will help stabilize fossil fuel prices. Increased Energy Efficiency Will Save Farmers Money, Energy and climate legislation will help farmers increase their energy efficiency, reducing their dependence on foreign oil and other fossil fuels. Technology has been advancing rapidly and use of new technology changes such as more efficient farm equipment and farming practice changes such as no-till agriculture. The Pakistan agricultural community is well positioned to benefit from passage of clean climate legislation. Farmers can protect themselves from cost increases through improved on-farm energy management and efficiency and develop new revenue streams through expanded markets for renewable energy. This will help our farmers continue to provide the food we all depend on. SWOT MATRIX FOR ENGRO FOODS. Strengths Weaknesses Worldwide fame of Engro. Unable to compete in price sensitive segment of UHT milk market. Efficient milk collection system. Under-utilization of the capacity. Keeping high quality standards. Unable to fulfill the demand of local powder milk market. Integrated distribution and warehousing facilities. Not yet ISO certified Generic brand name of Olpers Large market share of Engro innovative and chemicals. Having Good reputation in the marketby strongbrand name i.e. Engro Strong RD Opportunities SO Strategies WO Strategies Improving Economy Increase production of quality milk to cater the unsatisfied demand(S2,O2,O8) Population growth rate. As per the increase demand of the milk they should fulfill the demand as EFL have the ability to expand.(W3,O8). High urbanization rate. They should go in the product line of powdered milk. (S8,O2,O5) High literacy rate. They should make strong distribution system to cater to avail the full benefit of the growing market.(W3,O2 ) Flexible government policies They should increase their exports. for food industry. Have significant growth opportunities . May merge with other global businesses to eliminate competitors. They should cater the wide range of unsatisfied demandby improving their distribution networks(S4,O8)) Having Capable of expanding into other markets of the world They should adopt affective marketing strategies for the promotion of their product.(W2,O1) Threats ST Strategies WT Strategies High inflation rate. Invest more on the dairy product line as there is still a large chunk of the market which require modernization ( S6,T5) Low purchasing power. The co-ordination between different departments of EFL should be improved it will lessen the bureaucratic cost and increase the efficiency of the company. Decrease in GDP growth rate .Introduce new technology for assurance and better productivity (S4,T7) Increasing interest rates Decreasing investment Engro must get the ISO certification as to beat their competitors( W4,T8). Recessionary period in business cycle Competition with Nestle Competition with Nestle, Engro Foods and the new entrants Engro foods is currently facing increase in SalesTax SPACE MATRIX FOR ENGRO FOODS LIMITED SPACE matrix is a management tool used to analyze a company. It is used to determine what type of a strategy a company should undertake. Strategic Position Action Evaluation matrix or short a SPACE matrix is a strategic management tool that focuses on strategy formulation especially as related to the competitive position of an organization. SPACE matrix can be used as a basis for other analyses, such as the SWOT analysis, BCG matrix model, industry analysis, or assessing strategic alternatives (IE matrix). The SPACE matrix calculates the importance of each of these dimensions and places them on a Cartesian graph with X and Y coordinates. The following are a few model technical assumptions: By definition, the CA and IS values in the SPACE matrix are plotted on the X axis. -CA values can range from -1to -6. IS values can take +1to +6? -The FS and ES dimensions of the model are plotted on the Y axis. ES values can be between -1 and -6. FS values range from +1to +6 Conservative Aggressive FS 6 5 suggested strategy type 4 (3, 2.75) 3 2 1 CS 1 2 3 4 5 6 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 IS -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 Defensive ES Competitive Result: This particular  SPACE matrix  tells us that our company should pursue an  aggressive strategy. Our company has a strong competitive position it the market with rapid growth. It needs to use its internal strengths to develop a market penetration and market development strategy. This can include product development, integration with other companies, acquisition of competitors, and so on. BCG FOR EFL Relative market share in industry High Medium Low 1.0 0.5 0.0 ENGRO FOODS stars ? cash cows dogsHigh 10 Industry Sales Growth Medium 0 Rate Low -10 INTERNAL EXTERNAL (IE) MATRIX FOR ENGRO FOODS LIMMITED: The  Internal-External (IE)  matrix  is another strategic management tool used to analyze working conditions and strategic position of a business. The Internal External Matrix  or short IE matrix  is based on an analysis of internal and external business factors which are combined into one suggestive model. The  IE matrix  is a continuation of the  EFE matrix and  IFE matrix models. Strong =3.00 to 3.99 Average=2.00 to 2.99 Weak =1.00 to 1.99 Grow I And II Build III Hold IV ENGRO FOODS And V Maintain VI Harvest VII And VIII Harvest IX High=3.0 to 3.99 Medium = 2.0 to 2.99 Low= 1.0 to 1.99 1. Score from the  EFE matrix  =2.75-  this score is plotted on the y-  axis 2. Score from the IFE  matrix  =2.83-  plotted on the x-axis As blue lines indicate RESULT: This  IE matrix for  Engro  Foods tells us that our company should  hold and maintain  its position. The company should pursue strategies focused on increasing market penetration and product development. GRAND STRATEGY MATRIX FOR EFL: REPAID MARKET GROWTH RATE Quadrant I I Quadrant I ENGRO FOODS Weak competitive strong competitive Position Position Quadrant III Quadrant IV Slow market growth rate RESULTS: The grand strategic  Matrix for  EFL  is show that it lies in the first quadrant which recommend that for EFL  continued concentration on the current Market(market penetration and market development)and products(product development)is an appropriate strategy. DECISION STAGE QUANTITATIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING MATRIX OR A QSPM The Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix or a QSPM approach attempts to objectively select the best strategy using input from other management techniques and some easy computation. In other words, the QSPM method uses inputs from stage1 analyses, matches them with results from stage2 analyses, and then decides objectively among alternative strategies. Stage 1 strategic management tools The first step in the overall strategic management analysis is used to identify key strategic factor. this can be done using, for example, the EFE matrix and IFE matrix. Stage 2 strategic management tools After we identify and analyze key strategic factors as inputs for QSPM, we can formulate the type of the strategy we would like to pursue.this can be done using the stage2 strategic management tools, for example the SWOT analysis(or TOWS ),SPACE matrix analysis, BCG matrix model, or the IE matrix model Stage 3 strategic management tools The stage 1 strategic management methods provided us with key strategic factors. Based on their analysis, we formulated possible strategies in stage2. Now, the task is to compare in QSPM alternative strategies and decide which one is the most suitable for our goals. The stage 2 strategic tools provide the needed information for setting up the Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix QSPM. The QSPM method allows us to evaluate alternative strategies objectively. Conceptually, the QSPM in stage 3 determines the relative attractiveness of various strategies based on the extent to which key external and internal critical success factors are capitalized upon or improved.The relative attractiveness of each strategy is computed by determining the cumulative impact of each external and internal critical success factor QSPM of Engro Foods Based on strategies in the (IFE, EFE) and (BCG, SPACE, IE), company executives determined that Engro foods needs to pursue an aggressive strategy aimed at development of new products and further penetration of the market. They also identified that this strategy can be executed in two ways. One strategy is acquiring a competing company. The other Strategy is to expand internally. (Attractiveness Score: 1 = not acceptable; 2 = possibly acceptable; 3 =probably acceptable; 4 = most acceptable; 0 = not relevant Doing some easy calculations in the Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix QSPM, we came to a conclusion that Expansion internally is a better option. This is given by the Sum Total Attractiveness Score figure. The expansion strategy yields higher score than the acquiring of competing company.The acquisition strategy has a score of 2. 75 in the QSPM shown above whereas the internal expansion strategy has a smaller score of 2. 78

Experiment for Plant Recognition

Experiment for Plant Recognition Abstract In classical sparse representation based classification (SRC) and weighted SRC (WSRC) algorithms, the test samples are sparely represented by all training samples. They emphasize the sparsity of the coding coefficients but without considering the local structure of the input data. Although the more training samples, the better the sparse representation, it is time consuming to find a global sparse representation for the test sample on the large-scale database. To overcome the shortcoming, aiming at the difficult problem of plant leaf recognition on the large-scale database, a two-stage local similarity based classification learning (LSCL) method is proposed by combining local mean-based classification (LMC) method and local WSRC (LWSRC). In the first stage, LMC is applied to coarsely classifying the test sample. k nearest neighbors of the test sample, as a neighbor subset, is selected from each training class, then the local geometric center of each class is calculated. S candidate n eighbor subsets of the test sample are determined with the first S smallest distances between the test sample and each local geometric center. In the second stage, LWSRC is proposed to approximately represent the test sample through a linear weighted sum of all kÃÆ'-S samples of the S candidate neighbor subsets. The rationale of the proposed method is as follows: (1) the first stage aims to eliminate the training samples that are far from the test sample and assume that these samples have no effects on the ultimate classification decision, then select the candidate neighbor subsets of the test sample. Thus the classification problem becomes simple with fewer subsets; (2) the second stage pays more attention to those training samples of the candidate neighbor subsets in weighted representing the test sample. This is helpful to accurately represent the test sample. Experimental results on the leaf image database demonstrate that the proposed method not only has a high accuracy and lo w time cost, but also can be clearly interpreted. Keywords: Local similarity-based-classification learning (LSCL); Local mean-based classification method (LMC); Weighted sparse representation based classification (WSRC); Local WSRC (LWSRC); Two-stage LSCL. 1. Introduction Similarity-based-classification learning (SCL) methods make use of the pair-wise similarities or dissimilarities between a test sample and each training sample to design the classification problem. K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) is a non-parametric, simple, attractive, relatively mature pattern SCL method, and is easy to be quickly achieved [1,2]. It has been widely applied to many applications, including computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning [3,4]. Its basic processes are: calculating the distance (as dissimilarity or similarity) between the test sample y and each training sample, selecting k samples with k minimum distances as the nearest k neighbors of y, finally determining the category of y that most of the nearest k neighbors belong to. In weighted K-NN, it is useful to assign weight to the contributions of the neighbors, so that the nearer neighbors contribute more to the classification method than the more dissimilarity ones. One of the disadvantages of K-NN is that, when the distribution of the training set is uneven, K-NN may cause misjudgment, because K-NN only cares the order of the first k nearest neighbor samples but does not consider the sample density. Moreover, the performance of K-NN is seriously influenced by the existing outliers and noise samples. To overcome these problems, a number of local SCL (LSCL) methods have been proposed recently. The local mean-based nonparametric classifier (LMC) is said to be an improved K-NN, which can resist the noise influences and classify the unbalanced data [5,6]. Its main idea is to calculate the local mean-based vector of each class as the nearest k neighbor of the test sample, and the test sample can be classified into the category that the nearest local mean-based vector belongs to. One disadvantage of LMC is that it cannot well represent the similarity between multidimensional vectors. To improve the performance of LMC, Mitani et al. [5] proposed a reliable local mean-based K-NN algorit hm (LMKNN), which employs the local mean vector of each class to classify the test sample. LMKNN has been already successfully applied to the group-based classification, discriminant analysis and distance metric learning. Zhang et al. [6] further improved the performance of LMC by utilizing the cosine distance instead of Euclidean distance to select the k nearest neighbors. It is proved to be better suitable for the classification of multidimensional data. Above SCL, LMC and LSCL algorithms are often not effective when the data patterns of different classes overlap in the regions in feature space. Recently, sparse representation based classification (SRC) [8], a SCL modified manner, has attracted much attention in various areas. It can achieve better classification performance than other typical clustering and classification methods such as SCL, LSCL, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and principal component analysis (PCA) [7] in some cases. In SRC [9], a test image is encoded over the original training set with sparse constraint imposed on the encoding vector. The training set acts as a dictionary to linearly represent the test samples. SRC emphasizes the sparsity of the coding coefficients but without considering the local structure of the input data [10,11]. However, the local structure of the data is proven to be important for the classification tasks. To make use of the local structure of the data, some weighted SRC (WSRC) and lo cal SCR (LSRC) algorithms have been proposed. Guo et al. [12] proposed a similarity WSRC algorithm, in which, the similarity matrix between the test samples and the training samples can be constructed by various distance or similarity measurements. Lu et al. [13] proposed a WSRC algorithm to represent the test sample by exploiting the weighted training samples based on l1-norm. Li et al. [14] proposed a LSRC algorithm to perform the sparse decomposition in local neighborhood. In LSRC, instead of solving the l1-norm constrained least square problem for all of training samples, they solved a similar problem in the local neighborhood of each test sample. SRC, WSRC, similarity WSRC and LSRChave something in common, such as, the individual sparsity and local similarity between the test sample and the training samples are considered to ensure that the neighbor coding vectors are similar to each other if they have strong correlation, and the weighted matrix is constructed by incorporating the similarity information, the similarity weighted l1-norm minimization problem is constructed and solved, and the obtained coding coefficients tend to be local and robust. Leaf based plant species recognition is one of the most important branches in pattern recognition and artificial intelligence [15-18]. It is useful for agricultural producers, botanists, industrialists, food engineers and physicians, but it is a NP-hard problem and a challenging research [19-21], because plant leaves are quite irregular, it is difficult to accurately describe their shapes compared with the industrial work pieces, and some between-species leaves are different from each other, as shown in Fig1.A and B, while within-species leaves are similar to each other, as shown in Fig.1C [22]. test sample training 1 training 2 training 3 training 4 training 5 training 6 training 7 (A) Four different species leaves (B) Four different species leaves (C) Ten same species leaves Fig.1 plant leaf examples SRC can be applied to leaf based plant species recognition [23,24]. In theory, in SRC and modified SRC, it is well to sparsely represent the test sample by too many training samples. In practice, however, it is time consuming to find a global sparse representation on the large-scale leaf image database, because leaf images are quite complex than face images. To overcome this problem, in the paper, motivated by the recent progress and success in LMC [6], modified SRC [12-14], two-stage SR [25] and SR based coarse-to-fine face recognition [26], by creatively integrating LMC and WSRC into the leaf classification, a novel plant recognition method is proposed and verified on the large-scale dataset. Different from the classical plant classification methods and the modified SRC algorithms, in the proposed method, the plant species recognition is implemented through a coarse recognition process and a fine recognition process. The major contributions of the proposed method are (1) a two-stage plant species recognition method, for the first time, is proposed; (2) a local WSRC algorithm is proposed to sparsely represent the test sample; (3) the experimental results indicate that the proposed method is very competitive in plant species recognition on large-scale database. The remainder of this paper is arranged as follows: in Section 2, we briefly review LMC, SRC and WSRC. In Section 3, we describe the proposed method and provide some rationale and interpretation. Section 4 presents experimental results. Section 5 offers conclusion and future work. 2. Related works In this section, some related works are introduced. Suppose n training samples,, from different classes {X1, X2,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦,XC}. is the sample number of the ith class, then. 2.1 LMC Local mean-based nonparametric classification (LMC) is an improved K-NN method [6]. It uses Euclidean distance or cosine distance to select nearest neighbors and measure the similarity between the test sample and its neighbors. In general, the cosine distance is more suitable to describe the similarity of the multi-dimensional data. LMC is described as follows, for each test sample y, Step 1: Select k nearest neighbors of y from the jth class, as a neighbor subset represented by; Step 2: Calculate the local mean-based vector for each classby, (1) Step 3: Calculate the distance between y and. Step 4: if Euclidean distance metric is adopted; while if cosine distance metric is adopted. 2.2 SRC SRC relies on a distance metric to penalize the dissimilar samples and award the similar samples. Its main idea is to sparsely represent and classify the test sample by a linear combination of all the training samples. The test sample is assigned into the class that produces the minimum residue. SRC is described as follows, Input: n training samples, a test sample. Output: the class label of y. Step 1: Construct the dictionary matrixby n training samples. Each column of A is a training sample called basis vector or atom. Normalize each column of A to unit l2-norm. A is required to be unit l2-norm (or bounded norm) in order to avoid the trivial solutions that are due to the ambiguity of the linear reconstruction. Step 2: Construct and solve an l1-norm minimization problem, (2) where x is called as spare representation coefficients of y. Eq. (2) can be usually approximate by an l1-norm minimization problem, (3) whereis the threshold of the residue. Eq.(3) can be generalized as a constrained least square problem, (4) where ÃŽÂ »>0 is a scalar regularization parameter which balances the tradeoff between the sparsity of the solution and the reconstruction error. Eq.(4) is a constrained LASSO problem, its detail solution is found in Ref. [27]. Step 3: Compute residue, whereis the characteristic function that selects the coefficients associated with the ith class; Step 4: the class label of, y, is identified as. 2.3 WSRC WSRC integrates both sparsity and locality structure of the data to further improve the classification performance of SRC. It aims to impose larger weight to the training samples that are farer from the test sample. Different from SRC, WSRC solves a weighted l1-norm minimization problem, (5) where W is a diagonal weighted matrix, and its diagonal elements are. Eq.(5) makes sure that the coding coefficients of WSRC tend to be not only sparse but also local in linear representation [13], which can represent the test sample more robustly. 2.4 LSRC Though a lot of instances have been reported that WSRC performs better than SRC in various classification problems, WSRC forms the dictionary by using all the training samples, thus the size of the generated dictionary may be large, which will make adverse effect to solving the l1-norm minimization problem. To overcome this drawback, a local sparse representation based classification (LSRC) is proposed to perform sparse decomposition in a local manner. In LSRC, K-NN criterion is exploited to find the nearest k neighbors for the test samples, and the selected samples are utilized to construct the over-complete dictionary. Different from SRC, LSRC solves a weighted l1 minimization problem, (6) wherestands for data matrix which consists of the k nearest neighbors of y. Compared with the original SRC and WSRC, although the computational cost of LSRC will be saved remarkably when, LSRC does not assign different weight to the different training samples. 3. Two-stage LSCL From the above analysis, it is found that each of LMC, WSRC and LSRC has its advantages and disadvantages. To overcome the difficult problem of plant recognition on the large-scale leaf image database, a two-stage LSCL leaf recognition method is proposed in the section. It is a sparse decomposition problem in a local manner to obtain an approximate solution. Compared with WSRC and LSRC, LSCL solves a weighted l1-norm constrain least square problem in the candidate local neighborhoods of each test sample, instead of solving the same problem for all the training samples. Suppose there are a test sampleand n training samples from C classes, andis the sample number of ith class,is jth sample of the ith class. Each sample is assumed to be a one-dimensional column vector. The proposed method is described in detail as follows. 3.1 First stage of LSCL Calculate the Euclidean distancebetween y and, and select k nearest neighbors of y fromwith the first k smallest distances, the selected neighbor subset noted as, . Calculate the average of, (7) Calculate the Euclidean distancebetween y and. From C neighbor subsets, selectneighbor subsets with the firstsmallest distancesas the candidate subsets for the test sample, in simple terms, denoted as. The training samples fromare reserved as the candidate training samples for the test sample, and the other training samples are eliminated from the training set. 3.2 Second step of LSCL From the first stage, it is noted that there aretraining samples from all the candidate subsets. For simplify, we just as well express the jth training sample ofis. The second stage first represents the test sample as a linear combination of all the training samples of, and then exploits this linear combination to classify the test sample. From the first stage, we have obtained the Euclidean distancebetween y and each candidate sample. By, a new local WSRC is proposed to solve the same weighted l1-norm minimization problem as Eq.(5), (8) where is the dictionary constructed bytraining samples of,is the weighted diagonal matrix, is the Euclidean distance between y and. In Eq.(8), the weighted matrix is a locality adaptor to penalize the distance between y and. In the above SRC, WSRC, LSRC and LSCL, the l1à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢norm constraint least square minimization problem is solved by the approach proposed in [28], which is a specialized interior-point method for solving the large scale problem. The solution of Eq.(8) can be expressed as (9) From Eq.(9), is expressed as the sparse representation of the test sample. In representing the test sample, the sum of the contribution of the ith candidate neighbor subset is calculated by (10) whereis the jth sparse coefficient corresponding to the ith candidate nearest neighbor subset. Then we calculate the residue of the ith candidate neighbor subset corresponding to test sample y, (11) In Eq.(11), for the ith class (), a smalleraverages the greater contribution to representing y. Thus, y is finally classified into the class that produces the smallest residue. 3.3 Summary of two-stage LSCL From the above analysis, the main steps of the proposed method are summarized as follows. Suppose n training samples from Cdifferent classes, a test sample y, the number k of the nearest neighbors of y, the number S of the candidate neighbor subsets. Step 1. Compute the Euclidean distance between the test sample y and every training sample, respectively. Step 2. Through K-NN rules, find k nearest neighbors from each training class as the neighbor subset for y, calculate the neighbor average of the neighbor subset of each class, and calculate the distance between y and the neighbor average. Step 3. Determine S neighbor subsets with the first S smallest distances, as the candidate neighbor subsets for y. Step 4. Construct the dictionary by all training samples of the S candidate neighbor subsets and then construct the weighted l1-norm minimization optimization problem as Eq.(8). Step 5. Solve Eq.(8) and obtain the sparse coefficients. Step 6. For each candidate neighbor subset, compute the residue between yand its estimationby Eq.(11). Step 7. Identify the class labelthat has the minimum ultimate residue and classify y into this class. 3.4 Rationale and interpretation of LSCL In practical, some between-species leaves are very different from the other leaves, as shown in Fig.1A. They can be easily classified by the Euclidean distances between the leaf digital image matrices. However, some between-species leaves are very similar to each other, as shown in Fig.1B. They cannot be easily classified by some simple classification methods. In Figs.1A and B, suppose the first leaf is the test sample, while other seven leaves are training samples. It is difficult to identify the label of the test leaf by the simple classification method, because the test leaf is very similar to Nos. 4,5,6 and 7 in Fig.1B. However, it is sure that the test sample is not Nos.1, 2 and 3. So, we can naturally firstly exclude these three leaves. This exclusion method example is the purpose of the first stage of LSCL. From Fig.1C, it is found that there is large difference between the leaves of the same species. Therefore, in plant recognition, an optimal scheme is to select some trainin g samples that are relatively similar to the test sample as the candidate training samples, such as Nos. 2 and 9 in Fig.1C are similar to the test sample in Fig.1C, instead of considering all training samples. The average neighbor distance is used to coarsely recognize the test sample. The average neighbor distance as dissimilarity is more effective and robust than the original distance between the test and each training leaf, especially in the case of existing noise and outliers. From the above analysis, in the first stage of LSCL, it is reasonable to assume that the leaf close to the test sample has great effect, on the contrary, if a leaf is far enough from the test sample it will have little effect and even have side-effect on the classification decision of the test sample. These leaves should be discarded firstly, and then the later plant recognition task will be clear and simple. In the same way, we can use the similarity between the test sample and the average of its nearest neighbors to select some neighbor subsets as the candidate training subsets of the test sample. If we do so, we can eliminate the side-effect on the classification decision of the neighbor subset that is far from the test sample. Usually, for the classification problem, the more the classes, the lower the classification accuracy, so the first stage is very useful. In the second stage of LSCL, there are S nearest neighbor subsets as candidate class labels of the test sample, thus it is indeed faced with a problem simpler than the original classification problem, becauseand, i.e., few training samples are reserved to match the test sample. Thus, the computational cost is mostly reduced and the recognition rate will be improved greatly. We analyze the computational cost of LSCL in theory as follows. There are n samples from C classes, and every sample is an mÃÆ'-1 column vector, the first stage need to calculate the Euclidean distance, select k nearest neighbors from each class, and calculate the average of the k nearest neighbors, then the computational cost is about. In second stage, there aretraining samples to construct the dictionary A, the cost ofis, the cost ofis, and the cost ofis. The second stage has computational cost of+. The computational cost of LSCL is ++in total. The computational cost of the classical SRC algorithm is[8,9]. Compared with SRC, it is found that the computational cost of LSCL will be saved remarkably when. 4. Experiments and result analysis In this section, the proposed method is validated on a plant species leaf database and compared with the state-of-the-art methods. 4.1 Leaf image data and experiment preparation To validate the proposed method, we apply it to the leaf classification task using the ICL dataset. All leaf images of the dataset were collected at the Botanical Garden of Hefei, Anhui Province of China by Intelligent Computing Laboratory (ICL), Chinese Academy of Sciences. The ICL dataset contains 6000 plant leaf images from 200 species, in which each class has 30 leaf images. Some examples are shown in Fig.2. In the database, some leaves could be distinguished easily, such as the first 6 leaves in Fig.2A, while some leaves could be distinguished difficultly, such as the last 6 leaves in Fig.2A. We verify the proposed method by two situations, (1) two-fold cross validation, i.e., 15 leaf images of each class are randomly selected for training, and the rest 15 samples are used for testing; (2) leave-one-out cross validation, i.e., one of each class are randomly selected for testing and the rest 29 leaf images per class are used for training. (A) Original leaf images (B) Gray-scale images (C) Binary texture images Fig.2 Samples of different species from ICL database

The Dual Meaning of Meaning :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

A central problem in the philosophy of language has been to find a way to reconcile first person authority about meaning with externalist theories of meaning. In other words, if meanings aren't wholly in the head (the externalist thesis), then how do we explain the apparent authority we have about what our own utterances mean? In this paper, I will present one possible and, I believe, highly plausible solution which will allow us to maintain that we do have first person authority with regard to the meanings of our utterances while still accepting the lessons that Twin Earth has taught us (that meanings are, at least in part, determined by the external world). Moreover, it is, I believe, a virtue of any philosophical theory that it remain as close to common sense as analytical rigour will allow. Thus, it is advisable that one try to approach philosophical questions as the layman — still 'untainted' by philosophy — would approach them. This brand of 'common sense phi losophy' is what I shall attempt to use in providing an account of meaning. Let us begin, then, by examining first person authority. It seems quite obvious to me that, should there be no successful reconciliation of first person authority with externalism, the former would defeat the latter in any theory of meaning. I do not say this just because it is highly counter-intuitive to think that we don't generally know what we mean when we speak, rather it seems to me to be impossible to deny that we have this knowledge: not only do we know what we mean, but we know that we know what we mean. Though most philosophers recognise the obviousness of this fact, some11 maintain that it is in need of an explanation. This, I believe, is because they take externalism as more 'primitive' than first person authority. What I mean is that these philosophers approach first person authority from the viewpoint of an already developed externalist theory. I suggest that, instead, we take the undeniability of first person authority as given and then attempt to provide a theory of meaning that preserves first person authority while accounting for the role of the external world in determining meaning. What exactly is it, then, of which we have this direct authoritative knowledge? And how, if at all, does it relate to the external world?

Steps in building a shed :: essays papers

Steps in building a shed What ever the look or shape of your property it can probably be improved in some way by building a shed. Wether its purely for decoration or a specific function there are many reasons for building a shed. If you construct the shed yourself it can save you money because you don’t have to pay for labor. Another benefit is that you get to add your own character to it and have it just the way you want it. You don’t have to settle for a prefabricated average shed. you get the chance to tailor it to your needs and preferences. Not only can you save money by building it your self, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you made it . The first step in building a shed is deciding its intended purpose. Its purpose will probably determine the size, shape and cost of the shed. If its for improving the image of your landscape it will probably be a medium size shed but with lots of detail, which will increase the cost of construction. You might want to add windows to make the shed more appealing. A nice paint finished exterior gives you an opportunity to make the color match its surroundings such as the color of your house. If the shed is for tool storage and working area its going to need to be large enough to accommodate both you and you’re equipment. The increase in size means an increase in cost. Since it’s a storage, or work shed there is no real need to make it all that elaborate. Which will save a lot of money. If you will be spending a lot of time out in the shed it would be a good idea to make it a comfortable environment to work in. Adding insulation in the walls will keep out the cold and maint ain cool in the heat. Since there will probably be power tools that need electricity to run the shed should have some sort of electric source. You can simply run an extension cord from your house to the shed as a cheap alternative. If you are looking for something more professional and permanent, electric outlets can be installed inside the shed. most people are not electricians this should not be attempted by any novice do-it your selfer. Shelves are a good idea to increase interior storage space and incorporate the whole shed into usable space.

Relationship of Self-Esteem to Objective Success: Is it a Cause or Cons

It has been stipulated that self-esteem is one of the most studied concepts in social psychology. In the now classic study Pygmalion in the Classroom by Rosenthal and Jacobsen, it highlights how teachers' unfounded beliefs about their students became objective realities of the students performance (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003, p. 2). Early studies like this one has ignited the pursuit to find ways to increase self-esteem and encourage instillment, or creation, of self-esteem to guarantee future success. Because it is so popularly studied, results of studies investigating variables associated with self-esteem often significantly vary. In our individualistic culture, having high-self esteem is a coveted state. Through multiple studies exploring this topic, perhaps a conclusion can be made about the relationship between self-esteem and success. Is self-esteem a predictor of success or a result of achieving the success? A previous study called "Predictors of situational disengagement in the academic setting," the authors Stephan, Caudroit, Boichà ©, and Sarrazin (2011) examined the predictors of discounting or devaluing negative feedback in a physical education class in France. By comparing the grades received in class (of which the participants were informed) and the reports of the students type of motivation, as well as their perceived competence in the subject (p.446). The researchers measured the level of disengagement and perceived competence following receiving the individual grades. They identified three different kinds of motivation is from the self-determination theory: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation, or absence of motivation (p.444). If an unsatisfactory grade was receiv... ...eral self-esteem to school achievement. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 599-564. Ramsdal, G.H. (2008). Differential relations between two dimensions of self-esteem and the Big Five? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49, 333-338. Stephan, Y., Caudroit, J., Boichà ©, J., Sarrazin, P. (2011). Predictors of situational disengagement in the academic setting: The contribution of grades, perceived competence, and academic motivation. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 441-455. Stumpp, T., Muck, P.M., Hà ¼lscheger, U.R., Judge, T.A., & Mair, G.W. (2010). Core self-evaulations in Germany:Validation of a German measure of its relationship with career success. Applied Psychoology: An International Review, 59, 674-700. Zhang, M., & Cross, S.E. (2011). Emotion is memories of success and failure: A cultural perspective. Emotion, 11, 866-880. Relationship of Self-Esteem to Objective Success: Is it a Cause or Cons It has been stipulated that self-esteem is one of the most studied concepts in social psychology. In the now classic study Pygmalion in the Classroom by Rosenthal and Jacobsen, it highlights how teachers' unfounded beliefs about their students became objective realities of the students performance (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003, p. 2). Early studies like this one has ignited the pursuit to find ways to increase self-esteem and encourage instillment, or creation, of self-esteem to guarantee future success. Because it is so popularly studied, results of studies investigating variables associated with self-esteem often significantly vary. In our individualistic culture, having high-self esteem is a coveted state. Through multiple studies exploring this topic, perhaps a conclusion can be made about the relationship between self-esteem and success. Is self-esteem a predictor of success or a result of achieving the success? A previous study called "Predictors of situational disengagement in the academic setting," the authors Stephan, Caudroit, Boichà ©, and Sarrazin (2011) examined the predictors of discounting or devaluing negative feedback in a physical education class in France. By comparing the grades received in class (of which the participants were informed) and the reports of the students type of motivation, as well as their perceived competence in the subject (p.446). The researchers measured the level of disengagement and perceived competence following receiving the individual grades. They identified three different kinds of motivation is from the self-determination theory: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation, or absence of motivation (p.444). If an unsatisfactory grade was receiv... ...eral self-esteem to school achievement. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 599-564. Ramsdal, G.H. (2008). Differential relations between two dimensions of self-esteem and the Big Five? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49, 333-338. Stephan, Y., Caudroit, J., Boichà ©, J., Sarrazin, P. (2011). Predictors of situational disengagement in the academic setting: The contribution of grades, perceived competence, and academic motivation. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 441-455. Stumpp, T., Muck, P.M., Hà ¼lscheger, U.R., Judge, T.A., & Mair, G.W. (2010). Core self-evaulations in Germany:Validation of a German measure of its relationship with career success. Applied Psychoology: An International Review, 59, 674-700. Zhang, M., & Cross, S.E. (2011). Emotion is memories of success and failure: A cultural perspective. Emotion, 11, 866-880.

Social Media Article Review

The social network where no one knows your name It’s a new social network called Social Number, lists users by a number, not by name. It's the latest and greatest thing in an ongoing debate about being online and anonymous. The CEO of the company sees it as a complement to open social networking. Users say they appreciate being able to talk freely without fear of being judged. You can discuss anything and everything. You have a message board that you post questions and other people on that website can respond to that thread.Social Number users say they find value in being able to openly talk about sensitive topics without worrying about alienating or offending anyone. You have a message board that you post questions and other people on that website can respond to that thread. I think this a good thing to have, where people can express their feelings without having feedback from other people that they know mainly so they don’t offend them. You can talk about how to deal with a bad boss, politics, jobs, friends, the ups and the downs of life al can be discussed here without having your name put on a social network.This is also good for people who want to vent and have other people’s opinion. Another good thing about this anonymous social network is that there is no bullying or threats. For some people expressing your political views on a social network will get attacked by people who are friends with them. As we all have a freedom of speech, I don’t believe that anyone should be ‘attacked’ because they have their own opinion. http://www. cnn. com/2013/01/29/tech/social-media/social-number-anonymous/index. html? hpt=li_c2